The Career Refresh with Jill Griffin

What You Need to Do Before, During, and After Your Job Interview

• Jill Griffin • Season 7 • Episode 170

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Navigating the job interview process requires preparation and strategic execution. In this episode, I discuss top tips to ensure you make a memorable impression.  Also in this episode: 

  • What you need to do before, during, and after the interview
  • An alternative approach to the STAR behavioral-based interview questions 
  • How to use your resume and the job description to prepare your professional accomplishments and success examples
  • Why you need to evaluate your interview performance 

Support the show

Jill Griffin , host of The Career Refresh, delivers expert guidance on workplace challenges and career transitions. Jill leverages her experience working for the world's top brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Hilton Hotels, and Martha Stewart to address leadership, burnout, team dynamics, and the 4Ps (perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, and personalities).

Visit JillGriffinCoaching.com for more details on:

  • Book a 1:1 Career Strategy and Executive Coaching HERE
  • Gallup CliftonStrengths Corporate Workshops to build a strengths-based culture
  • Team Dynamics training to increase retention, communication, goal setting, and effective decision-making
  • Keynote Speaking
  • Grab a personal Resume Refresh with Jill Griffin HERE

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Connect with and follow Jill on LinkedIn

Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome back. I'm your host, jill Griffin. Today we are talking about tips for interviewing friends, and I've broken it down into what you need to do before the interview, during the interview and after the interview. I have spoken about this before in different ways, about being ready and prepared, so think about this as the deep dive on being prepared. All right, first, you need examples of your experience, and I know you have a resume, but that's not an example. So what I'm going to tell you to do is take the job description that you want to interview for, whether it's a real job and it's um, you're actually interviewing for it, or whether it's an opportunity that's closed, but the job description is like ah, I'd really love to do that, okay, so I want you to take that job description and I want you to make a list of your personal and professional examples to show proof that you have experience in that area. Next, I want you to take your resume and I want you to go through your various titles. If you've held more than one title at a job, I want you to think about each one of those titles in addition to your professional experience, and I want you to come up with the list of your successes and your high performance examples based on your titles. So now you have the job description and examples of proof, and now you have the resume and examples of proof and I want you to overlay the Venn diagram and those overlaps are the areas where you're going to build out your deeper level, experience-based stories. This is also a great opportunity to really think about those transferable skills and how it applied, one where one place and how it can go into another opportunity.

Speaker 1:

Second thing you're going to do before the interview is you're going to prepare questions, because I've seen this so many times. I hear other people talking about it. You don't want to be in the position where, at the end of the interview process, you're thinking, oh, oh, you know what? I think I'm good, I think you've, I think you've answered everything. What that shows me is that you're not curious, you're not thinking creatively, which is a complete yawn and it's not going to help you in this job market. You have to stand out. So have your questions ready in advance, from doing your own research and listen if time has run out. When you're actually in the interview and they say oh, email me if you've any questions, do it Even if they don't answer and unfortunately I usually don't but do it because it shows who you are. It shows your curiosity, your creativity, the way you think, and it really helps your overall professional brand.

Speaker 1:

Okay, during the interview this is the next phase. You've made it, you've gotten there, all right, you might have a 45-minute screener. I'm finding most of them are between 20 and 30 minutes. What's happening is they're showing up late, they're leaving early, so you're talking about you probably only have about 15 minutes of meat in the interview and you need to make sure that you are succinct. This is about how you're presenting your specific role in the various accomplishments you're talking about. You have minutes. Don't get caught in a lengthy backstory.

Speaker 1:

There's been a lot of talk about the STAR method and you're probably familiar with that. That acronym stands for Situation, task, action and Res results. It's a behavioral-based interview style of questioning. I'm going to say I have a different way of doing it. Tune into an upcoming podcast that I'm doing with Sue Gygak. She is a top recruiter and we are going to deconstruct the STAR method because she also has a different approach to it.

Speaker 1:

At the end of the day, the acronyms might change, but it is making sure that you are talking about what was the challenge you were posed with, what was the actions you took, the results you created and the impact. And you want to make sure that you're able to do it in a very formulaic way like that. Because if they say to you, hey, Jill, tell me about a result, a recent result that you're really proud of. Hey, jill, tell me about a result, a recent result that you're really proud of, if you're not able to zone in immediately on the result and say, hey, here's how I overachieved the quarterly goal, and you start telling me all about a story that I didn't ask for. I just want to hear the results. Now that you've told me you've overachieved the quarterly goal, I might say to you oh, tell me more. And we go deeper into the conversation. If they ask you about impact, what's the impact you've driven? This is an impact marketplace friends. You want to be able to say, well, here's what happened. As a result of overachieving the quarterly goal, we were able to take that incremental we're going to assume it's cash right the incremental sales revenue. We've all just take that and reinvest in systems, hire more people, go deeper on servicing our clients, keep it to the bottom line for profit. That's the impact.

Speaker 1:

You have to be able to tell that impact story. So, telling it from different angles, which goes into the next tip, is that you gotta be data forward. You, you cannot go into interviews. The amount of times that I ask people in when I meet them and they are interested in working with me and I say to them, why should I hire you? As if we're doing a mock interview, and the amount of times that people give me very squishy, that there are, I'm going to say, lots of different ways to say that they're a nice person, and I wish, oh my God, I wish that was why we were hiring people. But it's not. It's not about you know, you get along well with others, what it should, be right, those are those essential skills that we need. But right now we are hiring on impact and core competency. So you have to tell me a numbers-based story, and if you don't have numbers, then I want you to think about things through the lens of where can you give me some qualitative results, even if you don't have quantitative results? All right.

Speaker 1:

Number three, and what to do during the interview. Going back to that squishiness, I see resumes. So this is. I guess this is actually what you're going to do before the interview and then make sure it follows through during the interview. Words like oversaw, responsible for, led, manage, directed I don't want to hear that. I want to know what you did to get something done. Know the organization that you're interviewing for. Right Titles do not always correspond to the doers versus the thinkers, and sometimes we're looking for doers, sometimes we're looking for thinkers, sometimes we're looking for both.

Speaker 1:

It's going to change based on the organization that you're working with and you have to be ready to say what is again the thing that you did based on the title that you're in and don't use squishy language on the resume and in your examples. Next, it builds on that is, watch your we versus I language and this is a little bit of a brain twister because we've spent so much time trying to get people to think like we's and be a team and talk about the team-based, strength-based culture and we need to do that. But it also depends on the question that you've been asked and the role that you're interviewing for. We're not hiring the team, we're hiring you that you're interviewing for. We're not hiring the team, we're hiring you. So we need to understand and this can be so hard for leaders, people that are overseeing lots of teams even though you're managing and helping the team to create capacity for the goal that they need to hit and you're helping managing any of their obstacles or challenges, we need to know what you personally did besides just creating capacity for somebody else. I know it's how you approach the challenge that we need to know and this there is always a place for team speak, but in this marketplace, I need to know about you and what you did, because what happened when we pushed everything from working in the office to going remote wholly is that the idea of a lot of senior management was really just the hall monitor. They really weren't doing a lot besides managing and giving morale to others and, yes, those are important things, but it's not going to get you to the final round in this marketplace when they want someone who has a proven track record of examples of doing quantitatively All right. So here's the tip Even if you're not looking for a job right now, I want you to start collecting experiences and examples for your portfolio now.

Speaker 1:

So when you're in, you know Q1 and you're looking at Q2 or second half, start thinking about? What are the examples that show what you specifically did in the I versus we language? All right, after the interview, friends evaluate. I want you to do this immediately. Are you still interested? What worked in the conversation, what didn't work, what would you do differently? I want you to write that down whether it's a notes app or pen to paper and get super clear, because when you start examining that, you're going to remember what you said and know that, hey, that really worked. I want to make sure that I answer that, or in your follow-up thank you notes. We'll get to that one in a second.

Speaker 1:

You're able to address something if you want to address it, and that kind of evaluation helps you get really clear fast. What I find that so funny is, especially when you're coming into something with a little bit of cortisol and adrenaline and you're like I hope you know, I hope this is working out or I hope I advance it that sometimes it's hard to think really clearly and remember after the fact and you're like did I say that or did I think I said that? So as soon as it's done, if you're interviewing virtually great, you know, shut the camera, get started on it. If you're interviewing in person I would even think about. Can you pop yourself into a cafe, grab a coffee, pause for a moment and make those notes? All right, moving on, this entire process is like looking for a mate, and I mean like a romantic partner. You both have to want to continue. So if you've been looking for a job for a while, even if you have a job but you're looking to find something else, it's really easy to fall into the mindset of I wonder if this is going to work, I wonder if they're going to pick me, or I wonder if I'll make it to the next round. And this is my moment to remind you that you get a vote and you get a choice too. So keep looking and keep dating in the dating and finding a mate analogy until you choose to stop, because nothing is finalized, until you decide for yourself that you still want to be in this process and they hopefully decide, and then you can figure out how you move forward in the relationship.

Speaker 1:

After the interview, I want you to notice the red flags. How did they treat you during this process? Were they always late and non-apologetic, or were they always late and look frantic and overly apologetic? What are you? This is the body language time. What are you reading off of them? It's going to tell you a lot about the culture and to see if this is a place that you want to work. Do you like them? Were they kind? Were there people that you could see yourself if you're on a business trip, enjoying spending some time with them, or are you going to be crawling out of your skin that you have to spend time with them outside of you know the day-to-day work that you need to get done.

Speaker 1:

Next, the thank you note. I am having executive recruiter Christian Schwartz come on. He is the founder of the Montgomery Group, a top recruiting firm. I'm having him come on soon because we are talking about the power of the thank you note Like this is where we always speak in text and short code and knowing your audience is key. But I mean it's been I don't know how many years now. I still talk about one candidate who clearly got the job, that she left a note for me after the interview at reception, a handwritten note and she wrote it in the lobby. She came back up, she dropped it off super impressed, and here I am. She dropped it off super impressed, and here I am how many years later still talking about that, that woman and how fabulous she was. It really helps people take a moment to pause and also reflect and it shows the person who's interviewing you that you have very good business skills and this is also how you would be treating the customers that would also be in relation or doing relations with the company right. So it shows a lot about who you are and that you're also able to follow up with that level of courtesy.

Speaker 1:

I know a lot of people are like no, you don't need to do it. You kind of do. And if everybody is in a Gen Z generation and no one's writing thank you notes, that's fine. But the workforce is multiple generations and other generations are also going to expect this. So really give it some serious thought.

Speaker 1:

And then the last question. The last point is I hear this a lot. So in this marketplace a lot of people are taking freelance assignments and that's amazing, right. They're bringing in some money, they're getting a taste and a feel for the organization and they're doing project work and that's great. What I hear asked a lot is what do I do? What if I get a job? And I understand that's going to be a decision you're going to have to make. But I also want to pause and take the Hollywood and the storytelling out of your brain, because so often this idea that we've watched too you know too many romantic comedies and then all of a sudden everybody asks the woman to be engaged on the same day and she has to choose between her suitors and what is she going to do? In the history of me doing this, so I've been a coach. Now for what is it like? 14, 15 years? I've been doing it full time now for eight years. It's never happened.

Speaker 1:

I'm not saying there haven't been two job offers. What I'm saying is they're not equal. There's one that's like really good on money but really crummy on other things. There's right. There's different scenarios.

Speaker 1:

So, friends, in this marketplace, what I am seeing is people are freelancing their way into jobs. So if you have an opportunity and it feels right for your personal situation to pick up some freelance work, it gives you an opportunity to be flexing your brain, flexing your muscle, getting to know a company, take the work. If it so happens that you're still in the assignment and you find another job, you know what. I trust that you will consult your inner guidance, work with a coach, work with a mentor, figure out how to handle it gracefully and professionally, and you're going to be okay, all right. All right. Friends, I always love to hear from you, so hit me up on the socials. Email me at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom. I want to know what you're doing around tips for interviewing and what's working for you, and maybe even what's not. So until next time, I'm gonna tell you to embrace possibility, get clear and concise and, most of all, be generous and kind.