by Ann H. Tang, PhD
The job search process is a daunting task that involves networking and job applications that culminate in rare interview opportunities. Once you secure an interview, you need to fully maximize this chance. AWIS therefore invited Antoine de Morrée, PhD, from the Stanford Leaders in Communication (SLIC) to lead an interactive workshop on persuasive interviewing on January 20, 2015.
How do you convey your value to a hiring manager? Antoine engaged the participants in a lively discussion and distilled from it one crucial key point: the importance of identifying the values of your audience. You need to discover the needs of the employer and show that your skills set serves those needs. You also need to be focused on the employer and not yourself.
Antoine then presented a couple of powerful techniques that you can deploy to highlight your strengths. One is to present your strengths and experience as benefits rather than list your accomplishments. By explicitly stating how you will benefit the employer, he or she will not have to draw a dotted line between your experience and what they need. Another technique is to state a standard or a metric that is a requirement for the position and how your experience fulfills that standard. Again, you draw the line for them.
The key to succeeding with these techniques is practice. Messages are often drowned out by verbosity, while brevity effectively delivers a memorable message. The workshop therefore incorporated practice segments with trained facilitators from SLIC to help AWIS participants hone their messages. As the evening progressed, messages gradually crystallized into more concise and clearer statements. The match between the participants’ skills sets and the mock job descriptions became more apparent, and the participants became more confident and adept at advancing their candidacy.
To seek a practice forum and learn more about SLIC, please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Stanford-Leaders-in-Communication-6586824/about
How do you convey your value to a hiring manager? Antoine engaged the participants in a lively discussion and distilled from it one crucial key point: the importance of identifying the values of your audience. You need to discover the needs of the employer and show that your skills set serves those needs. You also need to be focused on the employer and not yourself.
Antoine then presented a couple of powerful techniques that you can deploy to highlight your strengths. One is to present your strengths and experience as benefits rather than list your accomplishments. By explicitly stating how you will benefit the employer, he or she will not have to draw a dotted line between your experience and what they need. Another technique is to state a standard or a metric that is a requirement for the position and how your experience fulfills that standard. Again, you draw the line for them.
The key to succeeding with these techniques is practice. Messages are often drowned out by verbosity, while brevity effectively delivers a memorable message. The workshop therefore incorporated practice segments with trained facilitators from SLIC to help AWIS participants hone their messages. As the evening progressed, messages gradually crystallized into more concise and clearer statements. The match between the participants’ skills sets and the mock job descriptions became more apparent, and the participants became more confident and adept at advancing their candidacy.
To seek a practice forum and learn more about SLIC, please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Stanford-Leaders-in-Communication-6586824/about