- All right, welcome to today's video,
how to answer behavioral questions,
the five keys to an impactful story.
I'm gonna explain what the five things are
to tell an impactful story during an interview.
Stay tuned.
(bright music)
Okay, so this has to be the number one thing
that clients will come to me with.
They will think
that their stories are not communicated effectively.
Maybe they got feedback that said,
their stories weren't strong enough.
They're not very good at articulating their own value.
They're not sure how to communicate exactly what they did
and why they did it and why it makes a significant impact
and why they should be hired.
If you're in this situation, this video is for you.
Even if you just wanna improve your interview skills,
this is perfect.
The first point, it's about your value
and knowing your own value.
People think that it's the exact words that you're using.
You might think it's the length of your story.
You might think about how recent was the story.
Was it just like a few weeks ago, or was it a year ago?
Can I use this story from 20 years ago?
How long should the story be?
None of these things actually matter.
What matters is the impact that the story had,
like, what was the results of the story?
What impact did it have on the organization?
Why was it important that you were there?
Why was it important that you did the tasks
that allowed you to now tell this story?
What did you do uniquely
that made this story come about in the way that it did?
So it's about your inherent value.
And the biggest problem is
that you probably don't understand that yourself yet.
So if it's one thing I work with clients on is
they don't understand their inherent value.
So there's two questions that I want you to ask
after every interview story that you tell
so that you can get an answer to this.
So the first question I want you to ask yourself,
when you answer a behavioral interview question,
whether you're practicing, whether you're in an interview,
is, what impact did this story have on the organization?
What was the impact?
Second question is, what would have happened
if I wasn't there to do this particular task
to tell this particular story,
to work on this particular project?
How would it have gone differently?
So perhaps it would have been successful
but it would have been different, right?
Maybe it would have failed if you weren't there.
In many circumstances that's the case.
So we wanna zero in on what was the impact
that you had on the organization
from the story that you're telling?
And what was it that you uniquely
brought to the table
in order to make that story,
something that you can now talk about?
So I have a ton of examples.
You'll find a ton of YouTube videos, with example stories,
from my personal career, and from my clients.
And I have a free download as well.
But the examples won't be useful to you unless you know
your inherent value and your inherent impact, right?
So it's not about the words you say.
It's not about the length of your story.
It's not about when your story happened,
it's about the impact that your story had
on the organization.
Secondly, a really good interview story
will show how you changed in a positive way.
Okay, so even if we're talking about a time you failed,
a time you made a big mistake,
we're gonna be talking about a time that impacted you
and changed you as a person in some way.
And it's very important that the story
reflects you as a person, reflects your character.
Because those are the stories that really leave
a memorable impact on somebody.
I think I'm ready to talk about my story.
I had a big massive failure.
And you (chuckles) one thing I wanted to mention is
if you're still kind of upset about the story,
then it's probably not time to tell it yet
because you don't wanna tell it with a negative energy
and some of our failure and mistake stories
and some of the most powerful ones.
Sometimes we need to wait an appropriate amount of time
before we feel very comfortable telling them.
So, I was planning a large event for 200 people.
I was a manager and I had an employee helping me out
with the tasks for the event.
My employee, she was helping me out
with the tasks for the event.
She was basically handling the legwork for everything
and I was managing her.
And so this is not what I was used to
normally I'm the one who would be doing everything.
My employee, she didn't have a ton of experience
in the events industry or doing events.
She is/was a lovely person, but it wasn't her fault,
in the end it was my responsibility
'cause I was the manager.
So we had to procure a bus to come to pick up 200 people
and bring them to an excursion during the event.
The event was in a different city, everybody had to travel.
There was a lot of moving parts and long story short,
the bus that was supposed to come pick
everybody up for the event did not show up on time,
so everybody was left waiting.
I scrambled to get the bus to come.
We had to scramble to get a driver, get the bus to come.
When looking upon further investigation,
it turns out the bus was booked for the wrong date
and my employee had signed a document
that was for the wrong date.
That document had never crossed my desk before.
I had never seen it.
She knew that she wasn't supposed to sign documents,
but she made a mistake
and ultimately that mistake was my responsibility.
And she wasn't at the event,
so I had to have the embarrassment
and I had to deal with the situation.
And it was very, very embarrassing.
It was very, very painful.
It was very, very uncomfortable for me,
but ultimately was my responsibility
and I had to shift into solution mode to try and figure out
how we were going to accommodate 200 people
either have another activity for them or get the bus.
In the end the result was that
they were able to get bus drivers.
We were able to go on our excursion,
we were just delayed by an hour or so.
So in the end
the result was better than it could have been.
We didn't have to rearrange.
I kind of had some tentative plans to rearrange
because I did jump into action
and I was as resourceful as possible.
I didn't panic, however,
it was still an embarrassing situation.
So what did I learn from that?
As a manager, I learned that I needed to review better
and work closely with her, closer with her
in order to ensure that everything was double checked.
So as a person,
this changed me because I realized
that I needed to supervise a little bit more closely
than I had been.
So that shows, me as a person who was very trusting
and very willing to delegate,
versus somebody who might have been
hanging on to control of the situation
and not wanted to let their employee do anything.
Right, so that was my weakness and my downfall at that point
is I was too trusting,
and I let her handle too much of the things
and she just wasn't quite ready
for that level of responsibility.
So what I learned was,
is I'm gonna have a process in place next time
in order to double-check everything.
Make sure that no signatures are made by her
before somebody else's reviewing the document
or the signatures are made by the appropriate person
which should have happened in the first place.
However, she misunderstood or she made a mistake
and she's somehow signed that document
when she really shouldn't have.
So have a process in place to make sure documents
pass my desk are double-checked
and are signed by the appropriate signing authority.
This happened about a year ago now,
that was very, very embarrassing for me.
It was a big point in my career
where I would make sure that that would never happen again.
What my employee learned,
so I'll take the story a step further,
was she will obviously not make that mistake again.
She already felt bad about it, right?
So there was no point in me berating her, disciplining her
or making her feel worse about it,
because she already knew the mistake that had been made.
So as a manager, I took into consideration
that I knew she already felt bad.
She helped me fix the problem.
I was kind and compassionate towards her
and I didn't make it worse.
So as a manager, it grew me
because even though I wanted to get angry at her
human nature would say, how could you do this?
Why wouldn't you tell me about this,
like, what you wanna do?
Is not necessarily the best thing
and it's definitely not gonna serve her
in any way moving forward, right?
So I want people to be free to make mistakes
if they're doing the work,
and then deal with the mistakes after.
So this was an unfortunate mistake, again,
super embarrassing, super difficult for me to get over,
however, a huge key pivotal learning moment
in my career as a manager of people,
and as a manager of assigning responsibility
and delegating tasks to people.
So having better processes in place,
having better checkpoints,
and being more mindful of overseeing the process
instead of just delegating and trusting.
Hopefully, that tells you that I learned so much
from this experience.
So not only my ability to manage somebody else,
but then when the mistake happens,
how I handled it.
So this is a story that people remember right?
Was very painful, very uncomfortable,
very embarrassing, right?
And often the best stories is how they turn out, right?
So it grew me as an employee, it changed me as a person.
It's something I'll never forget.
And that's what makes a good story.
So the story is where everything works out great.
Those are good stories too
and we wanna talk about our results
and we wanna talk about how we figured things out,
and how we thought we might never do it.
We want to talk about our success stories
and talk about ourselves in the hero light.
But we also want to talk about ourselves
in a vulnerable light, right?
We also want to show that we're human,
and that we do make mistakes,
and then how we handle those mistakes,
what we learn from those mistakes
and who we become as people
because interviewers appreciate somebody who is human
way more than they relate to somebody who is perfect,
polished, professional and never made a single mistake
in their career, right?
Plus, that's not believable and it's disingenuous even.
And that's when people start to be like,
"Yeah, there was something off about that person, right?"
"They just seem to have it all to perfect."
So, that's when I want to offer to you is,
the main key is to have a moment in the story
where you changed as a person.
So next point is I wanna share with you
that you can share a physical location for the story.
So I shared that the event that we had
was in a different city.
I could have mentioned that it was in Whistler BC,
and that would have given a physical location
been like we're standing at the hotel.
I'm trying to figure out whether the bus is coming
and we've got all these people standing outside
waiting for the bus, right?
So this paints a very clear, very visceral picture
in the eyes of the interviewer and they can see,
wow, that would be a stressful situation
and they can even put themselves in that situation
and be like, wow, I can see how that would be very stressful
and then they start to relate to me.
So give the story of physical location
and every scene in your story
should have a physical location,
because it becomes more visceral
for the listener of the story.
Point number four.
So, even though I was talking about a story
that was a mistake, a failure,
in the end resulted in a not so bad outcome,
you want to show your own strengths in the story.
So I listed my strengths as I told that story,
as somebody who was kind and compassionate
after the mistake had been made,
somebody who was resourceful,
someone who moved into resourceful mode
and did the tasks necessary to fix the problem immediately
instead of panicking, despite what had happened
the best way that I could handle it at the time I did,
and I was able to shift my focus from blaming and anger
to resourcefulness and making the necessary moves
in order to get what we needed to get done, done
instead of panicking,
which is something that might be,
something that most people wanna do.
So I listed my key characteristics in the story
that would make me a high value employee,
even in the worst of situations.
So you wanna make sure that you're doing that
even in the situations where you made a mistake
or you failed, right?
But we do wanna talk about the story.
So I very strongly advocate for talking about the stories
where you made a big mistake, or you made a big failure,
because those are the most memorable stories.
They're the ones that have grown you the most,
and they're the ones where people can relate the most
and they're the ones that are in the end,
the most powerful, most memorable stories.
And point number five is show humility.
So, very important to show humility.
That means showing yourself as human,
showing yourself as vulnerable,
showing yourself as a person who isn't perfect.
Maybe you think that people do wanna hire someone perfect,
but they really don't, okay?
They're not perfect themselves.
They have their own insecurities themselves.
They've made their own mistakes themselves.
They don't wanna hire somebody who comes in
and intimidates them and makes them look bad.
And when you are perfect
or you showcase yourself as perfect,
first of all, it isn't true, because nobody is.
Secondly, is disingenuous.
Thirdly, they can't relate to you at all, right?
So, we wanna talk about our failures, our mistakes,
our shortcomings, our weaknesses,
and we also wanna show how we manage them
and how we handle them as humans.
So we all have insecurities.
We all have mistakes that we make.
And I like to say that as humans,
we're all kind of smart sometimes
and we're all kind of dumb sometimes.
It's just the way of it, right?
It doesn't make us any less worthy,
or any less capable on a day to day basis.
Kind of makes us interesting, kind of makes us more fun.
If you're able to laugh at your own mistakes,
yet in the same vein, you're able to learn from them
and take those lessons improve, teach other people,
you are doing what you need to do as a human
which is all that can be asked of you,
which is growing, learning, succeeding, right?
And if you can't go in there and talk about that freely,
then you are just a robot, who can do everything,
is perfect, knows all the answers,
it's very polished and very professional but really,
nobody wants to work with you.
So, I don't know about you,
I want to become very comfortable with my mistakes
and my shortcomings and my weaknesses.
I also wanna be really comfortable
with highlighting my strengths
and the things that I do really well.
And I also hope that by sharing my shortcomings
and my weaknesses, I can help somebody else,
I can show how I can improve and be better.
And I also know that the fact that that mistake happened
with the bus, the 200 people waiting
for the bus for an hour and a half,
I also know that I will never forget that
and that that has changed me as a person
and that in the future,
I will handle situations very differently
simply because that happened to me.
I hope that this has been helpful for you.
I know storytelling
is something that many of you struggle with.
I'm very happy to help you with that.
I actually put together a free guide.
It's got 10 examples stories,
actually few or more than 10.
It's got 25 questions of the questions you can ask yourself
if you're having trouble coming up with your own stories.
And it's got filling in the blank templates
so that you can fill in your own stories easily.
So, if you download the guide,
you can just click the link below.
It's called the ultimate situational interview guide,
situational behavioral interview, same thing,
and I've got you on that.
So if you need help with those stories,
you could start by downloading the guide,
come up with your own stories
and then if you'd like additional help from me
watch your inbox, I will be offering you some help.
And you can also check out my website
at www.nataliefisher.ca for more free resources.
Thank you so much for watching.
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and I will see you next week.
Thanks so much for watching.