- Hey everyone, this is
Self Made Millennial,
I'm Madeline Mann.
Want to know the step by step process
on how to rock behavioral
interview questions?
Well, fantastic.
Because that's what this
whole video is about.
To keep getting interview and career tips
from the person who has seen it all
from the recruiting side,
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I'll be teaching you my
story toolbox strategy
that gets exceptional results.
I get the most testimonials
of fabulous results from this tip,
including this fellow who
got the job from this advice
and being a loyal watcher of my videos.
Heck yes, thank you so much.
So I'll give you the steps
you'll need to answer
behavioral interview questions.
And I'll give you an
example of this in action
and stay to the end
because I will tell you
my trick for remembering
all of this information.
A behavioral interview is a question
that starts with something
like, tell me about a time when.
They are asking for examples
of things you have done
in your past and at the
core they're asking you
to tell them a story.
Stories aren't just for bedtime folks,
you need to tell stories to be memorable
and help them to see
themselves working with you.
This is my favorite type of question
to ask when I'm the interviewer
because I can better
understand the way you think
and approach situations.
When I ask something like
how do you handle stress?
I get a very generic answer, but if I ask,
tell me about a time you had
to complete several projects
within a tight deadline.
I can hear a story and better understand
the way that you respond to the world.
What you need to do first is
get notable career moment,
all written down, which is
what I call a story toolbox.
This will be the basis
of all of your answers
to behavioral interview questions.
And when they ask you a
question that's behavioral,
it will keep you from doing the old,
Um.
- Um.
- Um.
- Um.
- Um.
- Um.
- Um.
- Mmm
what was the question?
So take the time to write
this all down in a document
such as a time you saved the
day or solved a big problem,
a time when you worked
with a difficult person
and how you handled it, a
time you messed up or failed.
Put this all down in your story toolbox.
Now I have a lot more prompts for you
and it's kind of boring for me
to list them all out verbally here,
so I will put a link in the description
with a full document of prompts,
but by the end of this
worksheet you'll have about 10
or even more stories locked and loaded.
So you need to get that
story toolbox filled out
before moving onto the next steps
and I want to emphasize you
creating that story toolbox,
just 10X your potential
to rock the interview.
I'll link a video that walks through
how to use this story toolbox
for essentially every interview question.
Yeah, it's super impactful
so you can get that
full education on this.
I will link in the description.
Okay, now we need to answer the question.
They may ask something like,
tell me about a time you had to deliver
a piece of tough feedback.
If we were to look in the
toolbox I provided you,
you might start sweating and say,
Oh God, Madeline, you
didn't tell me to write
a story about giving feedback.
What a curve ball?
Nope, think for a minute,
feedback absolutely played a
role in one of your stories.
Think for a minute and pick one.
For example, I said that
you should have a story
or two about a time when you worked
with a difficult person
and how you handled it.
I bet there's a great
chance you had to deliver
some sort of feedback in
that story, so tell it.
You will be so pleasantly surprised
at how many behavioral questions
your preconceived stories will fit.
Then you answer this in the par method,
which is also similar to the star method,
but I prefer par because
it's three steps instead
of four concise is key in the interview.
So P stands for problem.
What is the problem or challenge
that was put before you?
A is for action.
What action did you take
to attempt to resolve it?
And R is the result.
What were the outcomes of those actions?
Let's say we wrote down a
story about how we worked
with a coworker who was
flaky and didn't do things
when they said they were going to.
Here's an example, problem.
I had a coworker who I was
depending on for reports,
but he would constantly tell me
that he wouldn't be able
to get it to me in time,
right when the deadline was about to hit,
which impacted my ability
to do my job in time.
Action.
I respected him,
so I took the concern straight
to him to talk it through.
I first showed empathy and said,
I can imagine you have so
much that you're working on
right now and I can tell
that you're working hard.
Then I was direct about
how he was affecting me,
so I said, and I wanted to
discuss the past three deadlines
that we set that you weren't able to meet.
When you don't get me the reports on time,
it delays the entire production process
and leads the rest of
us to take several hours
to readjust the schedule.
How can we ensure this
doesn't happen in the future?
And then finally you explain the result.
I was nervous about the conversation
but he opened up to me
about how he has always
tried to chase down
the information for the report
and so we came up with
a streamlined solution
where we now submit a form
with every report request
and he now he stopped putting off the task
and from then on we have been
getting the report on time.
And that's it.
The same exact story works
for those two prompts,
but it could also fit a lot
of different other questions.
Like, tell me about a time
that you had an interpersonal
conflict you had to deal with
or tell me about a time
when there was a communication breakdown.
Tell me about a time you took charge
when your boss was unavailable.
Once you have your story toolbox,
you can fit these answers every which way.
And what I do before every interview
is if it's a phone or a video interview,
I have the title of every
story to trigger my memory
on the computer screen
or a paper on the table.
If it's an in-person interview,
I always read all the stories right before
I go into the interview to stay fresh
and I bring a notebook in
and I bring notes that
I set in front of me.
Now I'm smooth about it.
I'm not like sitting
there reading the answers
while talking, but no one
does this and I have notes out
and I'm taking notes
while I'm in the interview
and it actually comes
off as me being prepared
and just giving way more of
a hoot than everyone else.
If you want every single
job search email template
you'll need in your job
search, I've had it for you.
I have an ebook called
Fill in the Blank Job Hunt-
Essential Email Templates
for the Job Search
and it tells you what to say
to recruiter or hiring manager,
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an application online,
how to follow up with a company,
how to negotiate your salary over email.
It has everything.
So I will link that
book in the description
for you to check out.
Make sure you like this video
and subscribe to this channel.
Thanks so much everyone.
Wi-five high-five.
