Interview Power. Tom Washington
staff
Conduct useful meetings
Able to instill a need for planning and organization into staff
Conduct motivating sales meetings
Always create a winning team
Get people believing in themselves
Give people the tools to help them succeed
In 1998 I was promoted from agent to district manager for New York Life. For the first month I hardly knew what I was supposed to do because there were no procedures or systems in place. Then I attended a seminar on insurance management put on by the Kinder brothers. They taught that you needed a system for everything. I learned a lot.
When I returned to the office I began to write a recruiting and training system. It really helped new agents get off to a fast start, and those early successes increased their motivation and self-confidence. I developed good campaigns with wonderful awards to motivate the achievers on the staff. We had training meetings which were always great occasions. I spent a lot of time with my new people and really got them going. I made mistakes but I did enough things right that it started to show. In 1999 we finished number three in the region and number one in 2000.
All of the skills listed are valuable, but it is the first skill describing the ability to develop systems that increase sales and productivity that will have the most impact.
Now read the instructions for completing this exercise. I trust you will take the time to write about your top twelve accomplishments and then identify skills within them. These twelve experiences will undoubtedly be used frequently in your interviews. They are your best experiences and each contains 5-15 key skills. Any time you want to sell one of the skills identified, you’ve got at least one excellent example.
The accomplishments you did not write about will also be used in interviews. If you have 20 or 30 that you did not write about, take up to two minutes with each one to identify the 2-3 key skills that jump out at you. Rehearse these experiences as well.
Before you begin identifying your accomplishments, be sure to read all of the instructions. There are important points throughout that you need to know and understand before you begin.
WRITING ABOUT ACCOMPLISHMENTS
1. Write a list of at least 30 experiences that you would consider to be accomplishments.
a) List the experiences as they pop into your mind. Don’t filter them out, just list them. They do not need to be “knock your socks off ” types of experiences. Try to list 40 or more, but list at least 30. Once you get started listing them, one accomplishment will trigger another. An accomplishment is anything you:
Enjoyed doing
Did well
Gained satisfaction from
Are proud of
b) Since people often share non-job-related experiences in interviews, do not feel limited to work experiences. Those with little work experience will of course emphasize experiences from school, hobbies, sports, or volunteer activities.
c) Include at least fifteen work-related accomplishments (assuming you have job experience), with at least four coming from your current or most recent job. If you’re frustrated in your current job, it’s easy to assume there haven’t been accomplishments,but there have been. Sometimes it merely takes a little more effort to identify them.
d) You have dozens of accomplishments. Don’t screen them out because they seem insignificant. Even these so called “insignificant” experiences can be used powerfully in an interview. These seemingly small experiences are often the perfect vehicle to demonstrate a particular skill or quality.
e) Don’t try to complete your list in one sitting. Over two or three days, think of the experiences as you drive to work or take a walk. As you drive you might be able to jot thoughts down as you wait for a stop light. Or, as you arrive at your destination, take five minutes to madly list the experiences that came to mind. Then you might need two or three sessions at home where you really concentrate on recalling experiences for 15-20 minutes at each session.
2. Write about your top experiences.
a) Determine your absolute top twelve lifetime accomplishments. One way is to decide which have had the greatest impact on your life. Another way is to ask yourself which ones will reveal the most skills. Or, which ones will have the greatest impact in interviews. As you begin to write, be sure to leave a three-inch margin on the left so you’ll have room to identify skills.
b) Write 100-400 words on each experience. Begin by describing the situation. Give some background. What were the circumstances? What were the problems you faced? How did you analyze the situation? What occurred? What actions did you take? What were the results? Use the SHARE model: Situation, Hindrances, Actions, Results, Evaluation. See pages 30 to 32. Write as completely as you can and give enough details so any reader would have a good understanding of what you did. If the accomplishment is job related, avoid acronyms or any technical jargon.
c) Describe your role. Many accomplishments are achieved through a group effort. You can still claim it as a personal accomplishment; simply concentrate on what your role in it was.
d) Describe the result. Every experience, every project, has a result. To describe the result, think about what your goal was. Did you achieve it? One of the best ways to think about results is to consider what you did, and then add the words, “which resulted in.” An example would be: “I trained all year for cross-country, which resulted in my placing sixth in the state—the highest finish ever for someone from my high school.”
e) Quantify your accomplishments whenever possible. It may mean estimating, but that’s fine. Did your accomplishment increase productivity at the office? If so, how much—10%, 40%, 65%? As a manager, did you decrease turnover? If so, how much? As a committee leader for a volunteer organization you may have increased membership, attendance at monthly meetings, or revenue on fund raisers. For more on results, read pages 32-40.
f ) Write as fast as you can—after all, this is an experience you lived through. Memories will jump into your consciousness. One memory will lead to another as you recall what occurred in the accomplishment. Try to make your pen keep up with your brain or make your fingers race along the keyboard without worrying about typos. You can correct those later. Do not be concerned about spelling, grammar, sentence structure, or polished writing, just get your thoughts on paper. This is not a philosophy paper where every word must be perfect.
3. Identify skills.
a) Study the sample accomplishments on pages 46-48 to see how skills and qualities are identified. Skills are important, but personal qualities and characteristics are just as important. As a skill you might say, “produce highly effective marketing plans.” As a quality you might say, “extremely reliable,” “work well with people,” “hard worker,” or “able and willing to take on greater responsibility.” In actuality, these characteristics are skills.
b) Identify skills and qualities using phrases. Again, study the examples. In almost all cases a phrase has more impact than a single word. “Persistent” is a good word, but it doesn’t have the same impact as, “I never give up until the job is done right.” “Organizing” doesn’t have the same impact as “Effectively plan and organize projects and obtain high quality results.” Use words like excellent, effective, effectively. Words like those remind you that you didn’t just do it, but that you did it well.
c) Identify as many skills as you can, even if you feel the same skills were identified in other accomplishments. If a particular skill has been used in several accomplishments, that tells you a lot about yourself. Probably it is a skill that you are very