“Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end: then stop.” – Lewis Caroll

I am just reading Alice in Wonderland to my daughter, it’s the version beautifully illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. It is such a crazy, magical story – wonderful for young and imaginative minds.   But it did make me think about the merits of beginning at the beginning and continuing to the end of speaking scenarios, especially interviews.  Especially when they say tell me about yourself…

The temptation here is to start at the beginning and go until the end and then stop.

If you take a moment to really think about it, how much of that information is really relevant to the job you are interviewing for?  How does it help the interviewer decide if you are a good candidate for the position?

Really what the interviewer needs to hear is how you are personally and professionally suitable for the role you are about to do, not your suitability for the roles you have completed in the past.  
In other words how do you future pace your interviewer into seeing you in this new role and future proof your career at the same time.

Working with a senior financial person recently we realised the job he had applied for was a balance of superior technical skills in a very niched area and one he was highly experienced in.  The other half of the job was about convincing very senior civil servants and senior staff in financial establishments to change their practices.   They were required to be a diplomat and encourage, influence and persuade without ever telling anyone what to do.

This meant we needed to go through their career and establish all the moments, projects and client work where diplomatic skills had been deployed successfully – demonstrating excellent diplomatic skills throughout their working life.

After that it became super easy to decide what aspects of their career to talk about in that potted history moment at the start of the interview.  The primacy effect meant that the interviewers were most likely to remember all these golden moments of diplomacy right from the start.

We most definitely didn’t begin at the beginning and go on to the end then stop.

We have just opened three spaces for June and July for interview intensives.  If you would like to know how to confidently talk about yourself and your career then we should chat.

Would you like to nail your interview and land your dream role by being present, personable and persuasive?
If you want to book a coffee chat to discuss how you can be more present, personable and persuasive in an interview, then you can do that here.

If you are already sold on the idea then you can learn more about the programme  here.