Job Moves by Ethan Bernstein

Author:Ethan Bernstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

Interviewing Like a Storyteller

To begin preparing for interviews, study and rehearse your story spines. Chances are high that you will have an opportunity to share your elevator pitch about your career journey (see Chapter Ten). You want to be ready to present a pithy version when that moment arrives. Career coaches—like media coaches—often advise going into an interview with a handful of messages you want to deliver. The seven frames of a story spine serve as a useful template for figuring those messages out and articulating them succinctly.

Next, anticipate which questions you’ll most likely get and prepare answers for them. If you’re applying for a job at a consulting firm or for a strategy role at pretty much any type of company, the hiring manager might conduct a “case” interview, in which you’re presented with a hypothetical problem you could face on the job and asked how you would solve it. If that’s the type of interview you’ll have, you’ll probably know beforehand. But if your interview is more general in nature and you haven’t been asked to prepare anything in advance, the most straightforward way to get ready is to scrutinize your cover letter and résumé against the job posting as if you were the employer. What would you want to know more about if you had to assess fit for the role and the organization? Where do you see gaps in your experience or skills? If you were looking for a reason to take your application out of the running, what would it be? Look for those potential holes or weaknesses in your narrative so you can practice addressing them clearly and confidently. Your interviewer is probably less prepared for this conversation than you are, and yet they care just as much about looking like they know how to do their job and evaluate you. The easier you can make it for them, the better you will do.

For example, if you’re trying to break into a new industry, you’re likely to get a question about how you’ll get up to speed. Practice a few versions of an answer. Think about how each response maps back to the story spines you’ve created. Draw on that narrative to illustrate how and why you will be able to contribute when you get the job. Perhaps you’ve successfully switched functions or areas of focus in the past and you’ve derived energy and motivation from what you learned in the process. You could describe how that same desire to keep learning is compelling you to explore a new industry now—and point out specific ways in which your experience in a different setting equips you with fresh insights about how to do or manage the work effectively. You could mention, as well, which tools you used in the past to quickly learn about a new function and talk about which tools could similarly help you gain your footing in this role. And take this opportunity to talk about the informational interviews you have done with people in this role and what you learned when you pressure tested if the job was a good fit.

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