Job interview tips: how to sell your examples in a behavioural interview.

One of the biggest questions I hear from my clients is “how do I sell myself in interview?”

One of the biggest mistakes people make in interview is to think that selling themselves requires chest beating.

Behavioural interviews have been popular for years. Mastering how to present your examples in a behavioural interview will do half the sales job for you – without you actually having to tell the interviewer how terrific you are.

Here’s what I mean.

In a behavioural interview, you need to give a specific example – for example, a person, time, project, task or thing you did. You structure your answer with the situation/task, the action, and the result.

A good behavioural interview starts with self-awareness: that is you understand what you said or did that made you successful in the example you choose to present.

Many people fall down here because they just tell the interviewer what they did. However there is no point just launching into an example or just providing detail about what you did. You also need to tell the interviewer why this particular task was meaningful for you and the challenge associated with the task.

Think about:

–  why you are presenting that example?

–  what was at stake, in the project or completing the task?

–  why did you personally find the task challenging?

–  what did you feel like when you were confronted with that situation?

To sell your examples you need to pick examples that are vivid for you, and tell the interviewer why this situation was challenging for you.

If you give that context to the interviewer they are more likely to think every action you took after that was “amazing”.

Also important is that you present examples where you were really proud of what you did.

This makes it easy to remember the convincing detail. There is a huge difference in your body language if you talk through something you were proud of achieving, rather than just going through the motions or trying to second guess what you think the interviewer wants to hear.

Give the interviewer all the detail around the challenge you faced, combined with your face lighting up when you talk through your example and they’ll start to be sold on you.

No fake superlatives needed!

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