320. Quick Thinks: How to Prepare, Stand Out, and Ace Your Interview

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: The ability to handle yourself in interviews and other high-pressure situations can make the difference in getting the job and achieving your goals. My name's Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this special Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I am thrilled to be live inside the Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning Community with many of our community guests, some who have been here for a long time and some who have just joined us. I encourage all of you to check out the Learning Community. Lots and lots of resources and access to people, including myself. We have an AI coach and lessons and quests to all help you learn and hone your communication skills. Today, I am joined by Laura Joyce Davis. Laura is on our team. She's an author, a teacher of communication, and she'll be helping me as we go through today's content.

[00:00:56] So today, I'd love to share with you some best practices around how to prepare for job interviews and any time you have to brand yourself and talk about what you do and how to differentiate yourself from others. So to get started, it is critical that you think about the opportunity you have before you. Spend time thinking about the job and what differentiates you from others. What makes you stand out? What are the key characteristics and experiences that can help you? And once you've identified those, come up with two to three themes.

[00:01:32] A theme is a general idea that supports your differentiation, what makes you unique and special. So, for example, you might be somebody who is really good at multitasking, doing many tasks at once. Perhaps you are an expert coder in some language, or you have high proficiency in AI. Those all can become themes. And these themes, again, are in service of differentiating you. And you should be able to articulate that theme clearly and concisely. Once you have the themes identified, it is great to stockpile support for your themes A theme is simply a claim, I am really good at multitasking. You have to show that, demonstrate that.

[00:02:18] So stockpile and collect examples that support this, and there's some specific types of examples I would like you to think about. First, think about testimonials. These are third-party voices that support you and what you're talking about. So if I say I'm really good at multitasking, maybe a former boss or colleague has said something that reflected my ability to do that. So you have a quote or a testimonial from that person. Perhaps you've received some kind of acknowledgment or award that you can mention. So having a list of ideas that support your theme, testimonials being one of them.

[00:02:58] Another is stories or anecdotes you can tell, as well as data. If you have any data that support what you are good at, you include that as well. So perhaps you finished a project under time and under budget. Perhaps you saved the organization some amount of money or time. Have those stockpiled. That is, keep them. I have friends who interview a lot, for good or for bad, and they have spreadsheets full of themes and support. So we start by thinking about the job and what differentiates us, or the opportunity and our differentiation. We come up with two or three clear themes, and then we have support for each theme, and the key in the support is variety.

[00:03:37] So you want several different examples of the different types of support. Once you have that information in hand, it's time to practice talking about that information. I am a huge fan of structure. Structure is a logical connection of ideas. So in a job interview, in an opportunity where we get to share about ourselves, maybe making small talk or at some kind of networking event, you want to avoid just rambling and listing. Instead, packaging your information up in a structure can really help. There are two structures I'd like for you to take away from our time together today in our learning community.

[00:04:17] The first is one I talk about all the time. What? So what? Now what? What is the information you're sharing. So what is why it's important. And now what is what you can do with that information. What? So what? Now what? So if I were to be describing a particular project I worked on that I think is relevant to answering a question or differentiating myself, I might start with the what, here's what the project was, and describe it. I might then move to the so what, the value that the project had for the company as it related to our KPIs or our goals. And then the now what would connect my topic, whatever the story was, to the opportunity at hand. What does it mean for that? So what? So what? Now what? is an incredibly valuable tool.

[00:05:02] The next structure I'd like you thinking about is excellent for answering questions, and it has similarities to what, so what, now what. And this is what I call ADD for adding value. When you're asked a question, I believe you should do three things. First, answer the question clearly and concisely. I, for a long, long time, was a hiring manager. I grew a team once from two people to eighty-five people in a year and a half, so I did a lot of interviewing. And it is amazing to me the number of people who don't answer the question asked. So we have to answer the question clearly and concisely. Next, we have to give evidence or support that reinforces that answer.

[00:05:45] And then finally, we need to make sure we connect that answer to the person who is asking the question. So let's imagine you wanted to interview me to be a teacher of communication at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, the job I currently have. You might say, "Hey, Matt, what's your experience?" So I would answer like this. I would say, "I have over twenty-five years of experience teaching communication skills. I've taught at the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as in the corporate world, from very small startups to Fortune One Hundred companies." What that means is I can tailor my material to be specific to the needs of your students.

[00:06:27] So you see, I answered the question clearly and concisely. What's my experience? Twenty-five years. And then I gave a reinforcing example. I've done this before, undergraduate, graduate, corporate world. And here's what it means for you. It means that I can tailor my material. We often assume that people can understand the relevance or the value of our answer, but the reality is they don't always make that connection. So make it explicit. Now, you don't have to answer every question in that order. You could go in reverse order. I could say, "If you hire me, I'll tailor my material to be specific to the needs of your students.

[00:07:01] I've done this at the undergraduate, graduate level, and in the corporate world. I've been doing this for twenty-five years." I just did DDA, relevance, example, answer. So if you have themes that you are aware that differentiate you from others, if you have supporting ancillary material, and you have practiced structure for how to respond, what, so what, now what, answer, detailed example, describe relevance, two different structures. Then when you are in an interview, in a small talk situation, in a networking situation, all you have to do is assemble your answers. So when somebody asks you a question, you think, "That question relates to this theme. This theme connects to the support that I've already thought about."

[00:07:51] And by being able to assemble, it's easier on you cognitively. The demand is less, which means you can focus more effort on connecting, on listening, on being present, which in and of itself makes you appear more confident and engaged. And confidence and engagement are important in networking and interview situations. So theme, stockpile, practice structure, and you are ready to go. Now, the next step is to actually practice for these situations. How could you do that? Part of practice is just this preparation, thinking it through. But more importantly is actually speaking it out. So get with a friend, a colleague, and practice.

[00:08:38] Do a role play or use an AI tool. Go to your favorite LLM, say, "Interviewing for a job of this type with these types of people," and have it ask you questions. Again, not to memorize your answer, but to practice. This is like doing a drill. If you've ever played a sport, chances are you've done practice and you've done drills, and these drills help us. So there's preparation, and then there's practice. And in doing the preparation and practice, you prepare yourself, and you will feel more comfortable and confident. So that's the methodology and process I'd like you to take away from this.

[00:09:16] Now, there's one element that is absolutely critical that will make you stand out even more, and that is your ability to tell a good, effective, efficient story. Stories are great ways to reinforce what you're saying, but many people don't tell good stories. They go too long. They go too short. There isn't a point. So I have asked my colleague and friend, Laura Joyce Davis, who has helped immeasurably behind the scenes to bring content to you. And Laura, welcome. Thank you for joining us inside the Learning Community, and I would love to turn this over to you to share with all of us a, a few tips on good, effective storytelling skills. 

[00:09:55] Laura Joyce Davis: Thank you so much, Matt. It's so great to be here with all of you. And I want to just start by asking why are stories important for interviews in particular? The thing that I wanna share with you today is to just think about how stories are important for three reasons. They connect you with others, they show your values and your experience in a memorable way, and maybe most importantly, they give you an opportunity to share with somebody you just met who you really are. They can give these very deep insights very, very quickly into the kind of person you are. So the three things that every great story has are conflict.

[00:10:39] We sometimes think we have to appear as strong and put together, and we want to, of course, be professional and put together in interviews. But remember that sharing a conflict, something difficult that you've been through that you've been able to overcome, that's one of the best stories you can tell in an interview because it gives you a chance to be vulnerable, but at the same time, to really put forward some ways that you've contributed to, you know, a past organization or a team that you've been a part of or even a family.

[00:11:09] So conflict is number one. The second thing is beats. Every story has beats, and what I mean by story beats is it has scenes. If I tell you a story about the time that I overcame that big conflict, I'm going to have one beat where I tell you about what the world was like before, you know, very briefly, I set the stage, maybe give you a tiny little moment of once upon a time, everything was going great. The second beat might be, and then one day I woke up and I got this call that changed everything. And then the next beat might be, and then what happened? What did you do next? Those beats are essentially what happened in the story.

[00:11:49] They're your plot points, your action. And every moment of action, you can do this very, very quickly, and I'll give you an exercise to practice for that in a moment. But remember that something has to happen in a story. It can't just be an anecdote. It can't just be one little moment where you feel a certain way or something happened. You gotta tell us what happened next and how you reacted to that. And then finally, transformation. So we've got conflict, beats, and transformation. Transformation is where you get to show what happens to you because of the conflict. You get to give us a little insight into the way that you react to something difficult, something challenging, maybe even something that is a weakness of yours that you have turned into a strength.

[00:12:41] And not in a way that feels phony or that you're pretending. This is genuine, and it'll require you to do a little digging probably to really think about this, to think about first, what are your weaknesses? That's your conflict. And then how have you transformed? You know, maybe your weakness is that you are naturally a really unstructured person. You find it really difficult to keep track of a lot of details. Maybe your story is that you have seen that weakness, you've recognized that it's a challenge for you that you have to overcome, even if you're naturally a certain way.

[00:13:18] And so you start to put together a story about you went to a training to learn how to master Microsoft Excel, or you learned how to manage a team by really thinking through the different steps in a project to get to completion, and now you're the most organized person that anybody knows. And you can tell that story very quickly using those story beats of those key moments and talk about how, "Hey, this is still how I'm hardwired, but I figured out how to make this actually a strength because I'm aware of this weakness." And the question, why do you wanna work here? If you can use the framework of the story of my life has led me to this job here now. And what am I gonna say to show the story of my whole life led up to this moment? Think back to the things that are genuinely true of you, the experiences that you've had, and how can they add up to this weird combination that somehow works because it is genuine of, okay, all of these different pieces have come together for this specific thing now.

[00:14:28] So the last thing I want to say, I wanna give you a little homework to practice, and you can use some of the suggestions that Matt was making about using an AI tool or recording a voice memo or talking to a friend. I want you to tell the story of your life in one minute, and I want you to time yourself. The best way, by the way, is if you can do it with another person, but you can also record yourself. I want you to think about the job that you want, and the story of your life should lead you to that job.

[00:15:02] Then I want you to set the timer again and do that two more times, the story of your life in one minute, but each time you tell it, you can't use any of the details that you did the previous time. So each time you have to come up with new details. It has to be just one minute. What this will do is it will force you to get deeper into your own story and to think of things that aren't obvious. Thank you so much, everyone. This has been so fun to share with you, and I hope that some of these tools have been helpful. 

[00:15:32] Matt Abrahams: Laura, thank you so much. The idea of really thinking through how we put our stories together can differentiate us and help us to be more clear and concise. I really like the idea of identifying challenges, of thinking about the beats, and really using the practice techniques that you shared to really help. And I'd like to end by simply saying, the pre-work you do around understanding how you best fit and differentiate, creating themes, stockpiling information, and then leveraging the ideas that Laura shared around how to craft a big story, this will truly differentiate you, and you will come off as authentic and real.

[00:16:12] In a world where AI can perfect and polish everything, being human and being able to tell your story in an authentic way will really make a big difference. Thank you, Laura, so much for joining me today. Your insights into what makes for a good story really augments the overall process for differentiating ourselves in interviews and networking. I hope everybody is taking away what we can do in advance to prepare, how we can actually practice, and so we can end up delivering our best selves in these situations.

[00:16:45] Thank you for joining us for this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the Podcast. I really appreciate Laura and her insight around beats in stories. Really thinking about those beats, those areas you emphasize, can be incredibly valuable. To learn more about these interviewing skills and other communication skills, check out our back catalog. We have hundreds of episodes to teach you useful, important communication skills. And be sure to check out our Learning Community at fastersmarter.io/learning to learn skills and tools to help you deal with the issues that are confronting you in your communication.