So the subject of this video is actually
as a result of someone's recent question and I'm always looking for questions and
suggestions of videos that I can do. Here's a question that I got on my
Youtube channel, from a Karma Ella a couple of days ago and it says " What do
I do if I'm finding it hard to speak and explain my experience, as in I feel like
I have lazy neurons because I physically work hard to prep but when I get
questioned I go brain-dead? That happens to the best of us so today I'm going to
give you actually kind of a secret way that I tell all of my clients to do in
prepping for an interview. Ok so if you find yourself in the situation where you
do a lot of prep work you know you've got this handled, you want this job so
badly and it's a perfect fit for you, you can do it in your sleep, it's custom-made
for you and you get in there and you absolutely bomb it or you've had that
experience in the past and you don't want to have it again.
Alright, here's how I tell my clients to get over that. You actually put together
a cheat sheet and you're probably wondering what kind of cheat sheet can I
put together that I can actually refer to in an interview that's not going to
make me look like I'm, you know, looking at different pieces of paper and I'm
trying to find my notes and everything. How am I going to do that? So here's
what you do, actually you want to put two different things in that
one page piece of paper So the first thing is you want to
list your stories but you only want to list a couple of words that will remind
you of that story. Alright and that's in the top two thirds of the page. So a
couple of words to remind you of that story followed by the quantifiable
result. So you'll have to think what was the end result of that achievement
story. Now sometimes it's going to be dollars, sometimes it's going to be for
instance cycle time, you were able to cut something down from three weeks down
to three days or perhaps it could be some mentoring that you did. For instance,
if you are a great leader and you are able to help someone move up in their
career and really reach their full potential. Maybe that's a great story, but
that's the quantifiable results. Sometimes it's really qualitative and
not quantitative but, you got to keep in mind people love numbers and you'll find
in a face-to-face interview if you're telling a story and then you have a
quantifiable end result, in other words, a number attached to that story, you
will find that in that interview, your interviewer is going to write down that
number. That's something that they can quantify, that they can hold in their
hand and they're writing down that number. That's what they're going to
remember out of the story. Alright, so come prepared with a cheat sheet so that
you don't have to go brain-dead and if you go brain-dead, it's okay because
you're actually looking at that paper. If they ask you a question and you need
to rely on your memory and it's not gonna happen for you because you're going
brain-dead in the interview, then glance down at that piece of paper and
the top two thirds where you're going to have a couple of words to remind you of
the story and the reason I say a couple of words is because I don't want you to
write out, even bullet point out, a long list of things because it takes too long
for you to glance at it. You don't want to read something, you want to glance
down at it just for a moment so that when you come back up you've got the
story in hand and the reason I say just a couple of words is because this is
just for you, not for anyone else. So you could list for instance, sales 2006, or
you can list a specific customer, let's say there was a really difficult
customer and you were able to turn them around and make them a raving fan. So you
would list that specific customers name followed by the quantifiable result
which would be you've saved a two and a half million dollar account, okay,
something like that. So you really want the first two-thirds to list a couple of
words followed by the quantifiable result and I do recommend that you put
them in columns. That you get out your Microsoft Word. You put three columns and
then you list out a couple of words followed by the quantifiable result and
do that for as many stories as you can remember in your history. You know when
we go through our branding process it takes, believe it or not it takes on
average about 31 hours for someone to fill out our resume application, and that
may seem really outrageous, why would you want to spend that much time on
something like a resume. Believe me, what you're doing is preparing for those
interviews, not just for the resume. So whether you work with us or not, take the
time to think about every position you've ever had and everywhere you've
worked, everything you've done and take inventory, take stock of everything that
you're proud of, everything that you did differently and how you made a position
your own. How you did it better than other people could have done it.
Alright and then follow it by the quantifiable result. So that's the top
two-thirds of the paper, you're probably wondering well what's on the bottom
third? The bottom third, are the questions that you're going to ask. Now those
questions actually can be written out. You can write out those questions or
type them out and you want to have those ahead of time. So what I would recommend
is go to my questioning strategy videos. I have two of them, there's a questioning
strategy part one and a questioning strategy part two and go through those
and they have specific questions that you want to use to make yourself highly
relevant to their pain points, their aspirations, their immediate needs
and their growth goals. Okay. So check that out, I've put
links to those in the description below and please feel free to take those and
put those specifically on the the bottom third
of your cheat sheet. Now you might be wondering, is this one of these things
that is going to make me look bad? Is it gonna make me look like I'm cheating?
Like, I don't really have my act together? Actually I've talked to a lot
of CEOs and a lot of COOs and I asked them if someone were to come into a
high-stakes interview with this cheat sheet page would you: first, consider them
to be cheating or ill-prepared or you're relying on notes; or number two, would you
consider them to be very serious about the process and taking the process very
seriously in preparing very well and consider it to be an asset versus a
detriment? 100% of the people that I surveyed and there's probably I probably
talked over 50 people that I've asked that question on and they've been at
very high levels, C-Suites, and they all say every single one of them say that:
They believe that it would show them that the person really wants the job,
that they're very prepared, they've got their act together, they've got
everything in a row, they know exactly what they're going to say and exactly
what they're going to ask. So I think that this is something to set you
apart from your competition in a high stakes interview or really any
interview where you really want the job. So if you find yourself preparing really
well but going brain-dead in an interview, that's the answer, use a cheat
sheet and it will work every single time. Now what I've learned from my clients is
that once they put that cheat sheet together
actually they find that when they go into the interview, they got it
in their head they don't have to look at the cheat sheet, they rarely look at it
maybe for the questions a little bit, but mostly they've got it in their heads.
So it takes all of the pressure off and it allows
you to go into the interview with no pressure about remembering the stories
that you want to tell in that interview because it's all on paper and you can
glance down at it. Alright, well I hope this has served you today and I'm Tammy
Kabell, again with Career Resume Consulting, and I'm really glad that you
spent some time with me today. If you've got any questions, please feel free to
put them in the comments below. If you find this helpful, I would love for you
to subscribe so please consider subscribing and if you've got wonderful
comments please let me know about those. And of course I will answer as many
questions as I can possibly get to. Thanks, have a good one and I'll talk to
you soon. Bye now. you
