Interviews: Demonstrate skills with stories

When I facilitate workshops on interview skills, so many participants have trouble identifying what skills are included in their stories.

The chances are, no story only demonstrates one skill. Each story will demonstrate many skills. And it's your job as the job applicant/ interviewee to know what skills each story includes and tell the employer.

Don't assume that the employer will identify them.

Let's say you were telling a story that showed your organizational skills. At the end of the story, you could recap for the interviewer, saying something like "so that was a time I used not only my organizational skills, but also my communication, team playing and problem solving skills." (assuming the story showed you used these!)

This is you taking advantage of every opportunity to market yourself during your interview.

Always take any opportunity to include any skill you know is good for this job. But keep it brief. Long winded replies turn any interviewer off.

If you have trouble seeing what skills are in a story, write down a short version of the story, then go through it and analyze what skills you used where. Once you get in the way of doing this it will come quite easily.

Stories are not only a great way to demonstrate the skill the employer has asked you about, but a great opportunity to tell him (or her) about some other skills you have too.

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More on Successful Job Interviews: Questions and Answers

(c) Fiona MacKay www.backtoworkcoaching.com