Better Interview Bootcamp | Part I: Preparation

Hi {NAME}, Welcome to Better Interview Bootcamp! This is the first of several emails that will teach you how to step up your interview game so that you land more final rounds, more offers, and higher salaries. Over the next 10 days we'll be covering: - A systematic approach to efficiently preparing for interviews (so you can be effective even if you have several on your plate at the same time) - Tips for turning fear, nervousness and sweaty palms into cool, calm confidence - Specific strategies you can use to separate yourself (in a great way) from all of the other applicants who are competing for the position - Psychological tricks to make yourself stick in your interviewers mind - and stay there when the critical decision takes places We're going to start at the top and take it from there: "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail" - Benjamin Franklin Back in October 2012, I was a junior in college. October was a big month because we threw our largest party of the year - a beach party. We ordered 1,200 lbs of sand and spread it all out across the basement of this old house (ridiculous, right?). We bought a massive inflatable pool that took up the entire room and we even turned a few of our closets into tiki bars. Then we invited everyone we knew, and around 10:00 pm that basement would be jam packed with ~250 college kids in bathing suits. I specifically remember the party from 2012 though. Just after midnight, which was usually the peak of the festivities, I looked around for my roommate - we'll call him John - and I couldn't find him anywhere. I thought, how could he be missing this? After asking several people, one of my buddies told me that he was at home preparing for an interview...that was 2 weeks away. I called him up immediately - "Yo, are you studying? For some job thing that's 2 weeks away?! Get your ass over here!" He didn't end up making it to the party, and all of our friends, including myself, didn't let him hear the end of it for several months. See, I figured that the whole job process was easy peasy. You find a few companies you want to work for, send in a resume and then they call you up, interview you and offer you a job. In other words, I thought I could coast on talent. I didn't need to spend hours preparing! How naive... The fact is, I didn't even go on a single job interview in college. I got an internship the summer before and accepted their (absolutely horrible) offer before my senior year even started. I thought I knew what I was doing. That couldn't have been further from the truth. Fast forward to today - almost everyone who made fun of John is still in the same position they were when they graduated college. John, however, landed himself a position in GE's management program where he rotates between incredible cities every 6 months - all expenses paid (rent, food, car, even travel). His past two rotations have been in Singapore and Florence, Italy. Probably worth skipping one college party for, right? That is why, in 2013 when I desperately needed a job change, I took a page out of John's book - preparation is the key to success when it comes to interviewing. 90% of the work is done before you even step into the office or pick up the phone on your interview day. How To Fully Prepare For An Interview There are three distinct areas that need to be considered when preparing for an interview. They are: - The Company - The Person Interviewing You - The Questions That Person Will Ask The first two are more specific and require a significant time investment. The third, on the other hand, can be effectively handled by a systematic process. It also happens to be where most of the interview time is spent. The rest of this email is going to focus on that process which, once mastered, can be implemented in almost any interview for any company. Pareto's Interview Process If you've been following along, you know by now that I'm a big fan of the 80/20 rule. Since it applies to almost everything in life, it's no surprise that it's extremely effective in interviews. Roughly 99% of interviews you will ever go on in your lifetime will fit into this template: - Tell me about yourself (your experience, why you are interested in this role, etc.) - A mix of behavioral questions, which we’ll dive into shortly - What questions do you have for me (the interviewer)? I go over these 3 steps in detail in my article, [How To Get A Job With No Connections](=), so feel free to go back and read through that section to get refreshed. Outside of the "Tell Me About Yourself" questions, you will be asked a variation of these 7 questions: - Why do you want to work for us? - Tell me about a time you exhibited leadership - Tell me about a time where you had to work as a team - Tell me about a time you’ve had to work with a difficult person, or difficult people - Tell me about a time you failed - Tell me about a time you overcame an obstacle - Tell me about a time when you had success Great answers should: - Tell a story - Include a business case - Include one tidbit that is "unforgettable" Here is an answer I wrote for #5, Tell Me About A Time You've Failed: "I fail every day, but I don’t tend to think of these instances as failures but rather as learning experiences. One of the worst experiences I had came during my first job as a medical device sales rep. My job was to cover cases across several states in the Southeast. I would show up, use their instruments and do the case. Hospitals had been trying to cut costs so they made us consolidate instrument pans and keep others off site. One day I showed up to a case and the patient was larger than normal. Turns out he was a custom size, but we didn’t have the instrumentation on site because only ~3% of cases used that size. I had to drive across town, pick up the set, drive back, and get it sterilized. We lost an hour of case time, I was cursed at and I even had a piece of human pelvis thrown at my head. That was a huge lesson for me in preparation and moving forward I carried around an emergency “set” of instruments in my car which I ended up using to bail myself out of that exact same situation several more times." This answer hits all of our criteria above. It tells a story, it illustrates that I am able to think outside of the box and go the extra mile to make sure the job is done correctly. And no one is going to forget that piece about having a human bone thrown at my head! Now, the first step in your interview process, before you do anything else, is to sit down and write out your answers to these questions making sure that each answer hits those 3 points. I want you to spend 30 minutes to an hour over the next 2 days to write out a "first draft" for each question. Then you're going to continue to refine these answer until they are perfect - on paper. After that, the next step is to repeat them over and over until you could say them in your sleep. This is one of the most important, and hardest, parts. We're going to talk about why that is the next part of Better Interview Bootcamp: Part II: The Key To Confidence (and How To Never Be Nervous Again) Keep an eye on your inbox for that in a few days! Best, A [Cultivated Culture] Land a job you love without applying online. How Can I Help You? 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