Best Interview Question Responses
Telling Career Success Stories to Highlight Skills and Achievements
Telling career success stories helps to provide a more vivid picture of a candidate's match to a current job opening. Read how to create your own.
Heading into a job interview totally unprepared for what is going to happen next will only demonstrate to a recruiter that a job seeker is not the right person for the position. However, savvy job seekers can prepare in advance by reviewing their background and education and summarizing their shining moments into brief, yet interesting stories – career success stories.
Career success stories allow candidates to answer job interview questions with smart, interesting examples of what they have done in the past that demonstrates how they think and act when confronted with situations similar to the ones they might experience in this new position. These anecdotes enable the recruiter to understand how the job seeker has previously handled responsibilities, solved problems, or responded to situations.
The key for the job seeker is to make a link between what they have done in the past with what they can bring to this new position. As most interview experts agree, past behaviors indicate future performance.
So how can job seekers create their own career success stories?
Identify Achievements
Candidates should begin by creating a list of their achievements. One of the easiest ways to do this is to quickly jot down – no self editing – words or phrases that reflect what they have done in past positions. Job seekers might consider how they:
- saved the company money
- solved a difficult workplace issue
- developed a new procedure
- improved a current procedure
- designed a new program
- received special recognition
- coordinated a company-wide event
- automated a process
Develop Statements
The next step in the process is to develop this list of achievements into complete action-oriented sentences. Use words that communicate the action taken. Take a cue from the list above – each item starts with an action word. An example: updated the employee handbook.
Quantify It
In order for an achievement to garner attention, it now needs to be quantified by a number. This can either be in terms of money or time. Saving the company $100K in one month is an example of both.
Job seekers can then turn their “updated-the-employee-handbook” scenario into a fully thought out statement like, “Reviewed, updated and distributed new employee handbook to over 100 employees in under three months.”
Add Details
Now is the time to embellish. Creating a career success story involves taking a single sentence and filling in the details. The details should consist of two pieces of information:
- steps taken
- outcome or result
For instance, if a job seeker’s achievement was that she coordinated the annual sales meeting for 100 people, the steps might include coordinating travel, booking hotel rooms, arranging meals and many other things. The outcome or results might be that she received a standing ovation, compliments from the Vice President of Sales, or even a meeting that went off without a hitch.
What is important in creating career success stories is for the job seeker to be able to share a bit of her background and experience in such a way that the recruiter can understand how that experience is applicable to the job available. And once the job seeker lands the new position, she’ll be able to start a whole new group of career success stories.
