Create a Job Interview Presentation That Shows You’re the Perfect Match 🔴 Live Office Hours

Key Concepts

• Transformation: Employers buy the transformation you can bring to their organization, not just your skills.
• Employer Goals: Understanding the top 3 goals of the employer/team is crucial.
• Problems/Challenges: Identifying the problems hindering the employer from achieving their goals.
• Power Story/Case Study: Analogous scenario from your background demonstrating how you solved similar problems and achieved results.
• CAR Technique: Context, Actions, Results - a framework for telling compelling stories.
• Skills Mapping: Explicitly connecting your skills to the specific outcomes and the employer's needs.
• Believability Factor: Using stories to build trust and demonstrate your capabilities.
• Great Eight Elements: Top goals of any company: Revenue generation, market awareness, customer attraction, customer happiness, positioning your company for growth or being a risk management or compliance, employee happiness, cost reduction and process efficiency.
• 30/60/90 Day Plan: A plan for the first three months on the job.

Selling Yourself Best in an Interview

Understanding Employer Needs

• Transformation, Not Skills: Employers are not buying your skills directly, but the transformation those skills will bring. Think like a customer: you buy a product or service for what it will do for you, not just its features.
  • Example: Selling the feeling of looking at a hung picture (transformation) instead of just the drill (skill).
• Identifying Employer Goals: Start by understanding the top 3 goals of the target organization/team.
  • Example: Marketing team goals: more leads, faster, cheaper, higher conversion rates, brand building.
  • Use AI tools to identify common goals for specific roles/teams.
• Identifying Problems: Determine what's standing in the employer's way of achieving those goals.
  • Every organization has different problems in attaining the same goal.
  • Having a holistic inventory of potential problems helps you sell yourself.
  • You can identify/validate goals and problems throughout the interview process.
  • Addressing latent pain points that the employer isn't even aware of makes you a "genius."

Presenting Your Solutions

• Power Stories/Case Studies: Use a power story, project, or case study to demonstrate how you've solved similar problems in the past.
  • The scenario should be as analogous as possible to the target employer's situation.
  • Refer to the YouTube video "Job Interview Formula Guaranteed to Get You Hired" for more details on power stories.
  • Upcoming workshop on September 10th and 11th will break down the CAR technique for telling power stories.
• CAR Technique Breakdown:
  • Context: Explain the scenario, challenge, and why you were doing what you were doing.
  • Actions: Describe how you solved the problem.
  • Results: Highlight the specific outcomes and benefits for the organization/team/customers.
• Skills Mapping: Explicitly call attention to the specific skills and experience you used to achieve the results.
  • Do not start with skills; provide the context and results first.
  • The story helps the interviewer deduce your skills and build believability.

Presentation Structure

• Snapshot Slide (Example):
  • Upper Left: Scenario, goals, and problems of the organization.
  • Lower Left: Solution and process used (methodology, steps, software, organizational changes).
  • Upper Right: Resources used (primarily your skill sets).
  • Lower Right: Results, outcomes, and benefits for stakeholders.
• Leave-Behind: Provide a booklet of case studies for the employer to review after the presentation.

Addressing Common Presentation Challenges

• Too Much Information: Focus on core business/functional skills and eliminate unnecessary "fluff."
• Balancing Detail: Use bullets for key information (goals, problems).
• Executive Management: Focus on functional skills and provide the answer upfront, allowing them to dig for details if needed.
• Succinctness: Avoid explaining "how the sausage is made"; focus on the results and your recommendation.

Additional Tips

• Addressing Lack of Experience: If you haven't encountered a specific problem before, explain how you would approach it.
• Highlighting Skills: Use the "color palette" approach to identify key skills in the job description:
  • Yellow: Skills everyone has.
  • Green: Skills that provide some separation.
  • Electric Blue: Highly specific skills that make you a top candidate.
  • Focus on the green and blue skills.
• Selecting a Good Story:
  • Does the story map to the "Great Eight Elements" (top goals of any company)?
  • Does it align with the employer's goals and potential problems?
  • An older story that maps to their needs is better than a more recent story that doesn't.
• Avoid Creating Problems: Don't start a story with a problem you created, but rather a challenge you overcame.
• Don't Apologize: If you are asked about your background, explain it but don't apologize for it.

Leadership Coaching Program

• Monthly program focused on building career skills (communication, confidence, organization, critical thinking).
• August session: Building a Business Case (scoping projects, identifying goals, creating budgets, risk assessment, etc.).
• Upcoming sessions: Employee Year-End Handbook (September), Negotiating Higher Pay (October), Performance Review (November), Reflecting on the Year (December).
• Benefits: Live coaching, detailed workbooks, thought provokers, challenges, additional training courses.
• Special Offer: Purchase a hard cover of "The Zebra Code" and receive $250 of free leadership lessons and $50 off the annual plan pass.

Conclusion

To effectively sell yourself in an interview, focus on understanding the employer's goals and problems, and then present compelling stories that demonstrate how your skills and experience can deliver the transformation they're seeking. Use the CAR technique to structure your stories, explicitly map your skills to the desired outcomes, and be prepared to address potential challenges, even if you haven't encountered them before.