Okay! I talk i wrote do you guys know i wrote a whole book on interviewing
okay i'm gonna give you the most pound for pound best tip ever on storytelling
right now this card you do this don't you don't have to watch any of my other vid interview videos
you don't have to take any interview courses you don't have to do anything you don't have
to go watch any other coaches if you just do what i'm going to show you on this card pound
for pound this is the best interview tip you will ever get but first i want to take a sip
it's kind of like right after the commercial okay you know how i tell you there's basically
three formats to interview questions there's the behavioral interview questions tell me
about a time when well you know tell me about it tell me about a challenge you overcome blah
blah blah blah blah and then there's project specific questions andy that's a great looking
project right there can you walk me through how you did that and you just tell them how
you did something you did and then there's those situational questions where it's like hey we got
this project and we want you to build this thing could you tell us how you would do that those
kind of three things all right forget all that for a second those are basically the formats
forget all the techniques you heard when you do the first three things that i just said when you
do the first three things that i just said here's all you need to worry about when you go into an
interview there's three things you got to remember three it's so simple take a picture of the card
when you're gonna tell a story you're gonna be telling a lot of stories that are very specific
context is king and queen and checkmate because once they understand why you did what you did and
you tell them how you did what you did with all the parameters racked together you're going to get
hired and here's what i mean exactly here's what a lot of you do hey susie i see you built this thing
over here and you saved a bunch of money for your company it looks like a great bullet yeah because
my coach andy told me how to write resume bullets great can you can you tell me how you did that and
here's what a lot of you want to do okay the first thing is i started to do this and i did step one
and then i did step two and then i did step three and now the person here is just trying to listen
has no idea where you are in your story you could be rambling you might not be rambling
when instead what i'd rather you say is this only takes 20 seconds is give them context why
was i even doing that in the first place okay why was i doing that in the first place that project
i'm so glad you asked you know actually what was happening was we had this customer uh experience
system it was used for support and people would call us and the customer reps couldn't find what
they needed and it was taking too long to answer the questions and people were on hold too long so
we were losing a large 10 percent of our customers every month it was costing us a million a month
i don't know how long it took me to say that okay whoa sounds like a big problem right so they had
to call me in two evaluate what the issue was and build them a system and a process that fixed that
okay now now they know you're a badass okay oh that's great
so because it was an i.t project but we had to engineer some of the processes i did the seven
things i would you would do for any large-scale it project i got with the stakeholders i asked
them you know we discovered what the issues were once i had that we built the requirements then we
designed it then we architected it then we built it then we tested it and then we put it into place
so the first thing that i did was and then you walk them through your steps
why because you came with a playbook every single thing you've ever done in
your life can be reverse engineered into a methodology a framework a playbook a system
a step by step and employers love step by step why you come with the outline you come with the
playbook they pay more for systems as opposed to point solutions it sounds like you had a system
you walk them through your system they know you're organized they know where you are in the story
then what you're done with that and then guess what happened six months later we turned on
the new system and all of a sudden month over month we started retaining our customers back
to where it leveled off after six months so we were only losing two percent of our customers
which is natural attrition because so i ended up getting back nine hundred thousand eight hundred
thousand of the whatever the outcome right and the bennies this is it do not forget the context
this is what gives you heft it gives you the gravitas this is what gets them excited that
what is about to follow really mattered because a lot of people do a lot of stuff that doesn't mean
anything that doesn't really change the world that doesn't really change and benefit their companies
their customers or whatever so all you need to do what was the context why did it matter tell me the
system that you you went through and then tell me what happened that's it this is it's the simplest
thing to ever remember now let me throw one little bonus tip in here on the interviewing part
the best way to prepare for that is they're going to ask me about these bullets because they're
so awesome but i'm going to be ready for the behavioral interviewing questions that are inside
this the sit the project specific question because that's what the best damn interviewers do why do
they do that here's what a bad interviewer does hey susie tell me about a challenge you overcame
then susie is left wrecking her brain fishing around for some challenge that means something
in their world and the odds of you choosing the right one are almost nil but the best interviewer
says susie walk me through that process right there what did you do and then as you're going
through it when you're in about step two or step three the interview will interrupt you and say
what was the biggest challenge you faced when you were corralling the stakeholders
bang behavioral interview inside the context of something that matters to me and you know it's of
interest to me because i asked you to explain it to me that's the best interviewer does that right
so what do you prepare you prepare all those silly behavioral interview questions inside your project
specific responses you will never be surprised you will never be thrown off guard okay but why would
you want to prep this way because you talked about and made what was most important most
visible and that's the thing i care most about and that's why i want to talk about that resume bullet
and not ask you questions all over the place like tell me how you organize stuff and tell
me how you overcome challenges and tell me about a problem you solve because i don't care about that
i want to talk about the specific problems that i know matter to me as an interviewer