Hello, my fellow LinkedIn professionals. Welcome back to my Amazon Leadership Principles series. Today I would like to help you get ready for your job interview. With this being said, I want to make sure you are all getting the most out of your time with me. If you missed my last training, I talked about how to create your story when answering behavioral questions. This is so important if you want to ace your interview. The second thing I discussed was that you must take full ownership of how you go about your job interview.
If you haven’t met me yet, my name is Holly. I am an ex-Amazon recruiting leader. I am also the founder of a career accelerator masterclass. In this masterclass, I have helped many tech leaders who were going through a crossroad in their career. It has been my pleasure to help them regain their confidence so they could land their ideal job.
Design of the Program
I want you to know that the program is designed to help you create a roadmap. It will help you to get a kickstart into the career that you want. I provide weekly career strategies and best practices for finding and getting your dream job. The program is designed with my experience working at Amazon and Google. It is also designed based on my startup recruiting background, as well.
Know What the Hiring Managers Want
It is very important that you aren’t just trying to tackle what the hiring managers are looking for in an employee. You should also be able to show them that you can go in-depth while delivering your results. That is key to acing your interview. This is a skill that you will need no matter what job you are applying for.
Amazon Leadership Principles
There are so many resources available regarding the Amazon Leadership Principles. The leaders focus on key inputs for their business. They deliver them with the right quality in a timely fashion. They always rise to the occasion and never settle. This should be the same aptitude or attitude for all organizations and not just for Amazon. So, even if you aren’t a people manager, you should be able to have this same aptitude. The reason you need this aptitude is that all great leaders don’t just think about leading people. They go above and beyond to scale results for the long-term. That is what makes a great leader.
The great leaders that I have had the opportunity to work with and support throughout my career are the ones that didn’t ask to be a people manager. They were asked to step up and they demonstrated leadership skills of influencing others in order to meet amazing end results.
Bonus Tip When Preparing to Create Your Story to Answer Behavioral Questions
How? The “how” will allow you to brainstorm and bring back the awesome strategies that you put together in creating the what and the why. So, how did your action lead to positive results? You can defer to the star method. You really just take a moment to pause and think about your experience. When you thinking about being overwhelmed or stressed out, you know you have done the work. You can let go of those unhelpful thoughts.
I am a true believer that if you do things that you love and you really enjoy your environment, you will be so creative in tackling obstacles. This is what will help you to ace your job interview.
What are you most proud of? How will that help you to create the opportunity for you to land your dream job? How will you deliver results? These are things that you are likely to hear from an employer during your job interview. The hiring authority or business leader wants you to let them know how you can get the job done. You may also have to tell about a position that you have held and what it is that you liked about it.
When you are answering the questions, even though the question can be vague, don’t just give a one or two-sentence answer. Don’t go over 60 seconds in your answer either.
I have so many videos of my interview strategies on my channel if you want to check those out.
Standing Out from All the Rest
Another thing that you need to remember, when answering interview questions, is how you are going to stand out from all the rest? You could be 1 of 100 people that are interviewing for that same role. You don’t want to sound like everyone else or have the same story as every other person who is interviewing for that role. When you are answering the question, always think of ways that you can stand out. What is going to bring you up a notch from your competition? Be sure that you are positive and confident in your answers. Show the employer that you are unique from everyone else and you will deliver results.
Other Important Factors When Answering Interview Questions
Buy-in and collaboration are huge. So is your persuasive background. For example, if you are in a senior position, you have to manage people, right? If you want to be a people manager, it is important to show you have the skill of persuading others. You should show that you have leverage with cross-functional teams and/or partners. You need to prove that you can gain their trust to achieve results.
Surely, you have some examples. Think about the top 2 greatest results that you went above and beyond to deliver. What are those stories all about? The interviewer wants to feel your story. They want to know how you took a problem, overcame it, and delivered amazing results.
Now, I want you to write down the top 3 tasks that are needed in order to achieve the results. How or what was your action plan to resolve the challenge that made it outstanding? What made you stand out? You should be able to describe the overall impact and results to the employer who is interviewing you.
Takeaway
The takeaway to help you answer all the behavioral interview questions, even for non-tech questions, is to create your story. Answer the how, why, and what. Let the interviewer know how you stand out from everyone else. Let them know how you will achieve results, no matter what obstacles you have to overcome to get there.
I have a passion for helping technical professionals land their dream role. I am all-tech. My first degree was in the tech field. I am really happy to be here sharing this information with you today and I look forward to offering you more tips in the future, as well.