How to REALLY prep for an interview!

What do you do leading up to the interview? prep for a few questions, practice in the mirror, work on your smiling. All great but as they say this can potentially be "putting lipstick on a pig" if you don't have great experiences to draw from.

So what really preps you for an interview?

Good quality experiences are the basis for really good stories. Stories that of course have a great situation leading up to it, show what stellar behavior you chose to exhibit, and display how you achieved an award winning outcome. How you took on an extra project that changed not only the way your department does business but other departments throughout the company. How you had an idea for cost savings, that really didn't take any extra time but simply required you and your coworkers to start to work in a different way, and oh yes… this one saved your organization $27,000 in short order and lead to you getting a raise. People with experiences like these are the ones employers want to hire. These are even the type of people that are likely to get several job offers and have the ability to negotiate both salary and other terms of the position.

"But Scott" you say "I don't have any of these fancy schmancy experiences but I still want that Finance Manager job in that sweet office building down the road with a view." Maybe so but guess what? someone else who has great experiences actively improving her organization and getting results also wants that job. You will be competing against this person. Going up against someone who has great experiences in an interview is a little like the person who swims a couple of times a week in the pool at the YMCA, competing for a single spot in the olympics. Even if you get through the "elimination rounds" you will be able to tell very quickly by the rapidly expanding gap of water, who the star performers are.

Having great experiences can help you change career fields. One common language in many job interviews is leadership and influence around focused improvement. That is something all organizations are looking for and those are always transferrable skills and experiences. In fact what often stands out

Let's dig a little deeper to determine how we get there. How do you start noticing opportunities or problems for improvement in your organization?

Caring about what happens where you work is a start. Now before you launch into your martyr story about how much you care about this or that, I would challenge you to think about this: Does everyone else that you work with feel the same way about you; That you put yourself behind the needs of the organization and the people in it? That's where you start to notice opportunities to get an interview story. You get miffed a little bit when paper gets wasted or we are giving the customer a less than stellar experience. You start to cringe when you see that that since "we have always done it that way" it has lead to no shortage of missed opportunities and  extra expenses.

Another place you can start is by volunteering for projects, more responsibility, additional workload, to work with other departments, channels, or vendors. We have one person on our team right now that was promoted into position a year ago. Since then he has taken on the most challenging projects that nobody else wanted. He has since been very successful with each project. Through these he has achieved some amazing exposure working closely with other teams and at the same time stretched himself outside his comfort zone. Because of this he now has other experiences working with some of our senior leaders and at the same time has given himself a competitive advantage compared to other people in similar level positions. He will likely be very successful when a position comes open for promotion or if he wanted to go someplace else could probably get numerous job offers.

Think about it this way: If you were your own marketing or sales department for the company of You Inc, wouldn't you want to sell products or services that have significant differentiation from your competitors? That is exactly what you are doing here. Creating competitive advantage in the labor marketplace through the accumulation of the best stories is the best way to ensure that you can have the career you want. 

So remember before you get anywhere close to the actual interview the best way to prep is to say yes to experience.

The rest is as simple as just telling stories!