Whether it's an important job interview or you are being interviewed by a multimedia professional for a story, there are two things that I always coach my clients to be keenly aware of. In fact, just yesterday I had the opportunity to take one of my Advisory Board members through a quick interview prep. If the term "Behavioral Interview" is new to you, Google it and get up to speed.

Now clearly there are more than two things that make up a successful interview but I find these two to be 75% of the battle when I'm coaching a qualified candidate. Given that everyone that makes it to a live interview is assumed to be qualified, your image and delivery is what will set you apart or make you memorable to the interviewer or audience.

The Two Things You Control In The Successful Interview: Image and Delivery

Image. Your success might depend on the first 3 seconds of your interview. You are going to be "thin sliced". It's what behavioral scientists say happens during your first impression which only takes 3-5 seconds. If you remember only two things related to image in this article, make sure you recall that:

• Facial expression determines your aggression. The more aggressive you're perceived, the less approachable and friendly your audience will believe you to be. Not good. Try a warm smile and good eye contact in those first few seconds.
• Body language needs to be open and receiving. Arms open, not folded or closed and facing the audience or interviewer.

We want to come off approachable and likable. If you are fortunate to win this job you are going to be dropped into a new environment with completely new faces. The interviewer has that in the back of their mind as they interview you.

Delivery. Those that I coach probably get very tired of hearing talk about the S.A.R. method of interviewing but that's ok because it's critical to a successful interview. The key to being a great interview is being a great short story teller. Every terrific short story has three elements:

The Situation. The Action. The Results. Hence the acronym S.A.R. I love things that come in threes, especially when you are in a stressful situation or under pressure. If you can remember this method of answering an interview question (and you have relevant information to topic) you will have an engaged audience and crush your interview. Describe the Situation, the Action you took, and the Results or how it ended up. It's that simple.

When clients and I prep for an important interview we start by assembling all the things we know are important to the job. We review all previous conversations, meetings, and spend considerable time going through the job description. We look for areas where there is a strong match as well as areas where there are gaps in our skills or experience.

Here's an important note. Don't get discouraged over gaps. Job descriptions are written for the Utopian candidate that probably doesn't exist. If we can match 75%-80% of the critical responsibilities, we are likely a very strong candidate.

Once we assembled all the critical elements of the role we begin to build the situations, actions, and results that align from our skills and experiences. We build 1 - 2 min stories around each. We do the same thing with the gaps. This time we look at times in our past that we had skill or experience gaps that we closed and accomplished. Your ability to close gaps while in job are actually more important than the skills that align.

Look, the thing you need to be careful about is coming off smug. Yep, if you put the right preparation into the interview, you will need to watch your confidence levels. There are two really important elements that the interview needs to take away to be comfortable, and they aren't going to talk about them. They are flexibility and likability. We need to make sure that both those boxes get checked. 

Practice practice and then practice some more.

You'll find much more detail on this topic and many more pertaining to successful multimedia career management in my Amazon book "Your Struggle is Reel: Career Tips and Life Hacks from a Talent Management Guru. Find it on Amazon.com in e-book and printed copy here > https://bit.ly/3z9LIUn

Share Now

Comments