also allows you to select the very best experience when you are about to mention that skill in an interview.
d) One way to identify skills is to pull them right out of your descriptions. Often you can take a phrase almost word for word out of your accomplishment.
e) Don’t skip the obvious skills. Sometimes a skill is so obvious to a person that it doesn’t seem valuable or important. Go ahead and quickly write it in.
f ) Don’t skip a skill just because you think everyone can do it. Even if it is a common skill, it should still be listed. Often, however, a person only believes everyone can do it. This happens because the person has been skilled at it for a long time, and cannot remember a time when he or she could not do it. Because of that, it’s easy to assume that anyone can do it. Don’t get caught in that trap.
g) With your remaining accomplishments devote up to two minutes for each and identify the two or three most obvious skills.
Study the previous examples of accomplishments to get ideas on how to write about accomplishments and how to identify skills.
Involve someone in the process of identifying skills. It could be a friend, relative, or spouse. It’s good if you can find a person who is in the same situation, so you can go through this process together. Each of you will be able to give considerable insight to the other.
Have this person read one of your accomplishments. Then the two of you would discuss it as you provide more details. Have the person ask you questions to clarify anything which is unclear. This will help you tell more concise and clear stories during interviews. Telling the story out loud will help you recall the experience even better and will give you good practice for interviews. By discussing the experience with you, your helper will identify skills that would have been missed if that person had merely read what you wrote. People find it enjoyable to talk about their accomplishments and to receive positive feedback from someone they respect. As you speak, the person should write down any skills which come to mind. Then the person will give you feedback when you’re through describing the experience. Rather than simply reading back what was written, the person should expand on it and describe what convinced him or her that you have that skill. It might go like this:
I wrote “You stand up for what you believe and provide leadership for others.” I think it took a lot of guts to stand up to management and request, or almost demand, that safety out in the plant get more attention. Once you took the stand others were willing to back you up. I think that’s what leadership is all about.
Writing about your accomplishments will prove enjoyable and enriching. Invariably people report their self-confidence increases as they become more aware of the positive things they’ve done.
Take the time to recall your accomplishments and identify your skills. Follow the instructions carefully. They are based on feedback from hundreds of people and will make the task much easier. Don’t try to do it in one sitting. Spread it out over several days. Have fun with this exercise.
Chapter 8
DEVELOP YOUR AGENDA
Developing an agenda for your interviews is one of the most important interviewing skills you can gain. If you will be competing against people with more direct experience than you, devoting time to developing your agenda is critical.
Your Agenda
Establishing an agenda is simply a process of determining in advance the stories and strengths you must sell in order to get the job offer. Very few job seekers, however, take the time to develop their own agenda. This is a major mistake. By having a plan—an agenda—you can take advantage of all opportunities that present themselves during an interview. By identifying the strengths and experiences that will best sell you, prioritizing them, and determining the questions that would enable you to describe them, you will rarely fail to take full advantage of each question. The questions that are most useful are open-ended questions such as, “Tell me about yourself,” “What is your greatest strength?” and “Why should I hire you?” Open-ended simply means it is a question that gives you wide latitude in answering it.
When asked such open-ended questions, you will have the opportunity to cover points from your agenda. If you’ve prioritized your stories and strengths, you can cover the most important ones first. It’s important to sell these points as early in the interview as possible since you may not get another chance to do so later on.
There are several ways to make your key points. One way is to have a resume filled with results and benefits, causing the employer to ask about your results. A second is to jump at every opportunity. If you are asked one of the open-ended questions, such as describing your top strengths, you should be ready to bring out those strengths that will add the most weight to your side of the scale. Your analysis of the job description will enable you to do that.
A third way is to answer the question and include an example. Then, as you finish the story, state the specific strength you were emphasizing, and then add another strength. For example, if the interviewer had asked an interviewee whether she was a good team player, she would first describe what makes her a good team player and then back it up with an example. Once she finished telling the story she would state:
I think that experience demonstrates that I am a very good team player. I believe it also demonstrates that I’m a person who comes up with unique marketing ideas. On that project I listened to all of the ideas of the team and utilized the best ideas from everyone. When we met a couple of days later, I had incorporated those ideas and mixed them with some unique ideas of my own. The group really liked it and that’s what we went to management with. The product that came out of those marketing meetings has been one of our most successful products of the last five years.
Notice what the person did. She answered the question regarding being an excellent team player and provided a very good story to back it up. She then reminded the interviewer of what she had sold to him—proof that she was an excellent team player. This is important because sometimes interviewers actually forget the question they had asked you. When that happens, no matter how effective your answer is, you won’t get maximum points. So develop a habit of restating the strength you’ve just discussed in your answer. Having restated the strength, it was then appropriate for her to mention from her agenda, at least one other strength that the experience demonstrated. It can be as simple as saying, “So I am a very good team player, and I think that experience also demonstrates that I develop effective marketing ideas.”
The reason this technique works is that as soon as you mention the other skills that were being demonstrated in the example, the interviewer will instantly agree. This technique requires practice, so when you’re rehearsing, be sure to add those additional skills. You’ll get weight added to your side of the scale every time. If you have a friend act as your interviewer, be sure to practice it then also.
The Steps To Developing An Agenda
Below are the four steps needed to develop your agenda and to ensure that you fully sell yourself.
1) Identify Your Accomplishments And Skills
Identify your top 30-50 accomplishments (see pages 41-45). Remember that an accomplishment is any experience that you enjoyed, did well, or got satisfaction from. Pick twelve key accomplishments and write 100-400 words describing each experience. Identify 5-15 skills in each one. (See pages 46-48 for examples of describing experiences and identifying skills.)
After writing about your top twelve accomplishments, spend a couple of minutes with each remaining accomplishment and identify the 2-4 skills that jump out at you. The key here is to be quick and not get bogged down by spending more than two minutes with any of these remaining accomplishments. It might look like this:
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