May 13, 2025 • 32 mins
There’s a spectrum of proficiency, and it starts in the worst possible place.
That’s when you’re unconsciously incompetent—you're not good at something, and worse, you don’t even know you’re bad at it or what to do about it.
Think job interviewing.
If you put in some effort, you might move to consciously incompetent stage—you know what you should do (like the strategies your dear Coachy Andy teaches), but you’re not quite there yet.
Fast forward through the grind, and let’s skip some steps for email brevity, until you hit the sweet spot: unconsciously competent.
That’s when you’re so good, it’s automatic. You’re nailing it without even thinking about it.
As your coach, I’m here every week to help you climb this spectrum, especially when it comes to building your career.
And let’s face it—interviewing is one of the biggest hurdles in career advancement.
So, we’re tackling that head-on this week.
Today, we’re uncovering the three most brutal interview killers that trip up 99% of job candidates.
Spoiler alert: they’re all about storytelling.
Let’s dive into a story first and fix this once and for all…
If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings:
1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums.
2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel.
3. Grab any of my three books related to interviewing, hiring, and goal setting. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page.
4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, and Facebook.
5. Stay in touch with me in your email inbox by joining my newsletter here!
--Andy
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
TodayI want to
talk about interviewing and I want to talk in particular about some grave mistakes that
I think dare I say 100% of job seekers at least the ones that I coach make and it's
a natural mistake or mistakes they all center on around the way in which you respond to interview
answers which obviously is something that is incredibly key to success in an interview
(00:26):
and so today I want to talk about what I think are three central errors that people make when they
tell their stories when they respond to questions and I want to start out with a little story i want
to then tell you the analogy of the story and how kind of I see it relating to what you're doing
when you're responding to interviewers questions in the interview i want to let you know what I
(00:50):
think the mistakes are what the cure are and then I have some more free resources in every point I'm
going to make today where you can dive deeper if you enjoy it all right now the first thing
that I want you to wrap your mind around and I know this is really really hard for you uh but
your inter your interviewing and your interviewing performance has absolutely nothing to do with how
(01:11):
well you do your job zero none because if it did it would be done in a completely different format
instead of 30 minutes or 60 minutes asking you ridiculous questions and you being frightened on
on on whether or not your responses are going to be are going to be effective it is also not your
job during an interview to answer the questions that are being asked that's not your job in an
(01:33):
interview it's not to answer their questions it's not to relive your history word for word paragraph
by paragraph of all the scenes of your life that's not your job but that's what a lot of people try
to do it is your responsibility to understand what it is the employer needs the goals they have the
problems they have and for you to give them information using scenes from your life to be
(01:58):
able to illustrate for them how you're going to be able to transform their lives when you get there
and help them achieve their goals by overcoming their problems because you have the skill sets
that have enabled you to achieve and and and attain accomplishments for previous employers
so I was out running I don't know about two weeks ago and this story popped in my head because
(02:20):
I'm running out of ways to illustrate and make analogies for you so I hope you enjoy this little
story because we're going back 48 years in coach's life maybe 49 47 48 49 years to when I was a a a
young grade school student i was probably about 10 years old so let's call this circa 1970s mid 1970s
(02:44):
let's call it 76 maybe even as late as 1977 so I'm 10 or 11 years old and it might not surprise you
i was a pretty good student and I worked really really hard that probably doesn't surprise you at
all and every year we would have these tests that I'm sure that I don't have children but
I'm sure the grade school students and the parents of the of the little kids I'm sure you go through
(03:07):
this agony every year where your kid takes some standardized tests mine were called the Iowa tests
and they would give us these tests and there would be there would be math and different types of math
and there would be reading and different types of reading and comprehension and speed and paragraphs
and multiple choice and all this other nonsense and some other things and every year I would take
(03:27):
these tests and I never prided myself on being a great test taker and I would always always crush
the math portion that's where the engineer in me but I wasn't really great at reading uh when I say
not great at reading what I mean is I was not even at level so if if I was in fourth grade I wasn't
even reading at fourth grade level according to the standard Iowa test so between about fourth
(03:49):
and fifth grade maybe it was fifth and sixth grade i take these tests and I will tell you that the I
win life be there because of these two greatest things in my life which was my school desk and
my dinner table and so I had taken this test and it was it was you know dinner time and I and the
results had come home and my and I got home after school i got the results i gave them to my mom
(04:14):
my dad gets home after work and I knew he was not going to be happy because this year my reading
score had really really fallen and so he gets home you know he he they they look at the scores
and they look he looks at the at the thing and he says to me "And he said "What's with this right
you're a good student you work really hard why are your reading scores so low?" I'm like "Yeah
(04:37):
but you see the math scores those are like off the charts." He I know but reading is really important
like what what gives i'm like dude I don't I don't know i mean there's just a bunch of words they're
strung together they don't make any sense to me i'm bored with it i don't know why I'm reading
this stuff it seems irrelevant boring i don't really understand so he says "Uh okay i tell
(05:00):
you what this is what we're going to do no TV no video games no nothing any night until you and
I do reading practice." I was like C like can we do that we start tomorrow because like SWAT's on
tonight and I got to watch SWAT because I watch SWAT it's like my favorite show and I got to go
talk with my buddies tomorrow about the episode he says "Well you're going to have to miss it
(05:23):
tonight." So now you would think that he would give me something to read that was actually fun
but no whatever novel he was in the middle of cuz he was a he he read a lot uh he whatever he was in
the middle of that's what we were going to read so he picks up this book he was reading and he says
"Okay here I want you to read these 10 pages." We probably was in the middle of the book so I read
I read the 10 pages took me like 30 minutes it takes him like 3 minutes and we go into the living
(05:47):
room and we sit down now he sits down in this gold chair and this is like remember this is mid circa
1970s there was this gold colored velour velvety chair he sat on that i plopped popped a squat on
the you know gold shag carpet probably sitting next to the radiant heat and he looks at me he
says "Okay question number one start out with an easy one." And he asks me who the main character
(06:10):
was in the books he's like "Who's Bob tell me about Bob." Like I Bob like Bob he's Eddie he's
the main character he's on every single page i'm like "Dad I don't you know I'm just reading the
words i'm just I'm I'm pronouncing them out i'm reading them out you know I'm good in spelling."
(06:30):
He's all you got to remember you got to remember what you read and and and you need to look at
the information and you need to try to draw conclusions but you need to remember so now
I'm thinking okay well I got to read to remember and I got to read for reasoning like I got to be
able to do you know why does this occur well he was asking me questions about why might that occur
(06:51):
and so the next night rolls around not this is really bad because the next night Charlie's Angels
was on and if you don't understand I mean this is remember this is mid1 1970s there was no such
thing as DVRs and VHS's and Betamaxes weren't even around at least not in the last Vita house until
I don't know maybe 1979 or 80 so if you missed the program you missed the program and there was
(07:15):
absolutely no way I was missing ferra faucet that night I mean come on I know I know the dudes that
are my age or a little older you know what it meant to Miss Farah right i had a Farrah Faucet
poster on my on my adorned the wall of my bedroom i know a lot of you guys did anybody else have
a Farrah Faucet poster on their bedroom wall and if any of you have no idea what I'm talking about
(07:36):
you just go to Google and you type Farah poster and up is going to pop this this picture of her
that's very famous in a reddish bikini uh it's it's like immortalized i mean that woman's charm
kn no age limit so I know you know well see Mark knows what I'm talking about larry B knows what
I'm talking about carlos knows what I'm talking about steven Crow knows what I'm talking check it
(08:00):
out okay um okay so Charlie's Angels where was I okay so I get home from school i know i get
ready dinner time's rolling around i'm eating like this because now I got to read for speed i got to
read for speed i got to read for reasoning i got to remember what the hell I'm reading and there
ain't no way I'm missing Charlie's Angels because I mean Phah was pretty great and Jaclyn Smith and
(08:21):
K jackson weren't bad either so I wasn't missing this so we sit down my dad asks me the questions
i do a little better because I completely changed the way that I had read that night i understood
what the goals were the goals were at that night i needed to read for speed because Pharaoh was
coming on i needed to make sure I could read for recall or retention because he was going to ask
(08:44):
me about the characters and I needed to be able to understand what was going on and so I had to
look at everything completely differently and as I read those I was making associations bob
yeah I got a friend named Bob he's kind of like this or or I'm reading a passage and yeah that's
kind of something I would do in school and I was making these associations or something I would do
on the ball field or whatever it was and so over the course of the week I got a bit better at this
(09:06):
and then the end of the year came around and I had to take that stupid Iowa test again but the score
went way way up which would make sense because I I did a lot of reading every day for for you
know some novels I would never pick up as a child but it it helped me tremendously and why why am I
(09:27):
why am I telling you this story because the way I was reading that paragraph word for word line
by line trying to pronounce and enunciate all the words and stringing them together without a
real understanding of what the goal was is one of the greatest analogies I could use for the people
(09:47):
that I spend half of my day with every single day super smart people that I coach in interviews but
that's how they tell their stories and that's how a lot of job seekers tell their stories as if I
need to completely relive every scene of my life from the beginning of birth till now when I'm in
an interview and I'm trying to explain exactly what happened in my career on some project that
(10:14):
took me a year long that I need to try to compress down to three minutes that is exactly how you tell
stories most of you and we need to reshape the way you think about why you're in an interview
it is not to relive your past it is not to explain your experience it's not it is to figure out what
(10:34):
it is that they need and how you're going to transform their lives and be able to package a
story from the highlights the scenes of your life and the power in the story is actually what's not
said in the story the power is in what's not said it is every bit as much as what is said and then
(10:56):
connecting the dots for them so that they can immediately reason that you are the right match
for the job speed speed reasoning so that they know you're the right match in the shortest amount
of time convince them that you are the right match and and make it so that they can actually
remember you and the way that they will do that is in two-word clusters and I will explain all of
(11:18):
what I mean by this but I need you to completely rethink what's happening in an interview you get
what I'm saying so far all right so I want you to think about this rate reasoning remembering you
are the architect of your life you are the author of your stories the painter i need you to pick up
(11:39):
the brush and paint me a Mona Lisa using only the scenes from the highlights of your projects okay
okay so this is the first thing so I need you to wrap your mind around this speed speed reasoning
right match remember remembering all right so let's go through these each one of them and I want
to go through each one of them i'm going to tell you what it is how I want you to think about it
(12:03):
what I think is something we need to eradicate the issues that you're that you have these mistakes
that you're making and then what the cure is all right first one speed speed what is it the goal is
to convince them as early as possible as fast as possible that you are the right person for the job
(12:27):
whatever you're interviewing for whatever you're interviewing for there needs to be a power story
that comes out immediately after you say hello and you tell them a little about you which is the be
probably a great introduction like the prelude or the prologue to your power story which is a
story of a project that they need to understand you want to do this now what you tend to do and
(12:52):
when I say you tend to do I mean again I spend half of my day every single day coaching people
what they generally do which I'm assuming is what you usually do is you take a really really long
time in your stories because you're trying to explain what happened and here's what it sounds
like when I'm building a story with somebody and they say to me "Okay but but but Coach Andy can we
(13:18):
wait can we pause here for a second because I need to explain to you what actually happened no that
is not the purpose and then when you think about what's going on all up here as you're trying to
remember what you did all I care about is putting it in you're compressing a year-long project into
a threeinut story it's only the information that sells you best so it needs to be in a structure
(13:40):
already preloaded so that you can move with some real pace with only information that sells you
best it's what you leave out that makes your story great we want them to imagine and make inferences
in the direction you want what you think they need are all the details of what actually happens they
(14:02):
do not need that they can't remember any of this anyway that's too much for them to hang on to
so what they're doing is they're looking for verifications that you have what they need
because they're making assumptions based on your resume or whatever background that you
have so what is it that I want you to do well the first thing is I want you to remember we we speak
(14:24):
in a particular format when we respond to answers and it's not the STAR technique and I'm not even
talking about the my car technique at this point i want you to I want you to think about when you
sell yourself only using ingredients with specific nomenclature or language and only the sellables so
(14:44):
what is that what does that sound like what what's the difference okay and let me tell you what I
often hear and then let me tell you what I want you to do so every single one of you no matter
what your function is when you are describing the steps that you take to achieve a goal overcome a
problem fix a problem come up with a new solution pick anything you want anything you want 100% of
(15:10):
the time 100 you do some form of an assessment you have to think before you do anything maybe you
think in and it's in 60 seconds that's fine maybe it's 6 days maybe it's 6 weeks maybe it's 6 months
i don't really care but you are going to describe the assessment the researching the you are an
(15:34):
analyzer you're an assessor you are stepping back to evaluate the current state and you're
looking at the future state every single one of you no matter what you do no matter what widget
you make no matter what service you sell no matter what product you market no matter what books you
account for that's what you do you always get your arms around something okay so let's say
(15:56):
you're going to open up a new region or design a new project or launch a new project or do anything
that you can imagine just think about what you do a lot of you want to tell me a toz what it is that
you did so you know the first thing that I needed to do was I needed to do some research and get my
hands around what the current state was and what the future state might look like so I needed to
(16:18):
build a team and I needed to designate somebody to go over into into the database and look at all the
customer data and then I needed to find somebody to go to the different warehouses or the satellite
offices and actually ask questions to interview people so that they could gather data and here's
the questions that they asked them and then what I did was I needed to figure out well I had to have
(16:40):
I had to have somebody else go out and talk to our competitors and see maybe what they were doing or
what different divisions in the and so then we had to put a plan this is what your story sound like
who's who gets what I'm saying right and you're you're giving me the paragraph you're giving me
all the words you're you're you're enunciating everything you're giving me all the steps there's
so much dead weight in that in that story not to mention it's taken forever so what I what I want
(17:05):
you to do is I want you to compress it down first sweep at this because we're going to keep going
over the same thing every single time what are the ingredients what's the specific language what
are the sellables what is it that you want them to know you want them to know that you know where to
look you want them to know you know how to analyze you want them to know you're organized you want
(17:27):
them to know you're experienced you want them to know that you know how to assess okay so we needed
to do the research well in order to figure out what the what the new product line was going to
be I had to look at our top 100 customers i had to look at their demographics i had to look at what
they were buying i had to look at what how much they were spending i looked at by by geography
then what I did was I looked at our competition i looked at their products i tried to get market
(17:50):
insights from that from that insight I was able to draw the conclusion that that's it that's all
you need to say i don't know how many seconds that took me but that's a portion of your story those
are ingredients they were very specific what is the listener doing the listener is thinking four
times faster than you can talk that's an awful lot of time to think about Farah okay so you don't
(18:13):
want you don't want them to get ahead you don't want them to get bored and you don't want to lose
them in the weeds all they need to know is I got the highlights you knew where to look you I don't
care if you had a 20 person team doing it or you did it all by yourself the point isn't that you
want to spend a lot of time on the researching but you need to let them know you know how to analyze
(18:33):
a problem get what I'm saying okay so think in terms of speed trim out the fat you want more on
this there's three great resources I have all are free first one is a YouTube video maybe Cara could
drop it in the chat if she's on her toes which she usually is she's a good dancer the job interview
(18:56):
formula guaranteed to get you hired this will give you more on my car technique it's C A R i'll help
you with that i have an evergreen meaning it runs all the time you can watch it at your leisure if
you bother to sign up for it for free it's called the job interview playbook webinar i do not want
you to get confused for those of you who happen to be sitting here with me on February 27th when
(19:20):
we're doing this live next week at my live office hours I am taking a slide or two out of this deck
i'm going to present it to you live and then my brave boot camper Hannah is going to join me on
the camera and we are going to build her story live in front of you so you can see what this
looks like real time that's March 6th so this one you can watch whenever it's about 77 minutes this
(19:48):
here next week will be me and Hannah building her case study but I'll get you a running start
on that okay that's number one think speed number two reasoning you want to be able to connect the
dots for them using your past the projects the skills and the accomplishments your past does not
get you a job your ability to show them how you will transform their future gets you a job they
(20:12):
do not buy these they don't buy your skills they buy the application their projected application
of your skills in their environment to achieve their goals by overcoming their problems and how
fast you can do that or how high you could achieve those goals is what gets you hired and how much it
gets you paid but you need to use examples from your past okay so what are the issues here well
(20:36):
you're thinking about your past and not their future you're worried about questions they're
going to be asking you instead of what is it they need to know in order to make a good determination
that I'm a great fit and how could I do that as fast as possible so you're worried about
what they're going to be asking instead of what they need to know no matter what question you
(20:58):
ask me about if you should get in my program or anything I'm going to answer the question
you should have asked me i'm not going to rely on you who lacks experience in this or an interviewer
who lacks experience in interviewing to ask me the right question i'm going to own it and take
it upon myself to make sure you get the right information what gives you the best information
(21:20):
and makes it easiest for an unskilled interviewer to make a determination that I am a great fit for
them something that shows them exactly how I would operate in their environment so the
first thing that you need to do is you make sure you need to avoid picking irrelevant stories let
me tell you something i don't know if he's here i got a super super client great dude he and I
(21:44):
uh Tuesday night were were working on some interview prep that he has i think maybe today or
tomorrow i think I think tomorrow maybe is his his interview and he wanted to work on his power story
and and use my car technique to formulate it and he put some effort and time into doing that and he
was using a story that was recent from his most recent job which was a great great story except
(22:09):
that they're an educational institution which he is interviewing with he is talking about a
story from a non-educational institution he has 13 years of experience working with educational
uh institutions so I said to him why are we working this story we should be working one
from your from your most relevant experience so we need to we need to overcome this problem by giving
(22:35):
them something exact that sounds like music to their ears it's exactly like what we're doing here
so what you want to do is number one number one you want to make sure that you are using the most
relevant stories i did this exactly like you need me to do it that's your nirvana but I realize you
(22:55):
don't always have the nirvana the next best thing is can I give them analogies that are exactly like
the skills I need to demonstrate and even though it's not an educational institution it's I'm doing
the same kind of things and they can they could sort of get it so that's the next best thing
and then what I want you to do is I want you to obsess about them i want you to think about them
(23:19):
i want you to think about the job description or if you don't have a job description I want you to
manufacture one you must have some kind of idea of what you're interviewing for and I want you
to think in these terms i want you to checklist back the skills that need to shine in the story
so what what do I mean by this all right so Chris was his name and he he is a fund developer and
(23:42):
he's interviewing with this school and I looked at the job description which was well written and
the job description talked about who they were it talked about what they needed he was like the
head development guy funding development business development basically he needed to raise funds for
this high school and so it went through a list of things that said you know development like make
(24:07):
me the money go get the money okay you need to develop the strategy you need to execute the plan
um there's different areas that we want to look at we need to make this more robust then there was
other responsibilities like you know work with the board work with the president work with the other
PE play nice with the people the other people in that are contributing to this right some other
(24:31):
things now when you look at a job description like that you know their goal is to raise money right
their problem was they didn't know how to do that because they'd run one event a year they'd send
out an invitation and then they would try to make a whole bunch of money that's not very effective
there's a lot of different ways to do this so when he goes in there I said to him we don't even need
(24:54):
to know do you have a story where let's go let's as fast as possible get the one story out that
what does it do it checks all the boxes as fast as you can in one story in the first few minutes of
the interview they're going to see that you have all of those things and so do you have something
(25:15):
in an educational institution where you created a strategy you raised the money you rolled it out
you had to pitch it to the board i asked him "Do you have this this this this this and this?" He
says "I do." We said "Let's do that story." And so what we did was we worked backwards to say
"Okay so now when you tell them your story you're going to make sure that you're using language in
(25:38):
the story that's helping them go check check check check check cuz that's what they're doing." So and
he said "Well I was in the situation we needed to raise money i needed to create a new strategy
because we had only been doing one event for years so I so I was hired because of my expertise in
raising funds across all the different mediums by which you can do that so there are a number
(26:05):
of different ways that a school can raise funds so in his story what he's doing is he says okay
so here was the here was the issue we needed to figure out how to raise more money we only had we
only had one event so when he goes into his story he's going to talk about how he assessed what they
did how much money they raised who was giving him that insight what are the opportunities to create
(26:28):
new channels related to tapping into alumni using email campaigns uh setting up a more white glove
service for major donors who are going to give the schools more than $5,000 and other things
so all of these things that where he says and I built a strategy and a plan that included you
know we augmented what they were currently doing but then we added boom boom boom boom boom and
(26:52):
what they're hearing is check he knows how to do that check he knows how to do that he knows how to
put the strategy together he knows how to put the plan together he's telling me a successful story
I know this is going to end successfully because he foreshadowed the result and that they're what
they're doing is they're saying wow that sounds like experience wow he sounds organized wow that's
exactly what we need So he is working backwards and when he says "So then I pitched my approach
(27:16):
to the board and explained to them what it was going to cost how long it was going to take what
systems we needed to implement what resources I needed." They're saying "Oh he knows how to
present to the board." And he could do this in three minutes do you get what I'm saying so far
is this eyeopening i know what I'm saying is super obvious but was it obvious before I said it so
(27:40):
if it was obvious before I said it why aren't you doing it right i'm still thinking about fair okay
all right so on this piece I got a video out on my YouTube channel called How to Choose the Right
Job Interview Answers you'll kill yourself if you're not choosing the best story you'll really
kill yourself if you're not telling it well okay there he is okay all right when I say retention
(28:11):
what I really mean is how'd you make them feel and they're going to use two words to describe it two
nouns two adjectives or an adjective and a noun so let's go back you want them to feel what you
want them to feel so going back to Chris's story what was he wanting them to feel i want them to
feel that I'm experienced i want them to feel I'm organized i want them to feel I have executive
(28:36):
communication skills i want them to feel I'm experienced right it's the same thing like what
the skill checklists are and what they're doing is they're not remembering everything you said
okay they're remembering how you made them feel so I want you to remember this you do not get hired
because of your qualifications ever don't don't fall into that trap the most qualified person
(29:02):
rarely gets the job it's the person who sells themsel best in they hire who they like they hire
who they feel is going to be a good teammate they hire who they feel has the right expertise so when
he's telling his story same kind of thing you're checking back they're they're deducing your skills
(29:26):
wow he said all the pillars that we would want to go after he must he must be very experienced
he must be highly organized he must be technically savvy he must know how to market the campaigns he
must know how to persuade the board that's what they're storing in their head the minute you walk
(29:47):
out the door they're going to forget everything you said unless you offended them and so so I I I
need you to make sure what are you going for look at what they're asking for look at what they need
are you making them feel because remembering you is going to be a completely different thing when
they feel good about you all they're going to remember is they felt good do you get this who
(30:13):
is an ace at this who has read this little beauty right you get the idea speaking of my little my
little beauty all right here's a couple of other premiums interview intervention communication that
gets you hired i'll ship this to Well the price is going to be going up soon because I just had
to order 3,000 more copies but what's in the warehouse right now is is being shipped out
(30:35):
everywhere for $7 US and you get the ebook and you get the audio book so basically it's free
you give me a few dollars for the envelope and the service fees for the guys to pick it and pack it i
printed the book for you i'll even I'll even ship it to you anywhere in the world 7 USD so the other
thing is I want you to look at this video the best way to prepare for a job interview i want
(30:56):
you to make sure you're watching the No I don't know if you can see this the November 5th 2024
episode that specific episode it's my favorite it's the latest it's my best okay so all I got
to ask now is who's tracking right you get what I'm saying you got to reshape the way you think
(31:17):
about what it is that you are doing and it's all about how fast can you convince them that you
are the right person for the job and make them feel or remember you using those two adjectives
right subject expert right highly organized those kinds of things as fast as possible we want your
(31:40):
story to be what fast powerful and memorable all right I hope you enjoyed that uh and then you get
a little peek into my life as a a 10-year-old boy and and my my 10-year-old boy crushes and
all that good stuff if you enjoyed this please click the like button share it people need help
interviewing is hard it's really really hard and people need help and make sure you subscribe to
(32:05):
the station make sure you're on my newsletter cuz you know I it hurts me when you miss my emails and
it hurts me when you miss my recorded videos on Tuesday at 6:30 a.m and it really hurts me when
you miss my live shows on Thursday all right if you're here with me live we're going to the
chat if you're watching this on the recording I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you next
TodayI want to
talk about interviewing and I want to talk in particular about some grave mistakes that
I think dare I say 100% of job seekers at least the ones that I coach make and it's
a natural mistake or mistakes they all center on around the way in which you respond to interview
answers which obviously is something that is incredibly key to success in an interview
(00:26):
and so today I want to talk about what I think are three central errors that people make when they
tell their stories when they respond to questions and I want to start out with a little story i want
to then tell you the analogy of the story and how kind of I see it relating to what you're doing
when you're responding to interviewers questions in the interview i want to let you know what I
(00:50):
think the mistakes are what the cure are and then I have some more free resources in every point I'm
going to make today where you can dive deeper if you enjoy it all right now the first thing
that I want you to wrap your mind around and I know this is really really hard for you uh but
your inter your interviewing and your interviewing performance has absolutely nothing to do with how
(01:11):
well you do your job zero none because if it did it would be done in a completely different format
instead of 30 minutes or 60 minutes asking you ridiculous questions and you being frightened on
on on whether or not your responses are going to be are going to be effective it is also not your
job during an interview to answer the questions that are being asked that's not your job in an
(01:33):
interview it's not to answer their questions it's not to relive your history word for word paragraph
by paragraph of all the scenes of your life that's not your job but that's what a lot of people try
to do it is your responsibility to understand what it is the employer needs the goals they have the
problems they have and for you to give them information using scenes from your life to be
(01:58):
able to illustrate for them how you're going to be able to transform their lives when you get there
and help them achieve their goals by overcoming their problems because you have the skill sets
that have enabled you to achieve and and and attain accomplishments for previous employers
so I was out running I don't know about two weeks ago and this story popped in my head because
(02:20):
I'm running out of ways to illustrate and make analogies for you so I hope you enjoy this little
story because we're going back 48 years in coach's life maybe 49 47 48 49 years to when I was a a a
young grade school student i was probably about 10 years old so let's call this circa 1970s mid 1970s
(02:44):
let's call it 76 maybe even as late as 1977 so I'm 10 or 11 years old and it might not surprise you
i was a pretty good student and I worked really really hard that probably doesn't surprise you at
all and every year we would have these tests that I'm sure that I don't have children but
I'm sure the grade school students and the parents of the of the little kids I'm sure you go through
(03:07):
this agony every year where your kid takes some standardized tests mine were called the Iowa tests
and they would give us these tests and there would be there would be math and different types of math
and there would be reading and different types of reading and comprehension and speed and paragraphs
and multiple choice and all this other nonsense and some other things and every year I would take
(03:27):
these tests and I never prided myself on being a great test taker and I would always always crush
the math portion that's where the engineer in me but I wasn't really great at reading uh when I say
not great at reading what I mean is I was not even at level so if if I was in fourth grade I wasn't
even reading at fourth grade level according to the standard Iowa test so between about fourth
(03:49):
and fifth grade maybe it was fifth and sixth grade i take these tests and I will tell you that the I
win life be there because of these two greatest things in my life which was my school desk and
my dinner table and so I had taken this test and it was it was you know dinner time and I and the
results had come home and my and I got home after school i got the results i gave them to my mom
(04:14):
my dad gets home after work and I knew he was not going to be happy because this year my reading
score had really really fallen and so he gets home you know he he they they look at the scores
and they look he looks at the at the thing and he says to me "And he said "What's with this right
you're a good student you work really hard why are your reading scores so low?" I'm like "Yeah
(04:37):
but you see the math scores those are like off the charts." He I know but reading is really important
like what what gives i'm like dude I don't I don't know i mean there's just a bunch of words they're
strung together they don't make any sense to me i'm bored with it i don't know why I'm reading
this stuff it seems irrelevant boring i don't really understand so he says "Uh okay i tell
(05:00):
you what this is what we're going to do no TV no video games no nothing any night until you and
I do reading practice." I was like C like can we do that we start tomorrow because like SWAT's on
tonight and I got to watch SWAT because I watch SWAT it's like my favorite show and I got to go
talk with my buddies tomorrow about the episode he says "Well you're going to have to miss it
(05:23):
tonight." So now you would think that he would give me something to read that was actually fun
but no whatever novel he was in the middle of cuz he was a he he read a lot uh he whatever he was in
the middle of that's what we were going to read so he picks up this book he was reading and he says
"Okay here I want you to read these 10 pages." We probably was in the middle of the book so I read
I read the 10 pages took me like 30 minutes it takes him like 3 minutes and we go into the living
(05:47):
room and we sit down now he sits down in this gold chair and this is like remember this is mid circa
1970s there was this gold colored velour velvety chair he sat on that i plopped popped a squat on
the you know gold shag carpet probably sitting next to the radiant heat and he looks at me he
says "Okay question number one start out with an easy one." And he asks me who the main character
(06:10):
was in the books he's like "Who's Bob tell me about Bob." Like I Bob like Bob he's Eddie he's
the main character he's on every single page i'm like "Dad I don't you know I'm just reading the
words i'm just I'm I'm pronouncing them out i'm reading them out you know I'm good in spelling."
(06:30):
He's all you got to remember you got to remember what you read and and and you need to look at
the information and you need to try to draw conclusions but you need to remember so now
I'm thinking okay well I got to read to remember and I got to read for reasoning like I got to be
able to do you know why does this occur well he was asking me questions about why might that occur
(06:51):
and so the next night rolls around not this is really bad because the next night Charlie's Angels
was on and if you don't understand I mean this is remember this is mid1 1970s there was no such
thing as DVRs and VHS's and Betamaxes weren't even around at least not in the last Vita house until
I don't know maybe 1979 or 80 so if you missed the program you missed the program and there was
(07:15):
absolutely no way I was missing ferra faucet that night I mean come on I know I know the dudes that
are my age or a little older you know what it meant to Miss Farah right i had a Farrah Faucet
poster on my on my adorned the wall of my bedroom i know a lot of you guys did anybody else have
a Farrah Faucet poster on their bedroom wall and if any of you have no idea what I'm talking about
(07:36):
you just go to Google and you type Farah poster and up is going to pop this this picture of her
that's very famous in a reddish bikini uh it's it's like immortalized i mean that woman's charm
kn no age limit so I know you know well see Mark knows what I'm talking about larry B knows what
I'm talking about carlos knows what I'm talking about steven Crow knows what I'm talking check it
(08:00):
out okay um okay so Charlie's Angels where was I okay so I get home from school i know i get
ready dinner time's rolling around i'm eating like this because now I got to read for speed i got to
read for speed i got to read for reasoning i got to remember what the hell I'm reading and there
ain't no way I'm missing Charlie's Angels because I mean Phah was pretty great and Jaclyn Smith and
(08:21):
K jackson weren't bad either so I wasn't missing this so we sit down my dad asks me the questions
i do a little better because I completely changed the way that I had read that night i understood
what the goals were the goals were at that night i needed to read for speed because Pharaoh was
coming on i needed to make sure I could read for recall or retention because he was going to ask
(08:44):
me about the characters and I needed to be able to understand what was going on and so I had to
look at everything completely differently and as I read those I was making associations bob
yeah I got a friend named Bob he's kind of like this or or I'm reading a passage and yeah that's
kind of something I would do in school and I was making these associations or something I would do
on the ball field or whatever it was and so over the course of the week I got a bit better at this
(09:06):
and then the end of the year came around and I had to take that stupid Iowa test again but the score
went way way up which would make sense because I I did a lot of reading every day for for you
know some novels I would never pick up as a child but it it helped me tremendously and why why am I
(09:27):
why am I telling you this story because the way I was reading that paragraph word for word line
by line trying to pronounce and enunciate all the words and stringing them together without a
real understanding of what the goal was is one of the greatest analogies I could use for the people
(09:47):
that I spend half of my day with every single day super smart people that I coach in interviews but
that's how they tell their stories and that's how a lot of job seekers tell their stories as if I
need to completely relive every scene of my life from the beginning of birth till now when I'm in
an interview and I'm trying to explain exactly what happened in my career on some project that
(10:14):
took me a year long that I need to try to compress down to three minutes that is exactly how you tell
stories most of you and we need to reshape the way you think about why you're in an interview
it is not to relive your past it is not to explain your experience it's not it is to figure out what
(10:34):
it is that they need and how you're going to transform their lives and be able to package a
story from the highlights the scenes of your life and the power in the story is actually what's not
said in the story the power is in what's not said it is every bit as much as what is said and then
(10:56):
connecting the dots for them so that they can immediately reason that you are the right match
for the job speed speed reasoning so that they know you're the right match in the shortest amount
of time convince them that you are the right match and and make it so that they can actually
remember you and the way that they will do that is in two-word clusters and I will explain all of
(11:18):
what I mean by this but I need you to completely rethink what's happening in an interview you get
what I'm saying so far all right so I want you to think about this rate reasoning remembering you
are the architect of your life you are the author of your stories the painter i need you to pick up
(11:39):
the brush and paint me a Mona Lisa using only the scenes from the highlights of your projects okay
okay so this is the first thing so I need you to wrap your mind around this speed speed reasoning
right match remember remembering all right so let's go through these each one of them and I want
to go through each one of them i'm going to tell you what it is how I want you to think about it
(12:03):
what I think is something we need to eradicate the issues that you're that you have these mistakes
that you're making and then what the cure is all right first one speed speed what is it the goal is
to convince them as early as possible as fast as possible that you are the right person for the job
(12:27):
whatever you're interviewing for whatever you're interviewing for there needs to be a power story
that comes out immediately after you say hello and you tell them a little about you which is the be
probably a great introduction like the prelude or the prologue to your power story which is a
story of a project that they need to understand you want to do this now what you tend to do and
(12:52):
when I say you tend to do I mean again I spend half of my day every single day coaching people
what they generally do which I'm assuming is what you usually do is you take a really really long
time in your stories because you're trying to explain what happened and here's what it sounds
like when I'm building a story with somebody and they say to me "Okay but but but Coach Andy can we
(13:18):
wait can we pause here for a second because I need to explain to you what actually happened no that
is not the purpose and then when you think about what's going on all up here as you're trying to
remember what you did all I care about is putting it in you're compressing a year-long project into
a threeinut story it's only the information that sells you best so it needs to be in a structure
(13:40):
already preloaded so that you can move with some real pace with only information that sells you
best it's what you leave out that makes your story great we want them to imagine and make inferences
in the direction you want what you think they need are all the details of what actually happens they
(14:02):
do not need that they can't remember any of this anyway that's too much for them to hang on to
so what they're doing is they're looking for verifications that you have what they need
because they're making assumptions based on your resume or whatever background that you
have so what is it that I want you to do well the first thing is I want you to remember we we speak
(14:24):
in a particular format when we respond to answers and it's not the STAR technique and I'm not even
talking about the my car technique at this point i want you to I want you to think about when you
sell yourself only using ingredients with specific nomenclature or language and only the sellables so
(14:44):
what is that what does that sound like what what's the difference okay and let me tell you what I
often hear and then let me tell you what I want you to do so every single one of you no matter
what your function is when you are describing the steps that you take to achieve a goal overcome a
problem fix a problem come up with a new solution pick anything you want anything you want 100% of
(15:10):
the time 100 you do some form of an assessment you have to think before you do anything maybe you
think in and it's in 60 seconds that's fine maybe it's 6 days maybe it's 6 weeks maybe it's 6 months
i don't really care but you are going to describe the assessment the researching the you are an
(15:34):
analyzer you're an assessor you are stepping back to evaluate the current state and you're
looking at the future state every single one of you no matter what you do no matter what widget
you make no matter what service you sell no matter what product you market no matter what books you
account for that's what you do you always get your arms around something okay so let's say
(15:56):
you're going to open up a new region or design a new project or launch a new project or do anything
that you can imagine just think about what you do a lot of you want to tell me a toz what it is that
you did so you know the first thing that I needed to do was I needed to do some research and get my
hands around what the current state was and what the future state might look like so I needed to
(16:18):
build a team and I needed to designate somebody to go over into into the database and look at all the
customer data and then I needed to find somebody to go to the different warehouses or the satellite
offices and actually ask questions to interview people so that they could gather data and here's
the questions that they asked them and then what I did was I needed to figure out well I had to have
(16:40):
I had to have somebody else go out and talk to our competitors and see maybe what they were doing or
what different divisions in the and so then we had to put a plan this is what your story sound like
who's who gets what I'm saying right and you're you're giving me the paragraph you're giving me
all the words you're you're you're enunciating everything you're giving me all the steps there's
so much dead weight in that in that story not to mention it's taken forever so what I what I want
(17:05):
you to do is I want you to compress it down first sweep at this because we're going to keep going
over the same thing every single time what are the ingredients what's the specific language what
are the sellables what is it that you want them to know you want them to know that you know where to
look you want them to know you know how to analyze you want them to know you're organized you want
(17:27):
them to know you're experienced you want them to know that you know how to assess okay so we needed
to do the research well in order to figure out what the what the new product line was going to
be I had to look at our top 100 customers i had to look at their demographics i had to look at what
they were buying i had to look at what how much they were spending i looked at by by geography
then what I did was I looked at our competition i looked at their products i tried to get market
(17:50):
insights from that from that insight I was able to draw the conclusion that that's it that's all
you need to say i don't know how many seconds that took me but that's a portion of your story those
are ingredients they were very specific what is the listener doing the listener is thinking four
times faster than you can talk that's an awful lot of time to think about Farah okay so you don't
(18:13):
want you don't want them to get ahead you don't want them to get bored and you don't want to lose
them in the weeds all they need to know is I got the highlights you knew where to look you I don't
care if you had a 20 person team doing it or you did it all by yourself the point isn't that you
want to spend a lot of time on the researching but you need to let them know you know how to analyze
(18:33):
a problem get what I'm saying okay so think in terms of speed trim out the fat you want more on
this there's three great resources I have all are free first one is a YouTube video maybe Cara could
drop it in the chat if she's on her toes which she usually is she's a good dancer the job interview
(18:56):
formula guaranteed to get you hired this will give you more on my car technique it's C A R i'll help
you with that i have an evergreen meaning it runs all the time you can watch it at your leisure if
you bother to sign up for it for free it's called the job interview playbook webinar i do not want
you to get confused for those of you who happen to be sitting here with me on February 27th when
(19:20):
we're doing this live next week at my live office hours I am taking a slide or two out of this deck
i'm going to present it to you live and then my brave boot camper Hannah is going to join me on
the camera and we are going to build her story live in front of you so you can see what this
looks like real time that's March 6th so this one you can watch whenever it's about 77 minutes this
(19:48):
here next week will be me and Hannah building her case study but I'll get you a running start
on that okay that's number one think speed number two reasoning you want to be able to connect the
dots for them using your past the projects the skills and the accomplishments your past does not
get you a job your ability to show them how you will transform their future gets you a job they
(20:12):
do not buy these they don't buy your skills they buy the application their projected application
of your skills in their environment to achieve their goals by overcoming their problems and how
fast you can do that or how high you could achieve those goals is what gets you hired and how much it
gets you paid but you need to use examples from your past okay so what are the issues here well
(20:36):
you're thinking about your past and not their future you're worried about questions they're
going to be asking you instead of what is it they need to know in order to make a good determination
that I'm a great fit and how could I do that as fast as possible so you're worried about
what they're going to be asking instead of what they need to know no matter what question you
(20:58):
ask me about if you should get in my program or anything I'm going to answer the question
you should have asked me i'm not going to rely on you who lacks experience in this or an interviewer
who lacks experience in interviewing to ask me the right question i'm going to own it and take
it upon myself to make sure you get the right information what gives you the best information
(21:20):
and makes it easiest for an unskilled interviewer to make a determination that I am a great fit for
them something that shows them exactly how I would operate in their environment so the
first thing that you need to do is you make sure you need to avoid picking irrelevant stories let
me tell you something i don't know if he's here i got a super super client great dude he and I
(21:44):
uh Tuesday night were were working on some interview prep that he has i think maybe today or
tomorrow i think I think tomorrow maybe is his his interview and he wanted to work on his power story
and and use my car technique to formulate it and he put some effort and time into doing that and he
was using a story that was recent from his most recent job which was a great great story except
(22:09):
that they're an educational institution which he is interviewing with he is talking about a
story from a non-educational institution he has 13 years of experience working with educational
uh institutions so I said to him why are we working this story we should be working one
from your from your most relevant experience so we need to we need to overcome this problem by giving
(22:35):
them something exact that sounds like music to their ears it's exactly like what we're doing here
so what you want to do is number one number one you want to make sure that you are using the most
relevant stories i did this exactly like you need me to do it that's your nirvana but I realize you
(22:55):
don't always have the nirvana the next best thing is can I give them analogies that are exactly like
the skills I need to demonstrate and even though it's not an educational institution it's I'm doing
the same kind of things and they can they could sort of get it so that's the next best thing
and then what I want you to do is I want you to obsess about them i want you to think about them
(23:19):
i want you to think about the job description or if you don't have a job description I want you to
manufacture one you must have some kind of idea of what you're interviewing for and I want you
to think in these terms i want you to checklist back the skills that need to shine in the story
so what what do I mean by this all right so Chris was his name and he he is a fund developer and
(23:42):
he's interviewing with this school and I looked at the job description which was well written and
the job description talked about who they were it talked about what they needed he was like the
head development guy funding development business development basically he needed to raise funds for
this high school and so it went through a list of things that said you know development like make
(24:07):
me the money go get the money okay you need to develop the strategy you need to execute the plan
um there's different areas that we want to look at we need to make this more robust then there was
other responsibilities like you know work with the board work with the president work with the other
PE play nice with the people the other people in that are contributing to this right some other
(24:31):
things now when you look at a job description like that you know their goal is to raise money right
their problem was they didn't know how to do that because they'd run one event a year they'd send
out an invitation and then they would try to make a whole bunch of money that's not very effective
there's a lot of different ways to do this so when he goes in there I said to him we don't even need
(24:54):
to know do you have a story where let's go let's as fast as possible get the one story out that
what does it do it checks all the boxes as fast as you can in one story in the first few minutes of
the interview they're going to see that you have all of those things and so do you have something
(25:15):
in an educational institution where you created a strategy you raised the money you rolled it out
you had to pitch it to the board i asked him "Do you have this this this this this and this?" He
says "I do." We said "Let's do that story." And so what we did was we worked backwards to say
"Okay so now when you tell them your story you're going to make sure that you're using language in
(25:38):
the story that's helping them go check check check check check cuz that's what they're doing." So and
he said "Well I was in the situation we needed to raise money i needed to create a new strategy
because we had only been doing one event for years so I so I was hired because of my expertise in
raising funds across all the different mediums by which you can do that so there are a number
(26:05):
of different ways that a school can raise funds so in his story what he's doing is he says okay
so here was the here was the issue we needed to figure out how to raise more money we only had we
only had one event so when he goes into his story he's going to talk about how he assessed what they
did how much money they raised who was giving him that insight what are the opportunities to create
(26:28):
new channels related to tapping into alumni using email campaigns uh setting up a more white glove
service for major donors who are going to give the schools more than $5,000 and other things
so all of these things that where he says and I built a strategy and a plan that included you
know we augmented what they were currently doing but then we added boom boom boom boom boom and
(26:52):
what they're hearing is check he knows how to do that check he knows how to do that he knows how to
put the strategy together he knows how to put the plan together he's telling me a successful story
I know this is going to end successfully because he foreshadowed the result and that they're what
they're doing is they're saying wow that sounds like experience wow he sounds organized wow that's
exactly what we need So he is working backwards and when he says "So then I pitched my approach
(27:16):
to the board and explained to them what it was going to cost how long it was going to take what
systems we needed to implement what resources I needed." They're saying "Oh he knows how to
present to the board." And he could do this in three minutes do you get what I'm saying so far
is this eyeopening i know what I'm saying is super obvious but was it obvious before I said it so
(27:40):
if it was obvious before I said it why aren't you doing it right i'm still thinking about fair okay
all right so on this piece I got a video out on my YouTube channel called How to Choose the Right
Job Interview Answers you'll kill yourself if you're not choosing the best story you'll really
kill yourself if you're not telling it well okay there he is okay all right when I say retention
(28:11):
what I really mean is how'd you make them feel and they're going to use two words to describe it two
nouns two adjectives or an adjective and a noun so let's go back you want them to feel what you
want them to feel so going back to Chris's story what was he wanting them to feel i want them to
feel that I'm experienced i want them to feel I'm organized i want them to feel I have executive
(28:36):
communication skills i want them to feel I'm experienced right it's the same thing like what
the skill checklists are and what they're doing is they're not remembering everything you said
okay they're remembering how you made them feel so I want you to remember this you do not get hired
because of your qualifications ever don't don't fall into that trap the most qualified person
(29:02):
rarely gets the job it's the person who sells themsel best in they hire who they like they hire
who they feel is going to be a good teammate they hire who they feel has the right expertise so when
he's telling his story same kind of thing you're checking back they're they're deducing your skills
(29:26):
wow he said all the pillars that we would want to go after he must he must be very experienced
he must be highly organized he must be technically savvy he must know how to market the campaigns he
must know how to persuade the board that's what they're storing in their head the minute you walk
(29:47):
out the door they're going to forget everything you said unless you offended them and so so I I I
need you to make sure what are you going for look at what they're asking for look at what they need
are you making them feel because remembering you is going to be a completely different thing when
they feel good about you all they're going to remember is they felt good do you get this who
(30:13):
is an ace at this who has read this little beauty right you get the idea speaking of my little my
little beauty all right here's a couple of other premiums interview intervention communication that
gets you hired i'll ship this to Well the price is going to be going up soon because I just had
to order 3,000 more copies but what's in the warehouse right now is is being shipped out
(30:35):
everywhere for $7 US and you get the ebook and you get the audio book so basically it's free
you give me a few dollars for the envelope and the service fees for the guys to pick it and pack it i
printed the book for you i'll even I'll even ship it to you anywhere in the world 7 USD so the other
thing is I want you to look at this video the best way to prepare for a job interview i want
(30:56):
you to make sure you're watching the No I don't know if you can see this the November 5th 2024
episode that specific episode it's my favorite it's the latest it's my best okay so all I got
to ask now is who's tracking right you get what I'm saying you got to reshape the way you think
(31:17):
about what it is that you are doing and it's all about how fast can you convince them that you
are the right person for the job and make them feel or remember you using those two adjectives
right subject expert right highly organized those kinds of things as fast as possible we want your
(31:40):
story to be what fast powerful and memorable all right I hope you enjoyed that uh and then you get
a little peek into my life as a a 10-year-old boy and and my my 10-year-old boy crushes and
all that good stuff if you enjoyed this please click the like button share it people need help
interviewing is hard it's really really hard and people need help and make sure you subscribe to
(32:05):
the station make sure you're on my newsletter cuz you know I it hurts me when you miss my emails and
it hurts me when you miss my recorded videos on Tuesday at 6:30 a.m and it really hurts me when
you miss my live shows on Thursday all right if you're here with me live we're going to the
chat if you're watching this on the recording I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you next
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