The best candidates give examples with details and tangible results. You don’t say you have great analytical skills. You talk about a specific example of when you used your analytical skills and the quantified results you achieved for your employer because of them. You don’t say you work well with people. You give a specific example of a project that involved coordinating a group of people or communicating or relationship building. You don’t say you will learn on the job. You come in having clearly researched your target company with specific ideas of what you would do in your role.
A good framework exists to ensure that the examples you give clearly highlight your contributions. That framework also gives the interviewer a good sense of the scope of your responsibility. To emphasize your contributions, answer these five questions:
- Who sponsored the project? Was it the CEO, the head of a department, an outside client?
- What was the overall objective? Were you researching a new market, developing a new product, organizing a conference for key clients?
- What was the output you needed to deliver? Was it a PowerPoint presentation to senior management, an Excel spreadsheet with projections, a written report?
- What was the result? Did the company enter the new market? Was the product developed, and was it well received? How did the conference turn out?
- What did you do, and what did everyone else on the team do? A prospective employer needs to understand what you specifically did. Itemizing what you did shows your contribution. Itemizing what everyone else did shows you stayed on top of the overall project, and it also gives the interviewer a clear sense of the size and composition of the team.
For example, Russell S. is a recent undergraduate with extensive music-related internships but who now wants a sales role upon graduation. To highlight that his experience in music was indeed relevant to sales, he walked his then-prospective, now-current employer through a sample music project. He deliberately picked a promotion project because it is closely related to sales:
- I was promoting a high school band for gigs in the neighborhood. (Question 1: The band sponsored this project. Also Question 2: The objective was landing gigs.)
- I canvassed different restaurants, bars, and community organizations for the type of entertainment they booked and developed relationships with the bookers of places that fit the music of my band. (Question 3: The output was the sales process.)
- We landed several gigs throughout the summer, and many places became repeat customers. (Question 4: The result was multiple sales and repeat business.)
- I was not in the band, but I acted as the business manager, negotiated the contracts, collected the fees, and worked with the venues to promote the band. Everybody else was a performer. (Question 5: Russell itemized exactly what he did in relation to everyone else.)
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