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The longer your job search drags on, the more you start to doubt your interviewing abilities. Or worseâyou start to doubt your skills and experience as a job candidate, which in turn affects your interview confidence.
You may begin to ask yourself, “What are employers really looking for in a job candidate?” The good news is we can help you understand just what you need to convey in a job interview to stand out to employers and finally land a job.
Employers want you to answer three questions they won’t ask you directly. So, it is your job to answer those unasked interview questions in order to move on in the hiring process.
Here are three things you should be sharing in your job interview to make the right impression and send the correct message to potential employers:
1. How Do You Save Or Make Companies Money?
The first thing you need to convey in your job interview is how your skills and expertise save or make a company money. You are a business-of-one. As an employee, you provide a service to an employer. So, in your job interview, you have to prove to the employer that the services you can provide for the company will either save or make them money.
It comes down to your ability to justify the initial cost it would take to hire you. Most professionals don’t know that it costs an employer between 130% to 140% of their salary to hire them. It’s a big investment for a company to hire a new employee. That’s why you need to convey your efficiency and effectiveness as an employee in job interviews.
To prove you could save or make a potential employer money, quantify your past experience (on your resume and in the interview) and cite examples of how you’ve saved or made your previous/current employer money. Once a potential employer understands that you will provide a good return on investment, they will automatically consider you a great candidate for the position.
2. How Do You Like To Deliver Value?
Make sure you talk about how you deliver value too. No employee performs a job the same way. We all work on tasks differently and go about accomplishing goals with different processes and strategies. If a company doesn’t think you’ll be able to do the job the way they want you to do the job, you probably won’t be offered the position.
In order to explain how you deliver value, you need to know exactly what you do and how you do it. During a job interview, let the employer take a peek inside your brain to help them get a better idea of how you would perform certain tasks that the job requires.
A great way to explain how you deliver value is by answering behavioral interview questions with the STAR technique. Begin answering a behavioral interview question by describing the situation or task you were faced with. Then, explain how you took action, walking the employer through your decision-making process. Finally, quantify your results so the employer can clearly see how you deliver value.
(If you’re not sure how you deliver value, take this free quiz! You may be surprised by the results.)
3. Why Do You Feel Connected To The Business?
The last thing you absolutely want to convey to an employer is how you feel connected to their organization. Consider the company culture and their mission, and use that to your advantage.
During a job interview, it’s important to explain to an employer how you feel like you’re a part of their “tribe.” Why do you want to be a part of the team of people dedicated to solving this specific problem? You can also talk about why you admire their products and services, why you understand and identify with their customers, and what you love about the way they do business.
Tie all your pre-interview research back to what excites you about working for the company. Employers want to hire people who would integrate well within their organization. By talking about the above factors, you’ll connect with employers on a deeper level and show that you’re passionate about the job. Therefore, you’ll come across as a great cultural fit.
You can also begin to convey that connection to a potential employer in your disruptive cover letter. A disruptive cover letter catches an employer’s attention and gets them excited about you as a candidate. So, even before you walk through the door to your interview, an employer will already feel a connection to you.
Knowing what to say in an interview in order to make the right impression can feel incredibly overwhelming, maybe even impossible. If you follow these three tips, you’ll be sure to send the correct message to an employer, and ultimately increase your chances of landing the job.
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This article was originally published at an earlier date.
Balancing a career and family is a common concern for most individuals. However, it’s important to realize the smallest of changes can […]
Brand pillars are the foundation of your brand and contribute to your overall brand DNA. There are five pillars: purpose, positioning, perception, personality, and promotion. Brand pillars help you define your unique characteristics and experiences, driving every consumer touchpoint to differentiate you from your competitors.
Letâs review the five brand pillars and how to implement them within your organization.
Purpose
Brand purpose is “why” you exist. It’s the reason for being beyond making a profit. A great brand purpose will always put the consumers first and manifest itself in everything it does.
Knowing the deeper “why” your company or brand exists provides the foundation on which to build everything else.
Simon Sinek, author of the book Start with Why, introduced the idea of defining brand purpose to a global audience in his 2009 TED talk.
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”âSimon Sinek, How Great Leaders Inspire Action.
Here are some key questions to ask yourself to get at the “why” when developing your brand purpose:
- Why does our company exist?
- What drives our brand?
- What is unique about our business? What is our secret sauce that no one else has?
- What problem are we trying to solve?
- Why would our ideal customer choose our product/service?
- What are we exceptional at?
- What inspires us day in, day out?
- What do we want our legacy to be?
- What are we most proud of as an organization?
- Where do we want to be a year from now? Five years? Ten years?
Brand purpose is critical in today’s market as it shows your customers, employees, and competitors that you’re bigger than just turning a profit.
Positioning
Brand positioning is the process of positioning your brand in the mind of your customers based on your brand purpose and values that gives you a competitive advantage.
What do you think of when you hear “search engine”? Did Google come to mind? This product is positioned to dominate its category. What about a company that provides “overnight shipping”? FedEx owns the transportation category even though other companies provide overnight shipping.
A well-developed and implemented brand position provides a sustainable competitive advantage, communicates value to customers, is a vehicle to help manage brand consistency, and impacts the bottom line.
Here are five steps to consider when creating your brand positioning.
- Evaluate Current Standing: Evaluate your current brand positioning. Is it working? Does it reach your target audience? Is it helping to achieve your business goals? If not, you may need to look at repositioning your brand.
- Research Your Competitors: You can’t stand out from the crowd if you don’t know what the crowd is doing. Conduct a competitive analysis to evaluate your competitor’s brand position by looking at their social media feeds, company websites, marketing & advertising materials, and customer service. Look at who they’re targeting, what their messaging is, their unique selling proposition, and their positioning strategies. For more information on how to gather competitive research, check out my article.
- Identify Your Target Audience: Understanding your target audience is critical as this information will define every strategy you execute. Your goal is to define your target audience into a simple statement: Our target market is (gender) aged (age range), who live in (place or type of place) and like to (activity). For more information on how to develop your target audience, check out my article.
- Identify Your Differentiators: Just like everyone is unique and different, so is your brand. It’s your job to find those characteristics and differentiators that will make your brand stand out from the competitive crowd. List all the things that your competitors do well. List all of the things you do well. List what your customers want. Now start comparing your most unique angles against your audience’s needs. Are there any needs that haven’t been filled? Is there anything that you provide that your competitors can’t easily copy or reproduce? Check out my article on how to develop your unique differentiators
- Craft Brand Positioning Statement: Here is a template to follow when crafting your brand positioning statement.
Personality
A brand personality can be defined as the set of human characteristics associated with your brand. Itâs communicated through tone of voice, visuals, and even policies. Theyâre expressed as adjectives that convey how you want people to perceive your brand. For example, is your brand cheerful, funny, friendly, youthful, innovative, spirited, dependable, responsible, credible, sophisticated, rebellious, cunning, powerful, honest, and so on? Here is a list of 200+ adjectives to get you started.
Letâs look at an example: Coca-Cola is considered real and authentic while Pepsi tends to be young, spirited, and exciting, and Dr. Pepper is seen as nonconforming, unique, and fun. Source.
A brand can also be described by demographics (age, gender, social class, and race), lifestyle (activities, interests, and opinions), or human personality traits (extroversion, agreeableness, and dependability). Source.
There are three approaches on how to find your brand personality.
- Jennifer Aakerâs Dimensions of Brand Personality framework contains 15 traits organized into five factors (Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness).
- Carl Jungâs Brand Archetypes Framework believes that archetypes are models of people, behaviors, or personalities, thus making them more recognizable and relatable to target audiences. Jung identified 12 archetypes. The idea is that any brand can relate to one of the 12 archetypes that help define the brand.
- There is the Combo Brand Archetypes & Brand Personality Framework. This model combines the Brand Archetypes and the Dimensions of Brand Personality frameworks mentioned above.
Perception
The first three brand pillars, purpose, positioning, and personality, are driven by the brand through targeting, messaging, and execution. The fourth brand pillar, perception, is owned by your customers. Itâs how they view and experience your brand. Jeff Bezos famously said, âYour brand is what people say about you when youâre not in the room.â
When youâre starting your business, list out the traits and characteristics that you want your customers to associate your brand with. If you have an established brand and want information on how your brand is perceived, gather customer, employee, and/or vendor feedback:
- Online reviews/ratings
- Testimonials
- Social media listening
- Live chats
- Emails
- Customer service calls
- Research (polls, surveys, focus groups)
You can also gain further insights into your brand perceptions by asking customers, employees, and/or vendors questions through various research tools (i.e. polls, surveys, focus groups, etc.):
- How do you perceive our brand? How would you describe it?
- What do you perceive our value to be?
- What terms or adjectives would you use to describe our brand?
- What do you consider to be our brand strength?
- What problems or challenges does our brand solve?
- What do you think of our competitorâs products (list them)? Have you used them?
Your goal is to evaluate customersâ perceptions to see if you need to make changes to your brand strategy. Itâs important to create a positive perception of your brand that aligns with your mission, vision, and purpose.
Promotion
Brand promotion is a way to inform, persuade, convince, and influence consumers by driving their decision-making process towards purchasing your brand.
A strong brand promotion strategy places your brand in the right place, at the right time, and in the right context for your customers and prospects.
The goal of brand promotion is to increase brand awareness in order to drive revenue and convert consumers to loyal customers, building long-term, lasting relationships.
To start identifying how to promote your brand, consider asking the following questions:
- What is your current brand awareness?
- How are you currently promoting your brand?
- Where do your customers expect to find you or your competitors?
- How are customers interacting with you online and offline?
- When do your customers need you?
- What kind of experience do you want your customers to have with your brand?
- How do you handle bad experiences?
- Who are your greatest brand ambassadors?
Final Thoughts
Brand pillars are the foundation of your brand. They help you define your brand for your internal and external customers, ensuring you capture your audience and convert them to brand loyalists. Start building your brand leadership today. Youâve got this!
Sweaty palms. Shaky voice. Blank mind. These symptoms of nervousness can seriously sabotage a job interview, no matter how prepared and qualified you are.
To quell these natural responses and help you muster more confidence in anxious situations, consider these quick pre-interview confidence boosters so you can perform better right before your next job interviewâno energy drinks or cheesy motivational speeches required!
Amy Cuddy, social psychologist at Harvard Business School, talked about what people do while waiting for a job interview to start in a popular TEDGlobal presentation.
âYou’re sitting down. You’re looking at your iPhone or Android. You’re looking at your notes.”
This common waiting room behavior is not really ideal for maximizing your confidence right before an interview. Instead, the following activities will make you way more confident before meeting a potential boss:
1. Strike A Power Pose For Two Minutes
According to Cuddy, rather than hunching up and making yourself small in the waiting room chair as you scramble to soak up last-minute notes or practice one final interview question, you should actually find a private place to do what Cuddy calls a power pose.
There are a few variations, but the Wonder Woman pose is easy to remember. So, 10 minutes before your interview, go somewhere private, like the bathroom, and strike a strong pose where you can take up as much space as possible.
2. Repeat A Positive Affirmation
“Repeating a positive affirmation can reduce production of cortisol and stress hormones by almost 50%, slow the mind, lower your blood pressure and heart rate, and make you feel confident and powerful,” says Kathleen Hall, founder and CEO of The Mindful Living Network and the Stress Institute.
Hall offers the following examples:
- I am confident in all things.
- I have unlimited potential.
Joyce Marter, psychotherapist and CEO of Urban Balance, would agree and suggests deep breathing while you recite a positive mantra in your head “using language you will want to use in the interview, such as ‘I absolutely will succeed in this job if given the opportunity.'”
You might feel a little silly at first, but these words will help you emit a more positive appearanceâand that sure beats a nervous one!
3. Read Over Nice Things People Have Said About You
Thinking back to a time when you were successful and confident is a great way to recreate that confidence right before an interview. A quick and easy way to do this is to print out and compile anything nice someone has said about you. Read old letters of recommendation, LinkedIn endorsements, letters, or notes from colleagues or teachers that have boosted your confidence in the past.
If you’re not really feeling this method, “quickly review your biggest accomplishments in your head before going into the interview,” says Katherine Walker, founder and executive director of Lifetime Behavioral Health. “This trip down memory lane will instantly create a sense of confidence and serve to get your brain thinking about items the interviewer will no doubt ask you about.” It’s the best way to remind yourself that all of your previous experiences have helped shape you and prepare you to succeed in this job interview!
We hope these three tips will help you feel more confident during your next interview so you can land that dream job!
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This article was originally published at an earlier date.