Plan What Your Want to Say in an Interview

Here's a piece from Yahoo Finance that lists Five Ways to Flub a Job Interview. The item that really stood out to me was the point about preparing talking points for an interview. In other words, know what you want to emphasize and be sure to cover them during the interview. Here's what Penelope Trunk recommends:

When President Bush walks into a press conference, he doesn't worry what journalists are going to ask him because he already has the answers he's going to provide -- no matter what the questions are. Such answers are called talking points.

Politicians want to frame an issue, so they listen to a question and then decide which of their talking points they'll use to answer that question. In this way, each question they're asked is an opportunity to get their own points across.

I once had a media trainer teach me how to stick to talking points, and it works for a wide range of situations -- including job interviews.

You control what five topics you want to discuss, so you should pick five things about yourself that you want to get across in an interview, and each point should come with some sort of story or example. You listen to each question and then figure out which point fits in well for a particular question.

You're not George W. Bush, though, so you can't totally ignore questions that don't have pat answers. But you'd be surprised how often you can answer an interview question with one of the five answers about yourself that you've prepared. This is a way to control an interview and make sure the focus is on your strengths.

A few thoughts from me on this:

1. In general, I agree with this advice. You need to know what you want to say and practice saying it.

2. I think it's rather easy to work in your key points because 90% of all interview questions are the same. Anticipate what's going to be asked and write out your answer to each one. Then rehearse them until you have them down pat. No, you won't sound rehearsed (unless you're a total dork reciting something over and over again) -- you'll be (and thus appear) more relaxed and confident. You'll also have a wide variety of examples showing how you can deliver results.

3. Be sure to answer the question that was asked. You can always tack on what you want to say later or work it in somehow, but don't blow off the question entirely like politicians do.

Comments

[The Saving Freak]

In most of my experiences with interviews (both giving and receiving) a firm hand shake is the perfect start and finish. It gives the interviewer a feeling that you are confident and ready to go. Any time I have received a wimpy handshake from someone it was an automatic mark against them.