Coaching: Interviewing—Let them know who you are

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Transcript: Interviewing—Let them know who you are

Your new Cornell University certificate, coupled with your related experience, makes you a competitive candidate and sets you apart from other applicants. When you are ready to head to the actual interview, whether it is online, on the phone, or in person, you need to be prepared to highlight your advantages and connect the dots for the hiring manager so they see how you are suitable for the open position. In this topic, we are going to look at how to prepare for an interview so that you know how to showcase your expertise and to communicate your qualifications. We will talk about how to arm yourself with knowledge about the company, its culture, and the job you are applying for. I will show you how to tie in your experiences and education into the goals and needs of the organization for which you are interviewing. And I will give you some tools to help you prepare to effectively tell your story.

Before we do all that, though, let’s take a minute to talk about your Cornell University credential. The certificate you can now hang on your wall is more than just an acknowledgement of completing the program. It is a recognition of the hard work that you have invested in becoming familiar with key issues in your industry and in building a knowledge base of proven practices to draw from during an interview. You have gained practical experience from studying current, real-life scenarios in areas such as system design, program management and fundraising, employee relations, talent management, or hospitality revenue management. You have strengthened your professional skills in programs such as employee leadership and supervision, workplace creativity, or financial management. These valuable experiences should be part of the story you tell about your skills and abilities.

As you look back on your course experiences, think about specific projects and discussions that were particularly challenging for you. What did you learn from them? What skills did they help you acquire? Taking time to review the concepts and exercises from your certificate work will help you talk more knowledgeably and easily about the ideas and skills you have developed. Just like an exam, the more time you put into studying the material for the interview, the better you will do!

In this section of the course, I am going to give you tips and instructions on how to tell your story to an interviewer. I want to talk about one issue now, though. Most people have some sort of career blemish, challenge, or failure that they would prefer not to talk about if given the choice. You can be pretty certain, however, that the interviewer will bring it up. Despite your best efforts, the interviewer will find a way to ask you about your unreasonable boss, the company that went bankrupt, your layoff, the sales plan you missed, the expense budget you exceeded, the gap in your résumé, or your nutty co-workers. Or maybe you were fired. So don’t go into the interview hoping the interviewer will not ask. Be prepared to talk about the blemishes.

Start by embracing your past. All of it. You are who you are. Your path is your path. The story you have is what makes you you. Everyone has issues, but what separates you from the pack is not the content of your story, but how you tell it. All things being equal amongst candidates, it is my belief that the candidate that tells his or her story confidently with some vulnerability and humor wins the hiring game.

People love stories of positive people who muddled through and triumphed over tough situations. The key here is not to complain about your situation or ruminate about how difficult the predicament was, but to share what you learned about yourself and about the business and how you are going to apply those experiences going forward to continue to breed success. When describing a negative or challenging situation, you always want to outline what you learned from it. Communicate how you accepted your challenges and demonstrate how you learned from that demanding boss—after all, he did make you realize that you can handle more than you ever thought you could. That is what hiring managers want to hear from their prospective employees. Figure out how to frame your story positively and practice telling it to a friend or interview coach.

As you start to work through the material in this topic, I want you to keep one last thing in mind. You are human. Humans make mistakes. So mistakes will happen. I think an interview mistake can be an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive. When I recruited for my team and for the clients for whom I found talent as a search firm recruiter, I would actually welcome the mistakes made by candidates. I did not automatically weed out those candidates that made errors, and I did not immediately move on those that interviewed without a misstep. How candidates handled the mistake factored into my decision whether to advance a candidate to the next round of interviews.

If you mess up, so be it. If you do run late to an interview or misspeak about a specific topic, own it and apologize. Do not blame others or make excuses. When possible, handle awkward situations with humble humor. A sense of humor and the ability to think on your feet are evidence to the interviewer that you let mistakes roll off your back and don’t take yourself too seriously.

And sometimes you will make a mistake that you cannot recover from. You did not know a key piece of information or may have said the wrong thing and offended someone inadvertently. If that is the case, accept it was not your fate to have that job. The powers of the universe kept you available for the right job to come along. Focus on the positive.

Let’s get started now on preparing yourself for interviews!

After completing this topic, you should be able to:

Explain the significance of your eCornell credential
Prepare yourself for your next interview
Tell your story effectively
Develop a research plan
Brush up on your interview skills