How to kick butt at your next job interview (even if you suck at speaking)!

It’s just about that time — a lot of people I know are looking for a new role. And one part of that experience looms over all others: the job interview!

Turns out I have a lot of feelings about job interviews. Here’s what I have learned, as someone who doesn’t suck at job interviews even though she sucks at speaking (more on that later).

First off, yes, job interviews are SCARY, in all caps! They’ll always be intimidating, no matter how many you’ve done. A group of strangers are judging your abilities for an hour, or 3, or 6. And they hold the key to your future — whether you’ll get the job or not! How do you even begin to handle the pressure?

Lots of people will tell you to practice your public speaking. Or to practice interviewing with your friends. They might think it’s important to get yourself to a place where you are as slick as a salesperson.

I actually don’t believe success at interviewing has much to do with what you say in the moment.

You see, I have a stutter. It can be pretty severe. QVC would not hire me to sell anything, that’s for sure!

Yet I’m at about 70% success rate when I get to the interview stage.

In fact, the last time I remember my stutter being so bad it felt like I was barely getting words out of my mouth, it was at a job interview. I got the job anyway! It also happened to be my first full-time UX role, transitioning from a science career. I didn’t have impressive design degrees or companies in my past to back me up.

In fact, they even told me they picked me over people “with more experience” because they liked my storytelling. Not how I told the story, but what I said.

So, I fully believe it’s not how you say things, but what you say. Prepare for your interview with that in mind.

1. Deconstruct the job description

The very first thing to do, is to go through the job description with a fine-toothed comb. You’re going to work backwards, to find out what they really want someone to do.

This is much easier if you know someone who knows the hiring manager, so they can tell you exactly what they’re looking for! Sometimes it isn’t very obvious from the job description, but you do what you can.

Let’s go through an example.

This is the posting that ended up as my first full-time UX job. Take a look at what I emphasized in bold:

The new site must be built immediately as it is using technology that is more than 15 years old. It is no longer supported and at the end of its life. The department urgently needs a Website Content Editor who will analyze and document the existing site. They will organize the content and create the pages for all the information that needs to be published using a Content Management System. They will also create all documentation which will be used by the staff to maintain the system, as well as implement future system enhancements.

The Website Content Editor will have the following responsibilities:

- Inventory and analyze the department’s current web content and other relevant source materials and perform gap analysis

- Create content for the website and update website daily ensuring that the information is current, accurate, and structured appropriately

- Create web content to support the functions of the department

- Document web content and structure

- Optimize content for search engines

- Keeps up-to-date with best practices in writing for the web, internal publications, and business industry trends

- Interview various stakeholders to understand business goals and target audiences

- Align content with organizational goals

- Collaborate with the business experts to gather requirements and document them

- Communicate effectively with project teams

Number of years of experience: 5+; Strong system requirements gathering and documentation; strong hands-on experience designing and working with HTML and images. Imaging software such as Dreamweaver or Photoshop and content management systems; strong hands-on experience with website structure, strategy and web writing; and excellent proofreading and grammatical skills required.

Soft Skills: Excellent writing, communication and organizational skills; works effectively in a team environment; good customer service skills; and has the ability to manage multiple tasks to completion with established deadlines.

Did you notice what wasn’t in that listing? There was zero mention of UX, UX design, information architecture, or content strategy. Sometimes you have to do deep dives to find what the role actually entails.

A note about “experience”

Also, did you notice the years of experience that job listing asked for? 5+. And how much experience did I have at the time? A few years of part-time freelancing, really.

Years of experience isn’t nearly as important as being able to do the job.

To be fair, many famous companies (read: the ones that everyone applies to) use “years of experience” to filter out the piles of job applications they need to sort through. It’s the only way to make the process manageable for them.

That’s why referrals are so important when applying to those companies. You’ll stand out from the pack, no extra years of experience required! So it always depends.

Don’t let experience requirements stop you in your tracks by default. Always consider context.

2. Figure out the one skill they really want

There’s often a long list of skills requested in every job posting.

99.99% of the time, they’ll never find someone who has them all. If they are on a do-or-die quest to actually get that unicorn, you can’t help them anyway. I always have a chuckle when I see positions open for 6 months or more.

Most of the skills are nice-to-haves. They might help if two candidates are otherwise the same and equally likable. But people can’t keep those qualities in their heads all at once when they’re talking to you. They usually just have one important skill in mind.

If they find someone who can do the one thing they’re really looking for, their brains light up and go, “Ooh, that’s exactly what we need!” Everything else doesn’t seem as important.

So distill that job listing down to the one skill you’ll need to have, to be successful in the role!

What I got out of that example job posting, was that they needed someone to organize and write content, because what they had was a mess 15 years in the making. I had to show I could organize content well. It was obvious they were desperate to find someone who could do that.

3. Position yourself as someone who’s got that skill down and will step up right away

You’ve decided on that one skill that will make or break you. Now comes the time for persuasion. But again, not in the slick salesperson way. It means choosing the right past project to focus on during the interview. You’re going to use it, to show how you were successful in that skill.

If you have a varied collection of past projects to choose from, you’ll have a lot of options. For this job interview at this early point in my career, I didn’t have much. But I only needed one. I decided to go all in on one freelance project where I restructured the website, and it resulted in an increase in sales.

That’s it. That was my pitch.

I know how to organize content well, because I did it for this e-commerce site, and sales went up.

I took every opportunity to go back to that. Even when I was barely getting any words out from sheer nervousness, I managed to convey at least that much.

But it was enough. I communicated that I could help solve their problem, and do it well. They could visualize me stepping into the role right away and being successful. And that’s how I got the nod.

A note about being able to code

I won’t lie. A huge part of being able to step immediately into roles I’ve been hired to do, is my ability to code serviceable front-end. (By which I mean HTML, lots of CSS, and enough jQuery to be useful.)

I’ve always been essentially a UX/Dev Team of One. If I want a guarantee of my work actually getting online, I need to do it myself.

Some organizations will really appreciate someone who can do this. To have someone who will do whatever it takes to get stuff done. These would be your small startups, or orgs without dedicated teams for both design and development.

Other organizations couldn’t care less. They would rather you have specialized experience working in large teams. These would be any orgs large enough to have dedicated teams for design as well as development. They won’t need you to code if there are 5 other people who can do it faster and better.

That’s another thing to look for, when you examine the job description. What kind of company is it, what kind of team is it? Will they need you to play by the all political rules, or will they need you to have real moxie?

For my first job, I knew I needed to do some coding, because the skills list included HTML. I ended up learning ASP.NET from scratch for that role to get the job done…but technically I wasn’t wrong!

4. Make it hard for them to say no

Why go through all this effort in the first place? Why isn’t it enough to prove that you have the requisite intelligence and experience to do the job, on a general level?

Because they are not hiring a list of filled-in checkboxes. They are hiring a person. They are hiring someone who will be on their team, to help them solve a problem they have.

Many hiring managers state that their biggest fear is in hiring the wrong person. So you have to anchor them in the belief that you are the right person, from the get-go.

The easiest way to do that, is to go into the interview already familiar with what’s important to them. The hiring manager doesn’t have to do the cognitive work in figuring out how you’d fit into the team. They won’t have to look at your list of skills and accomplishments, and guess how that will help them. You’ll tell them exactly how you’ll do that!

And when someone is already imagining you being a successful part of the team, it’s a lot harder for them to say no down the line. 😃 They’ve already pictured you there. Saying no later means losing you, in their minds. Loss aversion is one of the most powerful cognitive biases, after all.

Instead of letting your list of skills and accomplishments lead, you control your own narrative. But first you have to put in the work.

5. Don’t forget about the work you do before you even apply

The more your past experience naturally fits with the job they plan on having you do, the easier all this will be. The connection between your past projects and the future role will be more natural and evident.

So, picking the right jobs to apply to is extremely important.

As are referrals, of course. If you find the right role at the right organization, you want to make sure you leverage everything you have to get it! I have another post about how to network when you’re an introvert, to help you get started.

6. Don’t settle for “I guess they’ll work…” Strive to be the one “YES!”

One successful job interview I had more recently, my stutter was a lot better but still evident. What probably helped most was the 2–3 people who referred me directly. And the fact I brought in a case study of a past project that was pretty much exactly what they wanted for the work. I didn’t even go through the entire thing. I only pointed out the most relevant parts when a question called for it.

In fact, they told me later, that after I had left the interview, the team members looked at each other and were like, “Can we just get her to stay here right now and ask her to do THAT??”

That’s the kind of reaction you want. 😃

Remember, the goal isn’t to get a bunch of companies to include you in a pool of 3–5 final candidates where any one of you would do. The goal is to get the right organization, offering the right role, to shout “YES!!”

To do that, never underestimate the importance of prep time. That extra effort, even an hour or two, can make all the difference!

To sum up:

1. Deconstruct the job description
2. Figure out the one skill they really want
3. Position yourself as someone who’s got that skill down and will step up right away
4. Make it hard for them to say no
5. Don’t forget about the work you do before you even apply (choosing the right roles; referrals)
6. Don’t settle for being in a final pool of 3–5 where any one of you would do. Strive to be the one “YES!”

Originally published at anitacheng.com on July 13, 2018.