Tessa Davis says keep interview stories to 30 seconds and pick versatile examples that show how you handle conflict, mistakes, and teamwork. Reuse the same stories across different questions to build a consistent picture of your strengths.
Here's how you can make the most of the examples that you choose to use in your interview. The first thing you can do is to keep them short. So when they ask you, tell me about a time when X, they don't want to hear 4 minutes of a story about what happened. They want to hear 30 seconds of the story. Make it as concise and simple as you can. And what they really want to hear is how you handled the scenario. So the bulk of your answer should be about how you handled it. Secondly, make your examples versatile. So you might have an example for a conflict that you had, but actually when you've got a solid gold example, you'll realize that it can apply to many other situations as well. So it might be a time when you made a mistake, when you asked for help, when you worked in an MDT. So the one example can be used for lots of different scenarios. Before you panic, think, actually, do I have an example that relates to this question? The third thing is to remember to bring your examples in other questions as well. So it doesn't need to be just when it says, tell me about a time when X. Actually, you should be bringing in examples throughout your answers to help add specifics and to help showcase your strengths.
