Studies and surveys I’ve read over the years are fairly consistent in what they say are the biggest mistakes job-seekers make in employment interviews — insufficient enthusiasm for the job, lack of knowledge about the organization at which the candidate is interviewing, and an overall lack of preparation for the interview.

Thus I was not surprised to see Peter Guber recount, both in his forthcoming book Tell to Win and on the book’s site, that executive-search guru Bill Simon had told Guber “that lack of preparation is the number one reason why executive candidates fail to win over prospective employers in job interviews.”

Guber noted that executives fall back on their résumés instead of preparing, which Simon described as a fatal mistake “because the essence of what audiences remember is wrapped not in the tellers’’ résumés but in the way they tell their stories.”

Guber and Simon agreed that a candidate — Teri Schwartz (pictured) — who had really knocked their socks off when they worked together in the process of hiring a new dean for UCLA’s film school (Guber was on the search committee) illustrated the importance of having a purpose for telling a story in an interview.

“A new dean must change the culture and create a new story for the school,” Schwartz had said in the interview, “Economic well-being will follow collective response but never precede it.””

Guber recalled that Schwartz argued that “the hero of our story —— our future dean —— would have to be someone who could galvanize everyone from students to administrators to go down a very new and special road.”

“Schwartz’s “vision for a great school whose graduates will become industry leaders and inspire change for a better world” was, Guber writes, “the heart of Teri Schwartz’’s goal for her story.

Further, Guber relates, “Teri concluded her story with the magical analogy of our school as a reflecting pool into which every person associated with the school would drop a new quality of diversity, innovation, and technology. All these drops would ripple outward into the world and into the future, and each ripple would reflect our individual and collective vision and participation.”

Schwartz’s storytelling in the interview enabled her to overcome all three of the common mistakes candidates make. She conveyed her enthusiasm; she demonstrated that she had done her homework on UCLA and its situation, and she showed, by telling stories backed by goals and purpose, that she had prepared fully for the interview. Of course she was hired.