How to Tell a Story That Wows the Interviewer | A Job Seeker Case Study

0:00 There's this woman I worked with a few months back and I really I really liked her and I loved what she was doing for work and she worked for a consumer good a food like a food company maybe among other things and was in was in Europe and I want to read to you kind of the background it's only just a couple of words on how she was thinking about one of her victories because as part of our our coaching session we look at what are the goals that the employer is going to have

0:34 for anybody who's going to want to hire you then what are the goals for this particular position and what stories in your resume can we convert into great interview stories or basically what what experience do you have on your resume can we convert into great experience so that we can actually tell these stories in the jaob interview so they know you can help them achieve their goals and she was a reasonably senior person but I think if I remember correctly she wasn't quite the

1:03 strategist or the completely new innovator okay so she was in product Innovation but she was more of what I would call kind of the quarterback and the driver of the project so I don't want to say like a project manager but basically she's managing a product creation and launch and introduction into the market okay so what what she said is this was the bullet on the resume that we then turned into a story but but I want to I want to kind of Bring You full you know kind of through the whole

1:32 journey spearheaded fiber Jacks Big Ben Innovation okay so fiber jaacks like Flapjacks like pancakes a key project establishing foundation for Jacks platforms that's the product line of the pancakes by close collaboration with research and development and cross functional team exceeding Target sales by 45% with a 2% market share in year 1 now I see what she was trying to do okay but what happens from a contextual standpoint and a generation of feelings in me so I don't close

2:06 collaboration with R&D I don't really know what that means cross functional teams I don't know who they are exceeding Target sales by 45% I don't know what your target was or what it should have been I don't know how much money that is I don't know what that is I don't know how many sales that is if it's two if it's 100 145 or whatever and with a0 2% num numerology number psychology 02 of anything even trillions in trillions is still a small number to me so I don't really understand

2:33 all that so I started asking your questions these are the questions I asked her and here's how the story evolves so I said okay tell me what this is she said well we had this pancake product like Flapjacks product and it we'd been selling it for a long time and actually I said well how much do you sell and she said 50 million I think it was 50 million I don't know if it was Euros or dollars or

2:59 whatever it was but 50 million and she said and my job was I was in charge of a project where I was to think about a new way to market the product or create a new product line that was still in the same family of these pancakes but that would appeal to the under 50 crowd so the 50 million in sales was all to 50 and over demographic so so I said okay how much money do you generate in

3:29 the in the B low 50 demographic and she said she says really nothing like zero negligible let's call it zero okay then I said okay don't take me through the story what happened like this 2% of market like how much money did you generate with your launch she said 2.5 million okay that sounds like a good number but so wait a second there was 50 million and you added 2.5 million that doesn't sound like a lot I'm not we not poo pooing her accomplishment I'm all I care about is

4:02 storytelling right now what markets you best okay that's reality right but also 0 to 2.5 million is reality okay who's following me right now 0 to 2.5 doesn't sound anything like 50 to 52.5 right what does one sound like a tweak what does the other one sound like do you have any idea how hard it is to gain the first dollar of a new product line let me tell you from somebody who knows it's excruciating okay then I said hang on let's put this in the proper context how much money did

4:37 you get to do the project she said 200,000 okay now the motor's running wait a minute you had no sales they gave you a poultry $200,000 you turned it into 2.5 million yeah okay well take me through the project so why didn't do everything it's like take me through the project what are the that you go through I know nothing about product launch of innovation of Pancakes okay take me through this she said okay well Andy we do some market research okay it took us a little while to get to

5:11 these seven steps we do some market research then we I have to determine the trends okay customer insights okay whatever that is explore Solutions confirm the path implement it and track it okay sound sound simple enough let's go back through this again market research so if you're telling a story you're going to zip through those seven steps except when you set the context up let's go with that first you could say well I help we had this product line and the context is the

5:41 situation is I had to launch a new product because we weren't selling a lot to people in the younger demographic or under 50 you could say there was this mult actually it's billions of dollars that people spend on pancake mix right there's a $2 billion industry of which we were getting zero for primary demographic of people under 50 that's context right so I was put in charge and given a

6:12 small budget of $200,000 a mere $200,000 to try to create a new product line that would open up our Revenue in this particular demographic of which this multi-billion dollar industry we were getting zero that's context okay then what so in order to figure out what the new product line was going to look like or to remarket the existing product line because there's multiple ways to do this I had to go through seven steps where I had to do market research evaluate the trends get

6:42 the insights in the customer demographic data I then had to formulate some solutions right I had to confirm the path to try it implement it and then track it to see if it was working there's the seven steps there's the first line of the approach okay so now we're going to go back to her stories I say back to her stories I said okay tell me about the market so okay I had to look I okay

7:03 market market analysis so I had to go out I had to look at what people were buying different product lines different products from different companies I had to look at how much money was being spent boom boom boom got it go next next step determine the trends what what were they buying they were generally buying in the in the under 50 crowd they were generally buying certain things from certain places and certain locations great I got it now what well then I got the customer insights

7:31 I said tell me about that she says well I didn't actually do that the Boston Consulting Group did that BCG like that's detail we don't need there were did you evaluate the market trends I did did you draw conclusions I did so wait all you had a bunch of Consultants running off Gathering data to give you that we didn't need to waste your time with great you don't bog the story down with that you say we went through did the customer insights in the customer Insight we grab data such as the

7:57 demographics the geographies the ages what they were buying their preferences this and that give me the details bang go on to the next step I got it she knows how to read report she knows how to generate report she knows what to look for that's the feeling I need there's no way I'm going to remember all that so don't interrupt yourself as you're going through sending me the feeling getting me to elicit the feelings you want me to to do okay you explored the solutions what did

8:21 that look like so I drafted multiple opportunities of ways that we could penetrate the market great tell me what those were it was this this this change the boxes create a new chemical composition and so on it looked like based on the customer insights the people in that demographic like the words fiber and protein because that's what they want in their diet that's what they're appealing to Great get those on the box right kind of thing you're moving moving moving moving they're like

8:45 yeah okay great great great you got it you read it you did okay what all right then what all right I had to confirm the path how did you how' you do that okay I had to put a report together right exactly cuz you're not paying for this you got to get your company to pay for this so I had to put together a managerial presentation that I had to take to the board it had everything in

9:03 it from the data analysis that I went through to the conclusions I drew to the recommendation I was going to give them to the cost to the benefits to the risks great sounds like she knows what she's doing got all the ingredients in a management presentation she obviously got them to sign off she must know how to influence those people back to the story right this is what's happening with such little information that you're saying then what happened so we put my recommend approach

9:30 management team approved it we put in the approach we generated 2 and a half million after the first year right you follow me do you know how long it takes to tell this story two minutes and 50 seconds and all of a sudden you're getting all the signals sent they're feeling like wow she knows what she's doing she's influential she understands analysis she's engineered she knows what to look for she knows how to evaluate the market she knows how to how to pick choose correct correct

9:59 ly choose present it to management what happened we generated 2.5 million that's a 1,50% you can tidy up the math return on a $200,000 budget that's a story do you guys see the difference you could go into it took me 17 weeks to gather the data I had to get this we had seven Consultants working on the project I got the report then I had to do you see do you see the difference when you

10:33 are pacing yourself here is what we were trying to do we were trying to break into a market of which we had a product line but we couldn't gain any of the of a major demographic that we knew would like our product you follow me all right so there was seven steps I needed to take to launch the product here's what they were right market research what whatever determine the trends customer Insight

11:05 yada y y okay then she goes back through the story just like I mentioned then what happened 0o to 2.5