Interviewing Mindset: Tips from a Hiring Manager

1. Introduction: My name is Derek. I'm here to help you with preparing for Job Interviewing. I have seven years interviewing experience in four years as a hiring manager. And during that time, I found that most people struggle with interviewing due to the stress and anxiety that comes from their mindset about interviewing. This course is designed to help you reshape the way that you think about interviewing to deal with some of that stress and anxiety, and to help you prepare for interviews in such a way that you'll never leave an interview feeling like you failed. 2. Changing the mindset about interviewing: Oftentimes interviewing is difficult, not because we don't have the skills or qualifications to meet the role, but because when we get into the interview, we get hung up on the stress and anxiety that builds up within us. And we can answer questions despite having great examples in our work history or personal history to draw upon. Whenever applying to a job, we should definitely consider whether or not the company that we're applying to fits within our moral compass. Because when you're aligned with the company's goals, that makes it a lot easier to fully commit to the role. And it can come across very strongly in an interview when you agree with what the company's mission is. So one of the best ways to prepare for an interview is actually by writing a cover letter. Wall companies don't require this and maybe it's not always necessary. I recommended as a best practice because it enables you to dive into your reasoning behind your application to the role. And if you really understand that you're gonna be better prepared for the interview. Once you've determined that the company that you've applied to aligns with your morals and maybe you've written a cover letter and explored that one of the best ways to prepare for an interview is actually to change the way that you think about interviewing. And I think this is one of the most critical things to alleviating some of the stress and anxiety that comes with interviewing. Most of us. When we get into an interview, we're thinking, how do I get this job? How do I say what the interviewer wants to hear in order to land this role and began my career. And unfortunately that's actually the wrong way to be thinking about interviews. A lot of good interviewers are gonna be able to sniff out that preparation. And it's not an honest way to communicate with an interviewer. You really wanna do is you want to think about an interview as a way to showcase who you are, what you've done in your career and personal life potentially to get you to where you are. And that'll enable you to communicate what you can bring to the company. So this is a better way to think about interviewing. And it takes a lot of the anxiety and stress away. If you've come into an interview or thinking about, your only responsibility is to convey to the interviewer who you are, then you don't have to worry about whether or not you get the job. You don't have to think about the outcome. Because if you don't get the job, that just means that you weren't the right fit. And ultimately, if you did land that job and you weren't the right fit, neither you nor the employer is going to be satisfied with that relationship. A lot of people struggle with self-doubt, and that can make it difficult to feel confident going into an interview, what people fail to recognize is that every single individual person, regardless of their background, regardless of their school, work experience, upbringing. They all have a unique perspective. You have a unique perspective to bring to the table. And that comes from everything that makes you, you, your environment, your relationships, how you see the world. And that's what matters. If you remember that, then it'll be a lot easier to communicate who you are in an interview. We have all these accomplishments that we can be proud of and using the interview as examples. But how do we actually turn these into good examples for an interviewer? And this is where the star format is best used. Star is an acronym for situation, task, action, result. And it's actually really useful for interviews. So when thinking about your past accomplishments, the first thing that you wanna do is be able to communicate what the situation was. That situation may have been a personal conflict. It may have been an emergency situation. It may have been a project that you were assigned and maybe the deadline was at risk. But think about what the situation is and how best to communicate what that situation was. The task is what needed to be done in order to overcome that situation. The task could involve you, your team, or other external stakeholders who whatever that task was, you need to understand and be able to communicate why that task was required in order to overcome this situation. Action is what you actually did to resolve that situation. If the task was a team task, what was your role specifically in helping the team accomplished that task? If the task was a personal tasks and what exactly did you do? And figure out how to best communicate that and highlight the actions that you actually took to resolve the situation. And finally, result. What was the result of your actions and how does it resolve this situation? You most often want to have some metrics that are tied to this, especially in professional examples. But maybe you don't have those metrics readily available or it's more of a personal situation, be able to communicate how the result benefited all parties involved. 3. STAR Example: Now for an exercise, the following are clips from HBO's house of dragon series. Please note that there are spoilers for Episode two and it may be difficult to participate if you have not seen the episode. Imagine you are a narrow preparing for an interview and want to use the accomplishment demonstrated in the following sequence as an example. Use the star format to describe the example and write down what you think the situation, task, action, and result are from our narrows perspective. At the end, I will show you my interpretation and what a hiring manager might take away from using such an example. Keep in mind there is no definitive right or wrong answer, but you will want to focus on what would best portray the qualities or narrow demonstrates with this accomplishment, Damon has seized dragon Stone, has surrounded himself with an army of goat clothes and has now stolen a dangerous weapon, could throw money away. Scalia drama and Damon, let us draw it. So E less than 0. Either assembler detachment hotel. I will go to Dragon stone and drag David sacrificed justice. My apologies, your grace, but I cannot allow merge. It's too dangerous. Daemon is not limited to track. Instead, if come for the a. Here it is. You mad. You've never survived. This will happily neither would you. Choose violence here to declare war against your king. Wonderful princess, preventing bloodshed. So Kristin, please the scope the princess to safety. Take care not to startle Xerox, my lord's. She's rather protective of me. Know hyenas. Daddy that also prostatic. Guess it will Glaser neurons on Bosnia and move on. Isa. Your syllabus say they don't also daddy. Oh, he kinda reorient our Tooby monadic Nikkei to Nicholas. Emr. Need our second just shoots new ClinVar and cron drawn one loudly on our bear with us. He puts out to resume the mass and v overlay cornea Newport roof or should he lied to me? I'm right here, Uncle. The object of your iron, the reason that you would just inherited if you wish to be restored as you need to kill me. Do it. With all this bother. Here, Grace. You disobeyed me. He fled King's Landing without her what? You acted without the cramps leave. You are my only could have been killed. I said you went to dragon Stone. I'm retrieves the egg without bloodshed. The feet, I'm not sure. So auto could have accomplished to learn. 4. STAR Explanation - Comments from hiring manager: Now let's go through how I would prepare this example for an interview using the star format. See how your response compares to mine. And I'll discuss key takeaways. The situation from Ramirez perspective is that Damon has stolen a Dragon's Egg that is important to her, and that auto is incapable of retrieving the egg without provoking Damon and causing war. However, when writing about a situation, you want to try to be as objective as possible. If you use subjective descriptions such as the egg meant a lot to me and I knew Otto was incapable. You will indicate to a hiring manager that you respond to situations based on feelings rather than logic. Try to be concise and focus only on the most important information relating to the situation. You want to avoid unnecessary details that do not contribute to highlighting the qualities demonstrated by the example. However, a hiring manager may ask probing questions so you'll want to have a full understanding of all the details to be able to respond. E.g. I. Would not initially include the detail that run narrow was not asked to be a part of the retrieval as this could be taken as a positive or a negative. While there is reasoning behind your decision. Providing this detail upfront and bytes difficult probing questions unnecessarily that may indicate to a hiring manager for narrows problem with authority, I would avoid disclosing any details that could be interpreted as a negative. The task that is given to auto is to return the dragon egg to King's Landing. The tasks that were narrow assigns herself is to prevent bloodshed. In addition to returning the aid, you want to be concise and avoid unnecessary details. In this example, there's a team assembled by auto to retrieve the egg. But because we're narrowed, does not work with the team, it is best not to initially disclose. Probing questions are asked. Do you will want to demonstrate sound reasoning for your decisions? In this instance, Rivera could argue that this was a time-sensitive situation and the team assembled would not cooperate if she had approached them due to her station as princess and their obligations to the king. The actions are what we're narrow herself did to accomplish the task assigned in response to the situation. In this example, we're narrow fluid a dragon Stone to reason with Daymond. Again, be concise and avoid unnecessary details. How our narrow reasons with Damon is not an important detail unless it highlights a positive quality. In this case, it is runners relationship to daimon that D escalates the situation which is irrelevant to the example. It probing questions are asked, you should communicate the decision-making process behind your actions, e.g. where an era could argue that because she knew Damon would not fight her, her decision to step in between him and auto was justified. Also, be careful not to disclose the result when describing the actions taken were an era did retrieve the dragon egg, but that was a result of our actions. These are the most important and objectively positive outcomes that come directly from scenarios narrows actions. Make sure you highlight the results of your actions. Specifically, if your actions contributor to accomplishing a team goal, highlight how your actions impact of the team, e.g. hypothetically, if we're an arrowhead, found a dragon Stone to support auto leading to the return of the egg. The result of our actions was that the team had sufficient forces to intimidate Damon and accomplish the task. If in this example, we're never claimed that the result of our actions was that the egg was returned. It would indicate that she is dismissive of the team and not a team player. Additionally, you want to avoid disclosing results that could be interpreted as negative. E.g. because of our actions, the king is upset with run era. If you are asked probing questions, be able to demonstrate how the positives outweigh the negatives regarding the results, or if there were further actions to resolve any perceived negative results, e.g. or an era has a heart-to-heart with her father and justifies our actions, resulting in them being closer and more trusting. As with any example, there are pros and cons that can be drawn. An arrow demonstrates ownership, initiative and conflict de-escalation. She chooses to act on our own and the results of our actions are positive. As a manager, I would feel confident that renewal would not sit back and wait to be given instructions to resolve an issue. She wouldn't hesitate to take the action she felt necessary. She may also be able to de-escalate situations involving conflict, but that may be limited to this example. Alternatively, she also demonstrates problems with authority, poor risk management, and inflated ego, and has a poor team player or an error disregards that the king did not assign her any task in this situation. She could pose a risk to the business if she were to act without authority and miscalculate in her decision-making. She also demonstrates poor risk assessment. As the king notes, she puts herself in mortal danger. While she accepted the risk. It is debatable whether it's an acceptable risk in this situation. If she put herself in danger to resolve an issue for the business and was hurt, there would be massive legal and PR repercussions. She also demonstrates an inflated ego. She justifies her judgment with sound reasoning, but does not demonstrate any humbleness or consideration of auto or the king in her decision-making. This could be a red flag for the hiring manager as it limits growth potential and receptiveness to coaching and feedback. Finally, this example also demonstrates that rhinorrhea is a poor team player. Auto one is men are completely disregarded by Rivera instead of cooperated with. She acts alone without consultation of any kind. Her actions may have a long-lasting impact on auto and his willingness to cooperate with her. As our hiring manager, I would probe heavily on how she intends to work with auto in the future. All of these points in more can be endlessly debated from this example. And that is the point of a good example. It is to highlight to a manager what qualities you might bring to the table and how they might impact the team. Being a solo player who can act autonomously might be exactly what a hiring manager is looking for and we're narrow would be a good fit. Alternatively, they might be looking for a team player who brings ideas to the table and offers valuable discussions with the group. This is not real narrow based on this example. When drafting your examples using the star format, keep in mind how they demonstrate your qualities and think if they are a good representation of you. Consider how a hiring manager might interpret the example and try to make sure they would most likely see the qualities you wish to showcase. So that's one example of how you can take an accomplishment and format it using star to better tell the story of that accomplishment. 5. Learn what questions could be asked at the interview and how to respond: So why it's important to be able to format your accomplishments and star is because most interviewers are going to be asked behavior-based questions. A lot of times when we get into an interview, we kinda default to hypothetical responses because we haven't really thought about our own accomplishments and we certainly haven't formatted them into the star format, which makes it very difficult to answer behavior-based questions. This tends to not impress the interviewer is very much because it doesn't show what you've actually done in your past. Past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior. So think about that when thinking about those accomplishments and preparing your star responses. What the star format helps you do also is it helps you kind of deep dive into these accomplishments and determine why it was important to you, what you actually accomplished. And really understanding that example at a level where you can pretty much apply those accomplishments to almost any behavior-based questions if you really think about it. Behavior-based questions are questions that are formatted to get responses that are from past experience, though usually begin with, tell me about a time you blank. It could be something such as tell me about a time when you had a conflict with your manager and how did you overcome that? Tell me about a time when you fail to meet a critical deadline and what was the result? All of these are going to be looking for specific examples from either your work history or a lot of times they can be more personal examples as well. If you don't have the work history to draw upon. One really useful way to prepare for interviews is of course, market and this is not a secret everybody knows about mock interviewing, but it is really good to crush your test, those examples that you put into star format. I highly recommend doing it with a friend or family member and try to give them some behavior-based questions that you can apply, your examples too. So I have some closing thoughts and advice that I want to provide. And I think this is the most important thing about the course. When you go into an interview, your job is to communicate who you are. You have this wonderful unique background, all sorts of accomplishments that you can be proud of. And you can draw upon those, whether it's professional or in your school, or in your hobbies or your personal life. Don't be afraid to use those examples if there's something that you're truly proud of and if you use some of your unique skills and abilities to overcome those situations when you complete the interview, if you can walk out feeling like the interviewer actually has an idea of who you are, then you've succeeded from that point forward. Don't worry about whether you end the job if you get the job, great, because that means that they want you for who you are. And if you don't get the job, great, because that means that you avoided a potential mismatch that you might have not been happy with and that maybe the employer might not have been happy with. So overall, if you can reframe your mindset to approaching interviews in this way, you'll never leave an interview feeling disappointed. 6. Q&A with Hiring Manager: So as a hiring manager, what I'm looking for will vary depending on what I have on my team are ready, right? Teams should be composed of different personalities. That's very important to having a successful team because you want insight from different people's backgrounds. So I might be looking for somebody who has as leadership qualities if I don't have potential leaders on my team. But if I do, then I might be looking for somebody who is more of a problem-solver or a critical thinker. I also might be looking for somebody who is more of a cheerleader, right? Not necessarily a leader for the team, but somebody who will bring the team together better and lift up their spirits. So there's all different qualities and characteristics that people's personalities can bring to a team. And that's actually what I'm most interested in when I'm interviewing a candidate is finding somebody who's going to fit in with my team and make them more cohesive. So when I'm reading the qualifications list as a potential candidate, I just want to make sure that I meet most of those qualifications. Obviously, if I'm applying for something that I don't have the skills to do, then I'm not likely to land that role. Like I don't have any background in scripting or programming. So I'm not going to go for a software development role, but I do have experience in communication, team management, project management. So these are the kinds of qualifications that all feel comfortable speaking to if asked about in an interview and I'll feel comfortable executing in a position if I potentially get hired. But I also don't need to necessarily meet every single one of the qualifications. And most hiring managers aren't having to have that expectation either. So as long as you feel like based on the job description that you can do the job. And every job has some level of on-the-job training unless you're talking about like a VP or director level role. So as long as you meet most of the qualifications and you're confident that you can do the job with some training. I think that's really good enough and that's good enough for me to apply for a potential position. I don't recommend memorizing any kind of script in your preparation. You should definitely have a good understanding of your examples. And that's why going through the star format and being able to frame your accomplishments through the star format is really useful. But if you go through and try to memorize a script and that script out in front of an interviewer. It's never going to come off natural no matter how much. It's never going to come off natural no matter how much in practice it. Because we're not actors and alkene is really difficult. So I do recommend having a really good understanding of those examples and being able to communicate them effectively. But I don't recommend having a script. You should be prepared to speak to your resume, but you definitely don't want to regurgitate any of the information that's on your resume. Interviewers, hiring managers will tend to have looked at your resume kind of at a glance and maybe they've made note of some of the larger accomplishments. They might have some specific questions about things on your resume. But I wouldn't recommend just giving like a bullet point of what's on your resume when you're talking about yourself or your accomplishments. So it depends on what role you're looking for. Typically entry-level positions. You don't really have to have a professional background in order to apply. You should just demonstrate that you have some personal interests, that you have some experience, whether that's personal experience or school experience for that role. But you definitely don't need to have worked in that role before. Now if you're looking for more of a mid level or higher role than absolutely, you will need to have some professional background in order to meet the qualifications for that job. So a lot of times at the end of an interview you'll be asked if you have any questions for the interviewer. And the answer is yes, it's really important to have some questions for the interviewer. But you do want to reserve those questions for the end of the interview because you don't want to interrupt the interviewer's flow. Now for the kinds of questions that you want to ask, you definitely want to ask questions that are important to you because you want to make sure that the roll is a good fit for you. So again, you may have done some research and determined that this company is something that you're interested in and aligns with you morally. But you might want to ask some clarifying questions. You also might want to ask what kind of opportunity there is for growth. And certainly it's totally fair to ask about management style and what the manager might be looking for from you. So a lot of times, if you are asked to behavior-based question and you don't think you have an example that fits into that behavior-based question. It is okay to say, Can we move on to the next question? You obviously don't wanna do this too often, and it does, it doesn't necessarily reflect positively on you. But if you have great examples for future questions, then the question that you skipped could be totally forgiven. This actually happens quite often. And another strategy so that you don't skip too many questions is find an example that maybe doesn't fully match the question, but it's a really good example of your success and do your best to fit it in. But also be self-aware for the interviewer that it may not actually answer their question. And a lot of times they'll actually ask further probing questions which can guide you in a direction to connect that example to the original question. So my response to this would be, you need to find something that you can connect to. I understand that everybody needs it income. Sometimes you need any job that you can find in that you can get. And you might throw your resume out to every job that you possibly can. And when you land an interview, my recommendation, if you simply don't care what the job is and you just need money is to do your homework, really look into what that company does and figure out if there's some way that you can connect it to yourself. In this case, the job is probably not a good fit for you, especially if that interviewers hiring manager, if that's just one interviewer and a long line, you're just going to have to do the best you can and hope that the other interviews go well enough and that you present yourself well enough that even though the interviewer might have been rude, you still might be a potential candidate. But if that interview, but if that interviewer happens to be the hiring manager, you likely don't want the role anyways because it's not somebody who you want to work with. In that case, I might send feedback to the company via an app. I'll post interview email that speaks to the bad experience just so that it can be documented. But overall, there's not a lot you can do other than that. Well, one of the things that I think a lot of people mess up on in interviews is when they're asked a question that they think is a trick question, they try to make themselves look as good as possible. So if you're ever asked a question like, tell me about your biggest failure or tell me about a time that you disagreed with your manager. These are questions that are actually meant for the interview, meant to tell the interviewer very important information. You should definitely answer all of these questions honestly and sincerely. Having a disagreement with your manager is totally okay. What the interviewer is looking for is actually how you approached that situation. And what was the resolution. And everybody has failures, has mistakes in their careers. And interviewers want to know about how you responded to those failures. That's what can tell a lot about, about that can tell you a lot about a person. So don't go into an interview thinking that you need to look like a perfect candidate because there is no such thing. I wouldn't lean too heavily on we statements in, in professional careers, it's really good to involve yourself with your team and your collective stake holders. So using we statements is very much encouraged. But in an interview, it's really about what your accomplishments are, what your contributions are, and what you do. So it's okay to sound a little bit self-centered and use a lot of I-statements, so don't feel uncomfortable saying I did this. I did that. That's what the interviewer is for. They wanna know what you did. Another piece of advice I would give on what not to do is I would, I would recommend against leaning too heavily on team successes. So when you present a success, if your success was a team success, you need to really only speak about your actions and how that your actions actually contributed to the overall success. Because a team accomplishment has a lot of various parts. And if an interviewer feels that your contributions were insufficient to that team effort, It's gonna look poorly even if the team accomplishment was massive. Another thing that you probably shouldn't do is you should definitely never read responses from a prepared statement. It's fine to have notes to draw upon to refresh your mind about whatever your example you're using to answer a question. But don't read those responses because it's going to show a lack of understanding and connection to those actual examples. Again, the best way to prepare is to really understand what you did and why it's important to you. If you truly feel proud of that accomplishment, you're gonna be happy to speak about it. So some interviewers do like using hypothetical situations. And of course, if you're asked to hypothetical question, you can give a hypothetical response. These are really ways to challenge your critical thinking abilities, thinking on your toes. And oftentimes they're more geared towards problem-solving and potentially technical abilities. So preparation is really going to be more on the technical side. 7. Thank You!: Thank you for taking the time to complete this course. For further review, please download the attached materials, included our summary slides and sample behavior-based questions for mock interviewing. I hope you found something valuable to take away and feel better prepare for your next interview. If you have any further questions or feedback, please let me know in the comments section, I would be happy to hear from you.