Interview Preparation to Highlight Success

 Dear Deb,

I am a fairly modest person and I was wondering how much information I should give interviewers about my successes when I meet with them.  Sometimes I feel uncomfortable, sort of like I am bragging, when I talk about the great job I did; but my recruiter says I should do all I can to play up my strengths.  I would be interested in your thoughts on how to do this without coming off as arrogant or conceited.

Rose H., La Jolla, CA

A. Dear Rose,

Preparing for an interview is tricky business. On one hand, you do not want to come off sounding like Dr. Gregory House, from the TV series House, but you shouldn’t behave like a timid mouse.  Look at that, I am a poet and didn’t even know it!  

Seriously, if you don’t extol your positive attributes and achievements during an interview, who will? While being a braggart will get you nowhere fast, you must prepare yourself before any interview to speak about your former successes in a positive and compelling way.

Before the interview, practice to get comfortable with sharing details surrounding the value you have brought to work situations. It is not enough to simply say you are good at this or that.  Discussing specific examples of how you performed in challenging situations will illustrate your competence and make you more attractive to hiring managers.

While it may be uncomfortable to speak about yourself in a way that is boastful, if you spend time formulating short 2 or 3 sentence explanations of how your actions resulted in positive benefits to your previous employers, you can commit them to memory and learn to repeat them.

As you become more comfortable with sharing your successes, you can practice putting just the right inflection in your voice. It will become increasingly easy to express this information with interviewers in a natural way that sounds proud rather than cocky.

Clients who have taken advantage of career coaching and pre-interview preparation, consistently report feeling much more confident when they are asked to discuss their previous accomplishments. 

By determining the specific message you want to convey, and practicing in advance, you can get used to speaking highly of yourself and it will come to you much more naturally. 

Do you have a question for Deb?  If so email Debra@careersdonewrite.com. The Ask Deb blog appears weekly every Friday.