Do you get tongue-tied over those interview questions, "can you tell me a
time when" or "can you give me an example of." In this video, I'm gonna share with
you the best way to prepare for these types of questions. And also, make sure
that you stay to the end of this video to learn how you can get my free
download, "The top five interview questions that any hiring manager wants
to know about you and the best way to answer these questions."
According to Bureau Labor Statistics the average tenure in a position is 4.6
years. If you're over the age of 45, it's closer to 7. But the bottom line is this:
we don't interview that often, and because of that, it's completely natural
to go into the interview feeling a little anxious. But the best advice that
I can give is to prepare in advance for the interview. So you may be thinking,
"well how do I prepare in advance for an interview when I have no idea what kind
of questions that I'm going to be asked?" Well there really are common questions
out there that are asked in just about every interview: "Can you tell me a little
bit about yourself?" "What happened at your last job?" "What kind of salary are you
looking for?" "What do you think your biggest weakness is?" But the question
that really worries people are the ones that start out with, "Can you tell me a
time when...?" or "Can you give me an example of...? A lot of people struggle with these
kind of questions because they have to think on their feet, and they have to
come up with something, and not sound like they're rambling on and on and on.
The best way to prepare for these kind of questions is through creating SOAR
stories or STAR stories. Now, a SOAR stands for a situation, an obstacle that
you encountered, the action that you took, and the result that came about that
action. The STAR story is the situation, but instead of an obstacle, It is just
really the task, the action that you took, and again, the result that came about
that action. So you may be wondering, "well that's all fine, but how do I create
SOAR stories and STAR stories when again, I don't know what kind of
questions that I'm going to be asked? Use your resume. So let me give you an
example of a SOAR story. When I left my position in corporate America, I had a
small following. A small client base of clients, and that was not
going to nearly be enough to keep me going financially. I needed to increase
my client base very quickly, and so I started facilitating meetups at local
coffee shops, and although they were successful and I was actually maxing out
the participation, and even had a waitlist, the most people that I could
ever get in front of in a coffee shop was 10. There was just physically no more
room than to have 10 people and when you have 10 people, you're maybe lucky
if you sell one package. I think I ran a couple of meetups without not even
selling anything. You need more numbers than just 10 to be able to start getting
the sells, so I started looking at what other successful coaches in the industry
were doing. And one of the common denominators I found was that they were
using webinars. So I started looking at webinars in the market and I researched
Zoom and Google Hangouts and Adobe Connect, WebEx, before actually settling
on WebinarJam. WebinarJam was subscription based. It offered all the bells and
whistles that I needed, and it was affordable, so I went ahead and purchased
that and created my first webinar. I advertised it through running ads on
Facebook for about a week, and I had over 75 individuals, and with that I had
several clients that bought into that during the first webinar. That is a
SOAR story. You saw that there was a situation, there was an obstacle
that I faced which was the coffee shops and only being able to get in front of
ten people at a time, there was an action I took, and there was a positive result.
how did I come up with that particular SOAR story?
Well, what I did was I went down the bullet points of my resume. And as you
can see on this one here, I had a bullet point that said
Facilitate and workshops and online webinars.
I took facilitate workshop and online webinars and made a story out of it and
this is what you need to do. You need to go through your resume bullet point by
bullet point. Statement by statement, and come up with a SOAR or a STAR story with
it. Now here's the beauty of doing it this way. If you're in front of the
hiring manager and he is reviewing your resume and he comes up and says can you
tell me a little bit more about this particular event, well you'll have a
story already made up that is concise to the point has a format and you can
deliver within two minutes. Remember, when you're answering an interview question,
minimum 30 seconds, no more than two minutes. And two minutes are usually for
the stories involved - the STAR and the SOAR. But also, you will be able to use
these stories for multiple questions that can come about. You know in my case,
if I was interviewing, somebody might ask me what my experiences is with social media.
I could do that. Asked me a question about business development, I could
provide that same exact story. This is the beauty of creating source stories.
They can be used in multiple different ways. What I would encourage you to do is
create twenty to twenty-five stories. You're not going to be able to do that
all in one day, but you'll create these. You know, print them out have them on
either maybe an Excel document or a Word document. Then you can refer to them.
So let's say next Thursday you have an interview at 10 o'clock in the morning.
You get to the place at 9:30. You sit in the parking lot and you review your
SOAR stories or STAR stories for the next 30 minutes. You will walk into that
interview a lot more confident and a lot more prepared. I guarantee it. And by the
way, if you are in the interviewing stage, make sure that you check
out my free download below, The top 5 interview questions that any hiring
manager really wants to know about you. And I also include the best answers to
those questions. Thank you for stopping by and I hope you liked this video, that
you found it informative and useful. And if so, make sure that you subscribe to
this channel as I do upload a new career strategy every Tuesday so you
won't miss out on anything. I will see you in the next video