Preparing for the Interview

A few weeks ago I wrote about creating a statement on your resume that speaks about who you are.  This Impact Statement is all about selling you as THE person that a potential employer would want to walk in and take on the position.  We also talked about the "Tell Me About Yourself" question and how uncomfortable that question is to both the interviewer and interviewee. We suggested asking the interviewer to provide you with direction to your response.
The other day I had to sell myself and answer the "Tell me about yourself" statement at the same time.  I was approached to do some instructional design work for a company.  It wasn't about job search skills training; something I can talk about all day.  No, it was about the cycle of designing, developing and evaluating training programs for a pharmaceutical company - something that I haven't done in several years. So what did I do and how does it relate to a job search?

1.    Did my homework: I looked up the company again and again to figure out what they do and what they offer their customers. I reveiwed the industry wording.

2.    Researched new trends and industry jargon: I went on LinkedIn and joined an instructional design group.  Here I researched new trends in the field. When I didn't see anything, I asked the group if they could help. I got a couple of responses and read up on these.  I also looked up instructional design in the Occupational Outlook Handbook and aligned that wording with my past activities and knowledge of industry buzz words and jargon. I finally reviewed the trends in the field by Googling several professional group discussion boards (you don’t always have to join the professional group to read and respond to these boards).

3.    Designed my elevator speech: I had to change it because the focus changed. This wasn't a meeting about teaching job search skills.  I had to revamp it to include my "Why I'm the best" statement in regard to instructional design. (Gulp!) I went to measurements and statistics. How many years have I been in the business? How many programs and types of programs have I designed, facilitated? How did I measure effectiveness? How have I done needs analyses in the past? What were my successes? Why? By the way, while doing this I also noted my weaknesses.  There are certain areas where I know I lack the skill set and should the customer want these skills, I have to let them know that no, I don’t have the experience for that.

4.    Wrote it out and practiced. I wrote my elevator speech with a slant towards “Tell Me About Yourself.” (In a prior email, the company said they wanted to know about my experience in instructional design).

My statement included my company name, industry, and why I am the best. It generally said, “I am the owner and operator of Blackbird Learning Associates where for almost two years I have designed and developed training initiatives for the New Jersey state libraries and various corporations and community colleges. I have over 25 years experience analyzing organizational needs and designing, developing, implementing and evaluating learning and development programs. I have successfully trained over 5,000 employees in the pharmaceutical, banking and insurance industries.  I follow the ADDIE method of instructional design and I thought that today I would take you through my experience as it relates to the ADDIE method.”

All this work paid off and I received a contract with this company. Every job has different needs and if you prepare and focus on the particular needs of each organization, the selling part beomes a bit easier.  Good luck!