Clegg teaches a story toolbox method to prepare for behavioral interviews: collect 14 reusable career examples using prompts, then map them to any question. Use the CAR framework (Context, Action, Results) to structure answers, and answer even indirect questions like "How do you handle stress?" with concrete stories.
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Companies are asking so many behavioral interview questions in the job interview. The challenge is they ask for very specific examples from a job you did years ago and for tasks you've done thousands of times. And it's hard to predict exactly which example they'll ask for. Except what if I told you I had a strategy that makes these questions easy, that allows you to come up with a good answer no matter the question, and that I have thousands of public success stories coming confirming that this works wonders. Well, today is your lucky day because I will teach you the story toolbox method, the Star method, and give you top behavioral interview questions and answer examples so that you crush any interview just to make sure we are on the same page here. Orwell A behavioral interview question is where the interviewer asks for specific examples such as tell me about a time when you had multiple competing deadlines or give me an example of a successful product you launched. The key to success here. Here is assembling a story toolbox which allows you to come up with every example you need. The first step is remembering these darn examples in the first place. And here is how to remember work examples for interviews. And so I want you to be an anthropologist here. I want you to rummage through old work documents, texts, emails, your previous resumes. Talk to your former co workers and has to see what they put on their resume for that job so that you can help to remember things that happened. You you can also work backwards from a job description of a role that you want, such as you may see that they're asking for experience conducting focus groups. So then you want to come up with examples of when you performed focus groups in the past. Now the clever thing to do is to always keep a running document of projects you work on and things you accomplish at the job. So make sure you start doing that if you haven't already been doing that. Next, whip out your story toolbox prompts. The they are in my book Reverse a search which you can grab from the library or you can get the prompts for free linked below. Respond to each prompt with an example from your career and by the end you'll have come up with 14 examples. It doesn't even seem possible, but if you follow each of these prompts, this will come up with answers to nearly any behavioral interview question. For example, one of the prompts says a time when you were able to collaborate on a team and help others. So what you do is you'd search search the caverns of your mind to find two examples that fit that prompt and Simply write down a title for each. So if it's an example about aligning multiple departments during a company wide software system rollout, I'd call it Software System Rollout. Just a title long enough for me to recognize it. Now fast forward to when you're in an interview. How does this all work so flawlessly? You're asked question such as tell me about a time you had to influence without authority. Wait, what? That was not on that prompt list, missy. Yes, but due to the variety of prompts on that story toolbox, you should be able to hear a question like this and then change the way you start one of your examples in a way that makes perfect sense. So you're asked, tell me about a time you had to influence with authority. And then you look quickly at your titles of your stories and you see the one about aligning multiple departments during a company wide software system rollout. And you can see how that's relevant to this question. So you start out your answer by saying, I had to influence without authority by getting every department at the company to cooperate in a lengthy company wide software system rollout. Now that you have the right framing, you're off to the races. The next thing I'm going to teach you is going to be just as powerful in transforming the way you interview. When you answer the behavioral interview question, answer it using the CAR formula, which stands for C context. What challenge were you facing? This gives us background of what situation you were in. A action, what action did you take? And then the R results. What were the results of those actions? I know what you might be thinking. Hold on there, Skippy. Isn't there a commonly known formula called the STAR formula? Hello. And you would be correct. But even companies like Amazon who tell candidates to use the STAR formula admit that they're only saying STAR instead of something like CAR because it's more well known and better sounding when really everyone has agreed that taking two steps to provide the background, which in the case of star, they have situation and task, just completely overcomplicates the formula and it emphasizes the least important part of your interview answer. The interviewer doesn't want a deep recounting of the situation your company was in for that project you did. No, they're much more interested in what actions you took and how it turned out. So looping back to our example, you are going to use the CAR formula. And that would sound like I had to influence without authority by getting every department at the company to cooperate in a lengthy company wide software system rollout, the company was rolling out a new ERP system under a tight deadline and each department had competing priorities. Finance was worried about reporting accuracy, it was focused on system stability, and customer Support was concerned about disruption in the service levels. The lack of alignment was putting the launch at risk, and I scheduled a series of working sessions with leaders from each group to surface concerns early. I translated technical issues into business impact so that everyone was speaking the same language, and I created a shared rollout plan that clearly defined ownership and decision rights. I also set up weekly checkpoints to keep the momentum and address issues before they escalated. We launched the system on time with no major disruptions, reduced post launch issues by 30% compared to prior implementations, and built a cross functional playbook that the company later reused for two additional system rollouts. I personally always liked behavioral interview questions because once you know the formula, you are quite in control of the conversation and it's pretty straightforward. Rather than some of these brain teaser or scenario questions you might get, what about you? Let us know in the comments. Do you like behavioral interview questions? Say I like these questions or I do not like these questions in the comments. Now here is a huge tip that you can bring into your interviews instead of waiting for someone to ask you a bit behavioral interview question answer with a story anyways, such as if you're asked how do you handle stress? Answer the question in a sentence and then give an example of a stressful work situation you experience and how you responded to it. Your answer is going to be head and shoulders above what other candidates say. I cannot stress this enough. When you do this approach, the interviewer doesn't even realize you're doing it and they just think oh my gosh, this person is so much better interviewing. They're giving me such a clearer idea of what it would be like to work with them. Because these interviewers, they don't ask very good questions, right? If they're asking things like how do you handle stress? That's not a very helpful question. But you're making it more helpful by saying, typically when I'm in a stressful situation, I like to step away. I like to breathe, I like to get a notebook, I like to plan. For example, last month we had a deadline that was coming up that where a bunch of things went wrong and I handled it by doing XYZ that is going to give them such a more vivid picture. And I bet you none of your competition is doing that. I created a worksheet with an example as well to help you to craft your answer to the common interview question. Tell me about yourself. Go ahead and smack a like on this video. And make sure you're subscribed to this channel. You've got this wi fi high five.
