Simple strategies to ace your next interview

JOB interviews are both essential and inevitable moments of truth in your career. They serve as a gateway to new opportunities that can elevate your professional aspirations and boost your employment trajectory.

- TIFFANY UMAN

Interviews are golden chances to shine, yet it is in these exact moments that far too many professionals feel daunted and falter. Lack of confidence, an inability to self-advocate, ineffective communication skills and even uncontrollable nerves all negatively impact a candidate's interview outcomes.

Here are four simple strategies for mastering an interview:

Optimise storytelling

How you speak about your accomplishments, wins and track record can be highly revealing to an interviewer. You should always frame achievements as your current and prior roles in a way that highlights not just what you did, but also the impact and value you created. Your objective is to be the obvious choice for the role by clearly demonstrating that you have a track record of delivering results.

Although the STAR methodology is commonly applied, I personally recommend adopting a “what-how-result” structure as a more effective storytelling approach. Simple, effective and easy to remember, this technique is particularly helpful in answering behavioural style questions such as “Tell me about a time when…”

♦ What: This is where you share what you did to provide initial situational context for your answer.

♦ How: This is where you share how you executed on the task, project or situation at hand. This is also where you can integrate your distinct qualities and strengths that led to a successful implementation.