How to Give Concise Answers in Your Job Interview

0:00 I would love to talk about interview answers i get a lot of questions about how long should my interview responses be and for those of you that came to this to this video or this show to know to know what it is well sometimes those questions can be answered in one second with a yes or a no sometimes it's one minute but not to spoil the the punchline here but whenever you get into an interview and you have a base story I call them power stories but effectively you

0:32 are describing a project that you've done that is the most illustrative representation of how you will perform in their environment based on a project that you've done that's greatly similar to the kinds of things they want you to do in their environment whether it's sell something market something account for something build something run a project related to something whatever it is that you whatever it is that you do I want you to know you should be able to answer that

1:02 in three to five minutes that's your answer and if you're wondering how the hey do I do that what I really want to dive into today is why you're not able to because in three minutes they should know if they're going to hire you they probably know in 30 seconds but in three minutes if you really pack a punchworthy story filled with information that checks a lot of their boxes related to the requirements they're looking for from a features and skills perspective but also sees from an

1:35 impact and an accomplishments perspective how you actually helped a previous employer achieve something or even if it's a thought process that you're going through when when you're actually walking them through a story you should be able to do it in 3 to five minutes now if you're wondering well how do I do that or yeah that's about how long my answers are what I would tell you is I coach people every single day literally not a day goes by except the weekends where I'm not

2:02 talking to somebody onetoone where I'm coaching them on how to perform in an interview and I can tell you there are a host of problems when you are responding to an interview question that are really costing you points and there are a number of things that have to do with the organization of your responses that make it take longer that make it weaker that make that just fill it with dead weight words that don't mean anything and don't paint a vivid picture so what I'd like to

2:30 do today is I want to tell you what those problems are why you're not able to pack a powerful punch in a few minutes and yes there might be shorter answers and some interactive dialogue that you have with the interviewer but basically what I'm talking about today is when you have a main story that you're trying to tell you should be able to get the line share of the information that they need to know and I'm going to stress that the information they need to know and I'm going to

2:57 tell you why you struggle to do that cool one of the one of the things I want you to do as I'm running you through these slides I want you to think about what would be your most representative story that you are virtually certain dare I say 100% certain that you will want to share with an employer in an interview because it is the most accurate representation of how you will perform in their environment all right first first issue that a lot of you have and then I want

3:28 you to think about this as you as you hopefully can work your story a little as as I go through the structure here i want you to take some notes related to your individual stories the first thing is your answers generally are not organized I can keep the outline of every interview answer in my head because it should be the same for any type of question that you get asked so there's an organizational component to it that needs to be dialed in the story itself

3:57 you're trying to share information that doesn't really matter for story purposes and what what ultimately let me take me off the slides here for a second what ultimately are we trying to accomplish here's one of the biggest mistakes that I see people that I coach make and I I'm gonna say a 100% of them when when I'm roleplaying with them and I'm asking them to share their story or I'm asking them questions to prompt sections of the story that we are trying to assemble what people

4:30 do raise your hands if this is you everybody in the chat's going to raise their hand for this one so don't be bashful you're trying to relay a story based on what actually happened the way you remember it in your head who does that right you're trying to answer somebody i asked you a question tell me about this project or whatever it might be or tell me about a project you can choose it doesn't matter and then what you do is you start you start literally telling

5:00 me about it the parameters the steps and things of that nature and that's totally totally wrong you are in an interview to sell yourself we tell stories for selling and marketing purposes we only use the information that illustrates what it is we want them to feel about our qualifications that's right feel because they're thinking four times faster than you're talking so what they're doing is they're sending their little brains signals about whether you're

5:30 organized whether you're smart whether you're a good communicator whether you have the requisite skills that's what they're doing they're not going to remember what you tell them what they're doing is they're storing feelings about you to make a decision and they're extrapolating those so what you're doing is you're filling in a lot of information that is not germanine to the story let me give you an example from a couple of sessions I had this week and I'm going to dive deeper into

5:55 this as we go through the steps so I had a woman on Monday fantastic highly accomplished nursing background is going to be mo maybe she's here going to be moving into an operational position she's got the qualifications the experience and when I was asking her I start out with "Well what was the problem?" And she said "Well there was poor communication." As she was trying to describe some some of the the background which I didn't even actually need to know because even though

6:24 you have poor communication that's not central to the skills you're trying to portray and the story you're trying to tell to market you because ultimately we want to tell the employer how we actually solved a business problem that they care about poor communication is just going to lead to something that was a problem and in this person's case it was the nurse's communication to the patients while poor or the poor communication to the doctors basically meant that the patients

6:56 weren't informed they weren't they weren't satisfied ultimately the customer experience was bad the satisfaction scores were low which meant bit future business was going to suffer because they were not getting positive reviews so they were jeopardizing future business revenue by not doing great customer service that's going to be more important for me to understand all the other symptoms are are are secondary i had another person he when I asked him

7:26 he was designing a new product a system that his company was going to use to operate some of the back office stuff and one of the things he I said what's the problem and he said well basically the sales people had bad attitudes they weren't putting you know information in the system that's not the problem we don't need to know about the salespeople we don't need to know that they have bad attitudes we don't need to know why they're not doing something that's leading to a problem

7:52 that you ultimately need to communicate which is there's information the management team is using externally with investors with banks with other external parties where the information is inac inaccurate it could be illegal it's misinformation it could be lack of compliance those are the issues and so and what he's trying to do is sell himself and how great he is at troubleshooting problems and bu and getting requirements and building systems the salespeople have nothing

8:25 to do with the story other than they were the operators of the of the system he was creating what he's trying to project is his ability to build a system that contains data with accurate information do you see what I'm saying and you're and you're wasting time talking about things that don't represent what you need to represent about you in the interview and so this is really really important and you're wasting a lot of time upfront with a lot of dead weight information that while

8:54 true does not sell you it just takes you longer to explain you follow me do do you see what I'm what I'm saying this is just a couple of quick examples but what happens is you have a lot of this in your story that doesn't matter because you don't work your stories backwards which is the way you should be what is it I'm trying to what is it I'm trying to show them it's all about do you have the skill

9:20 sets and and have you helped previous companies transform in these related areas their goals their problems your responsibilities and so on so you want to keep your story super focused all right the other things that are at at issue you're not talking about the great eight what I those two illustrations that I just gave you and we'll go into what the great eight are but every story that you start should start with a great eight component and I will tell you what that is but

9:51 these are what I'm alluding to here is the very very specific accomplishments that employers care about you make the money you save the money you make it easier for other people to make the money or save the money or whatever it might be but we'll we'll we'll run through those real quick you're you're you're trying to be specific about the skills you have you never never need to say I have this skill ever a skill is deduced based on an if then if you were able to do that

10:24 you must if you were able to run that project on time and on budget and it was complete then you must be organized you must be a good project manager you must know how to manage the staff all of that gets deduced i don't ever need to say it so so this is really really important remember we're in an interview not on a resume here you're explaining what happened that is never ever ever your job is to explain what happened not it's it's to tell a story that illustrates how you

10:58 will help them transform based on what you did and you can be selective as far as the components that go into the story it is not your job to answer their questions either ever does that sound odd it is your job to give them the information they need to know to make a good choice about hiring you you can ask me any question and I can give you the same answer or same story for it so it makes

11:27 no difference it's up to you to think backwards about their goals their problems and what they truly need to know you got a lot of weight dead weight in there and dead weight comes in multiple forms it comes with information that doesn't need to be shared information that doesn't need to be shared that also doesn't sell you i don't care the attitude of the salespeople it makes no difference that's that's dead weight in the story the story is about how you got a system up that that enabled

11:54 your management team to have accurate data so so so keep that in mind and then the other thing that I have to absolutely take a knife to when people tell me their stories is I have to take out all the dead fluffy words that don't actually say anything specific strategy plan all a lot of those words when strung together don't paint a vivid picture in my mind of what's actually happening so the context up front that you need to provide has to be very very specific and very very

12:30 detailed from not not detailed in length detailed in words not number of words the words themselves need to be descriptive okay you don't paint the vivid picture because you got a lot of that dead weight and you're not thinking about what is it I want them to feel about me and think about me when I tell the story does this who who who struggles with this right this is this is this is really really bad like what what and a lot a lot of people have all of these issues when they

13:06 go into an interview and so I want you to think about this because if you have these issues even if you are a dead 100% bullseye candidate you can still run into trouble who's with me who's tracking good good is this thing on all right all right so now how do we how do we eradicate these issues well you can use my car technique that stands for give them some

13:37 context so why does the story matter why is it important and you're also going to tell them the answer upfront as to what your accomplishment was and we'll walk through this then I need you to very quickly run through your overall procedures the steps the outline and why do we want to do this because you you want to do it for a number of reasons but basically you want to give the listener a map of the story you're about to tell here's what I'm going to tell you

14:09 i have a system or a playbook or a procedure or if I reverse engineered this on the fly this is what it would sound like and people who have systems people who have overall programs people who have a one two three about them they get paid more right i'm going to pay more for somebody who understands the entire picture so you want to be very vocal verbal and specific about what the overall picture of in steps in ter in terms of steps takes and just so you know it takes you probably not even

14:44 30 seconds to say number one and number two i know step number two takes me 11 seconds to say eight steps cuz I timed myself so So that's really important that you you start out on the right foot and then you get to you get to go through the stages of your project with information about each of the steps and that also does not take very long at each stage it really does not and then you give

15:11 them the result again so what does this look like in practice all right so the first thing is I want to talk about the grade eight so when you start a story the story never starts with the first thing I did was the story starts with why was this even important so the the you know customer project customer service project manager who's implementing a new project an IT project to build

15:43 a new customer service system doesn't say I was asked to build a new customer service system we know that that's implied i don't even even need to say that and if I say it up front it's really boring and it doesn't tell me any reason why this was important you score no points for being important versus versus the IT project manager who said "Well in the past three years we were losing 25% of our customers every year." That was costing us about $60 million in customers

16:17 that were leaving so we needed to figure out how to fix it that's how you open up a story right we were losing money we had bad customer service and so I'm I'm being brought in to eradicate that now my part in eradicating that is building a better system i'm not doing everything but that's why you were doing it in the first place that makes you sound more important it also g gives you that big picture thinker label it also gives them an idea of how critical this this project was so

16:52 what conclusions can I draw from this wow you must be important if they entrusted you with such a big problem it doesn't matter if it was a $10,000 fix this is a big big issue your solution doesn't need to be elegant or overwhelming the impact needs to so right away I could just say that I coached a woman once was a kind of a chief operating officer type of of person and she was and I were

17:26 doing some interview coaching and I was asking her you know let's talk about some of the primary goals of a chief operating officer right you're going to you're going to run sales you're going to run marketing you're going to run services or service maybe you got the HR component you've got a number of these other things so we were talking about one of the major impacts she made in helping a company grow and she said "Well in the you know in the first year I helped the

17:52 company grow $17 million." That's revenue increase it could be value creation it could be profit it could be something of that nature she's going to hit one of the great eight but for context purposes you don't want to say "I came in and and it was my job to grow the revenue." That's boring we know that's your job we know that's what you do i can see it on your resume and I know what you're interviewing for but when she talks about and gives context to how she makes this happen

18:22 it's one thing for her to say you know in in the first year I was able to change the systems and change the personnel and we we were able to grow $17 million it's a whole another thing to say I joined this organization because after three years they were stuck at 50 million in revenue and couldn't figure out how to grow when there is an huge market demand for their whatever product or whatever service and I knew if I could fix the systems and the people components of this through

18:55 a series of projects that there was at least a 40% lift I could make in the first year f and and as it turned out it was $17 million or something like that that helps the listener understand that it's not that you lifted at $17 million it's that they couldn't figure that out without you does this make sense do you understand there has to be context so that I understand that this problem was really hard that nobody could solve then you came in because you had this experience

19:27 and you're going to tell me right away what the opportunity was or what you were trying to fix and I'm going to make the natural assumption if you tell me you're losing 25% of your clients in that $60 million I'm going to make the assumption that you fixed that because you otherwise would not have told me that this is so important i spend the most time in the beginning part of the answer changing the way my clients think about how they respond and it takes them a number of iterations

19:58 to get it right and it takes them a number of iterations to reprogram their mind of where a story starts you start with the impact you start with the end result you don't wait until the end you want them thinking immediately this is what you solved that's part of the context if you use the STAR technique you're not going to get to the result until I'm already tuned out does that make sense okay and you always want to give them the business problem or goal or opportunity you

20:30 achieved or problem you solved or how you made it go away upfront the next thing is then what you're doing is you're foreshadowing this and here's where you get a chance to actually say something explicit about your qualifications but only after you've impressed them with the impact this project ma that you made so then what you're going to do is you're going to segue with I was brought in i was recruited to figure out how to grow this because I have a track record of

21:02 helping companies grow their business i was the IT project manager assigned to this because of my specific experience implementing customer relationship management systems because I've done that 20 times before this is where this is where you get to stuff your qualification in but you use it in the wake of a because this is why I was assigned that that's a little chest pumping right there but it's just the fact right you guys with me so far this only takes seconds

21:36 to say so if you put a clock on you this should not take more than 15 seconds or so to say all of that it's pretty quick and then every single one of you no matter what it is you do I want you to think for a second think about what you do every day day in and day out project in and project out what is it that you do do you run IT projects do you handle customer calls it doesn't matter

22:08 every single one of you any single project that you've done looks like this you did some kind of research you did some kind of assessment then you identified a solution then you presented a business case then you built the fullout plan if that was not already built maybe the plan was built and that was part of the business case you implemented it you operated it you gathered data and you iterated okay that's what the template looks like every answer that you

22:40 give for a base story a power story where you're going to walk them through something I want you to think about this really quickly i don't care if you researched for five minutes i don't care if it took five months i researched i did an assessment i did a diagnostic why cuz you have to understand what you're about to do if somebody already built the strategy for you you still had to do an assessment of the strategy to ensure the steps you're about to take are in alignment with

23:16 the strategy you have all the eyes dotted the tees crossed every single one of you never does anything without an assessment of some kind okay then you created a solution i don't care if the solution was already designed you confirmed and and designed architected and and and blueprint the solution or the alternatives then do not skip this step because you're losing major points by

23:47 skipping it i presented the business case i presented the approach i presented my plan i presented my new idea whatever it is to whomever it was so I want you to think about this i pulled a business case together i drafted the statement of work that included the plan the cost the return on investment the resources the risk profile the whatever and then I presented it to the management

24:17 team that's one way of saying it or I presented it to my boss who is the executive vice president of or I presented it to the board of directors i presented it to the CEO the CFO it doesn't matter i don't care if you're a 25-year-old junior staff person you presented it to your management team or your manager or somebody and why do we want to get this step in what does this say think about this you're sending the feel they're getting feelings about you that a you know how to make an

24:48 argument you know how to prepare a business case or a plan you have an understanding you must be persuasive because you wouldn't be telling me this unless your plan got approved right i need to make that assumption and so you're saying this very quickly but what I'm feeling is organized knows how to pull the presentation together knows how to communicate it obviously is persuasive i'm running through those check check check check check and you spent three seconds telling me that

25:20 do you see the return on investment when you're using economical wording okay then what well then I built out the full plan once I got the green light great then I hired the team i recruited the whatever i implemented the plan we put the software in place we did whatever then we turned it on then I gathered data for 6 months to see if our customer attrition rate was going down or our retention rate was going up we evaluated whatever we evaluated the new patient survey forms right i

25:55 implemented the system with the more accurate data and each month we were able to reconcile it with the invoices and the accounting books and the so on and the so forth right this is really really important and then you tuned it if if if need be now you don't have you don't have to say "Okay I went through eight steps here they are boom boom boom boom boom." It might be five you might combine a few but the point is you can use this as a starting point because when you say "Well I went

26:24 through you know seven steps to implement this i did an assessment i identified a solution i built the business case i presented it to management." and you're rattling this off and they're hearing you say things in sequence in this slide took me 11 seconds to say literally the whole slide so you could do it even shorter if you have three steps or five steps or whatever it is but the point is you now are giving them the map so they know when they're listening to you exactly where you are

26:54 in the story and you also you also are showing them I have a system i know exactly what to do make sense okay that's the second part of the answer you start with the context that includes the impact and the result then you give them your formula whatever your formula is okay but a lot of you it's going to look like this then what I want you to do is I want you to go back I want you to go back through this and you're going to go back to the beginning and just say

27:28 so in the assessment again what did I say in the beginning of the of the show here what a lot of you do is you start with step one and then I did this well I did an assessment and then I had to interview these people and here's the questions I asked them and the data I was trying to gather and then I was going to use the data and then here's how I use the data and so this is why

27:50 it takes you 10 minutes instead of two minutes to to tell the story we speak in inventories we don't speak in steps even though I gave you a formula of the steps that I went through I'm not actually going to blow out any of those steps in sequence form i'm only going to give you the inventory of the factors that I assessed so what did your assessment entail so I did an assessment that required me to look at the 17 satellite locations make sure I understood our prospect base

28:24 i evaluated the last year's worth of of revenue the last year's worth of expenses i gathered all the data so I could draw my conclusion do you follow me that's an inventory i just told you what I assessed i didn't take you through the whole assessment do you understand what's happening in the listener's mind oh you obviously know what you need to look at and you must know how to evaluate it because you use that information just like you said to draw a solution did do you see give me a

28:57 hey in the chat this is really really important you speak in inventories you speak in lists give me a Hey I'm tracking it's inventory only on only information that sells you so I once helped a woman actually I've told this story a couple times but I absolutely love it and she was building a new product line and when we got to her researching step she said "Well Andy

29:28 there you know we had like seven people from Boston Consulting Group or Bane or one of the two and they were gathering this data and it took them like six weeks or whatever." I'm like "No don't don't say any of that you don't need any of that it doesn't matter how you got the data you got the data what's the important What's the important thing about your story i know what data I need i know how to look at it and I know how to draw conclusions that's it that's all they need to

29:56 know do you see how I get amped up about this this is why your answers are taking so long that's not gerine to the story that you had seven consultants that were helping you get you data i don't need to know that you don't need to share that and as a matter of fact that weakens your story okay and the other thing is it's illustrative purposes why is illustrative in caps because it's not exactly everything that happened i'm giving you a year of experience distilled down to 3 minutes only what

30:28 sells you best so the part about the consultants didn't sell her best she didn't need to say that so when you strip out all the A's and B's and C's and D's and all the way through the alphabet and you're only left with what am I trying to convey write that down every single time you need to be asking yourself what am I trying to convey what she was trying to convey is I know how to run a

30:55 new product launch because I know all the steps and one of the steps is to gather the data about existing customer insights the demographics down to what they buy how much they spend where they buy where they live right that's data I need i don't care how you got it that doesn't matter to me you'll figure it out okay so when you go back through your list that only took you 11 seconds to articulate you're going to hit each step with a few more seconds to explain each the

31:27 assessment to I I interviewed I looked at the 17 satellite offices i interviewed everybody who was in charge of the offices i collected the survey data right that's it a few seconds just give them the insights and then you're going to you're going to confirm the what you told them initially at the end of the first year I generated $17 million but then what you're going to do is you're going to pile on top so your results your results are said twice and then you extend the result

32:01 meaning what I what I wanted the chief operating officer to say was so after the end of the first year I generated almost 40% more 38 whatever it was in new revenue 17 million but on top of that I had also set us up for the subsequent year where we already had a $10 million renewal rate that was up from five the year before okay that's an that's an additional i am the little project manager and

32:34 I did this great project and I delivered it on time and on budget and you're not going to use the words but exactly like I told you two and a half minutes ago and because it was so awesome and because I'm so awesome the entire company is now using my internal project management methodology as the best practice i built all the tools and templates right that's a result and that's a benefit extension or an additional benefit that you are now going to reap the rewards of in future

33:03 years and everybody else is benefiting from your awesome work so you just want to make sure that you are talking about what then happened and what you positioned the company to do for the future okay so this so so when you think about everything you're about to say look at the way you're look at what you're including you do not need to script out your interview answers what you need are when

33:34 I say the thing about the assessment what's the color I need to add in so context up front then you sweep through very quickly in 10 seconds your outline of your steps then you go back and you spend a few more seconds at each step and then you confirm it with the result if you like this Cara maybe we can we'll hold this first and then I'll mention about the book package but there's a couple of great resources that we have that I would certainly help you with

34:06 your interviewing one is this job interview playbook it's a free webinar you can watch it at your leisure all you need to do is sign up for it we'll have Cara swap the pins out the other one is I know a lot of you have grabbed this we still have some copies left although we're we're going to be we're going to be running out in the notsodistant future so for $7 I'll ship you this $29 hardcover book i'll also give you the $9 ebook and an audio book you can't get

34:37 anywhere but from me and some other goodies that total up to nearly a hundred bucks worth of value for $7 US dollars i'll send it anywhere in the world while supplies last that's this promotion it's still going on it's been going on since April of 2018 but this promotion is going to be ending at some point soon because we're out of books and I need to do a reprint and we're going through some new solutions how to do all that so anyway but it's still here it's still here while

35:05 I'm talking so grab this and then watch the job interview playbook webinar you'll get more like I talked about today 11:36 okay if you enjoyed this whether you're here with me live or you're watching this on a on a video or recording if you enjoyed it click the like button please share it people need help everybody needs help when it comes to selling themselves in a in a job interview and their job search in general make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel if you're

35:33 here with me live we're going to the Q&A if you're watching this on the recording I'll see you next