|
Be brief. Now that the
secret is revealed, I will support my tenet with a
few facts. Actually, you can do what I did: I
watched some television with a stopwatch to see how
long an answer people provide for a question. As
samples, I used, among others, Presidents Obama and
Clinton because I consider them excellent
communicators with media people in a
question-and-answer setup. Typically, one of their
answers would be 30 to 90 seconds long, with very
few deviations. In order to get to such a level of
excellence, one needs two ingredients: innate talent
and lots of practice. Not all of us are born with
this type of talent, but all of us can achieve it
through practice and in fact should if we want to
excel at interviews.
As a career coach, I help
people become better at answering difficult
interview questions. I’ve found it interesting that
regardless of people’s professions, backgrounds, or
titles most are not good when facing a job
interviewer—despite the fact that some think they
are, because after all, they’ve gotten jobs in the
past, right? Universally, though, people are
long-winded, and their answers tend to be paragraphs
instead of several bulleted items supported by
examples. Some provide protracted answers that go
way beyond the listener’s attention span. The danger
here is that the job candidate is not made aware of
losing the listener’s attention, since regrettably,
interviewers don’t have digital readouts on their
foreheads showing their listening level at that
moment.
The best way to overcome
that obstacle is to prepare for interview answers by
first writing out the answers longhand in SARB
format. (SARB is the acronym for situation, action,
result, and benefit.) Next, review each answer with
an eye toward shortening them. If an answer can be
delivered in about 60 seconds, you’ll achieve your
objective. Now, it’s practice time. Best if you work
with a career coach who can give you not only honest
feedback but also the correct answers. Otherwise,
ask a friend, family member, or someone else who
also might benefit from such practice.
|
