Page 182 - Marky Stein - Get a Great Job When You Don't Have a Job-McGraw-Hill (2009)
P. 182

Fearless Interviewing


            the same mistakes that Marie made. You will know your skills and
            exactly how they can make a positive impact on whatever organi-
            zation you’re applying to. Unlike Marie you won’t do the following:


                • Think your résumé will speak for you.
                • Speak in generalities and expect the interviewer to “con-
                  nect the dots” for you.


                No wonder, Marie kept getting turned down for jobs in spite
            of her friendly and businesslike demeanor. Employers want proof
            of your abilities! The reality is that, before an employer pays
            Marie over $100,000 per year to act as his or her sales director,
            the employer will want to have some specific examples of where
            and how Marie had used those skills to produce positive results
            for another company. Marie cannot expect her résumé to “do the
            talking” for her. Instead, she has to learn to clearly and succinct-
            ly verbalize those results.



                     In the next two chapters you will learn how you
                    can easily avoid the pitfall of sounding too vague
                     simply by knowing your skills and knowing how
                         to communicate them with confidence.
                             Let’s move on to the good stuff!




                               Assessing Your Skills

            Taking an inventory of your skills is the beginning of being suc-
            cessful in any job interview. Ninety percent of employers say that
            the primary reason they do not hire a candidate is because the
            interviewee could not clearly state his or her skills. Read that last sen-
            tence again. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have the skills neces-
            sary to do the job. It means that they could not verbally state those
            skills in a convincing way.
                When you’ve finished the exercises in the next two chapters,
            you’ll have built the foundation for an enormous constellation of
            personal skills and accomplishments that I call your “skills arse-
            nal.” In this chapter, we’ll take an inventory of your skills. What


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