Page 259 - Marky Stein - Get a Great Job When You Don't Have a Job-McGraw-Hill (2009)

Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job

1. Do you remember your general skills list by heart so that
you can recall them in the interview?
2. Do you have a good command over your personal traits
list so that you can supply examples of them to the inter-
viewer?
3. Do you remember your list of three competencies, and
do you have anecdotes to support them all?
4. Finally, do your Q statements really paint a clear picture
of what you did, whom you did it for, where you did it,
and, most important, the results you achieved? If so,
great!

If your memory of your Q statement and skills lists are not quite
up to par, now is the time to go back and review them or make
changes so that you have plenty of information to demonstrate to
the interviewer that you are his or her top choice.
Here are some examples:

QUESTION: What are some of your strengths?
ANSWER: My strengths are my negotiating, training, and mar-
keting skills. An example of my training ability is a
project for which I trained a group of 16 new
employees for the help desk, and they were able to
function 20 percent faster than their predecessors.

To answer the question above, this interviewee:

• Cited three of her top skills from her skills arsenal
• Elaborated on one of them with a Q statement

Let’s look at a different question of this type:

QUESTION: What would your last boss say about you?

ANSWER: I believe she would say I’m innovative, dependable,
and professional. An example of my ability to inno-
vate is that I wrote an award-winning software pro-
gram for training new employees.

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