At long last, we have reached the end of this longest chapter in the book. Here are additional resources on integrating storytelling into interviewing:

Enelow, W., & Goldman, S. (2005). Insider’s Guide to Finding a Job. Indianapolis, IN: JIST.

Martin, C. (2004). Boost Your Interview I.Q. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Quintessential Careers: Guide to Job Interviewing Resources.

Terwelp, W. J. (2005). Strategy to boost your credibility. Career Hub

Washington, T. (2004). Chapter 5: “Master the Art of Story Telling.” In Interview Power. Bellevue, WA: Mount Vernon Press.

We tested this Writing-to-Learn approach to interview prep on three sections of a basic marketing class consisting mainly of college juniors, with a small number of sophomores and seniors also participating. Students in the sections who were assigned to complete the written interview-preparation assignment were given a list of 20 common interview questions for college students and asked to submit written responses to each. A local human-resources professional with many years of interviewing experience was recruited to interview and score the participants. He was instructed on how to complete the evaluation forms, but at no time did he know that one group of interviewees had previously prepared written responses to the potential questions and that the other group hadn’t. The group that prepared the written responses to the interview questions scored higher on the study’s evaluation instrument than the group that did not. Although the difference we saw did not prove to be statistically significant, it may be trend-indicative.

Based on the possible trend indication of the study, as well as previous scholarly research dealing with interview preparation and Writing-to-Learn, we are confident of the relationship between written interview preparation and interview success. We are committed to the idea that preparing written answers to common interview questions will make job-seekers more confident and allow them to focus their energies on other aspects of the interview while providing detailed, yet concise stories in response to questions.

Why are these writing exercises effective in enhancing interview performance? We credit Writing-to-Learn theory. James Britton, considered by many to be the father of the Writing-to-Learn movement, asserts that writing is learning because writing enables learners to organize their knowledge “and extend it in an organized way so that it remains coherent, unified, reliable.” Janet Emig notes that “writing through its inherent reinforcing cycle involving hand, eye, and brain marks a uniquely powerful multi-representational mode for learning.” Other scholars expand on Emig’s “reinforcing cycle.” “It’s a physical activity, unlike reading,” writes William Zinsser. “Writing requires us to operate some kind of mechanism - pencil, pen, typewriter, word processor - for getting our thoughts on paper.” David Joliffe asserts that this physical act of writing compels writers to become “actively involved” with what they’re writing about. Through writing, Joliffe says, participants “generate challenging ideas … engage in a substantial process … practice analysis and synthesis … and demonstrate a personal commitment to their ideas…” Suzanne Cherry calls writing “thinking on paper.”

Composing written stories in response to interview questions works because it helps candidates learn and remember concepts and content, improve thinking and cognitive abilities, organize their thoughts, enhance communication skills, bolster their self-image, and make connections. The story form is easy to remember because we think in narrative form, our neural networks having been shaped in childhood through storytelling.

Demonstrating thoughtfulness and organized thinking is positively associated with interview performance, according to a study by Maurer, Solamon, Andrews, and Troxtel. Noting that cognitive ability in applicants has been shown to be a “strong and consistent predictor of job performance,” and, in fact, to predict job performance more “accurately and universally” than other constructs (largely because this ability indicates candidates’ ability to rapidly learn job requirements), Huffcutt, Roth, and McDaniel posit that applicants with higher cognitive ability may exhibit greater effectiveness than other candidates in responding to situational and abstract questions. The Writing-to-Learn technique’s claims to help its practitioners organize their thoughts and make connections suggests that the Writing-to-Learn approach would be one way to sharpen communicative abilities for interviewing.

Research by Perry and Goldberg in 1998 suggested that interview preparation is important because their study showed that when recruiters were asked about college students they interviewed, interviewing skills surpassed the students’ background or experience in recruiter assessments of the likelihood that their companies would consider hiring a given student. We can then speculate that students (and other job candidates) who have better interview skills than others may have dedicated more effort to interview preparation than others.

Most career experts agree that few interviewees prepare adequately for interviews. In 1995, Barone and Switzer went so far as to note that, while college students spend in excess of 4,000 hours studying and attending class to prepare for their career, the average interviewee spends less than an hour preparing for a job interview. These experts also agree on the reason for the lack of preparation: job-seekers have no idea what questions will be asked in interviews, so they assume there is no way to prepare. Finally, career authors agree that this typical job-seeker rationale for lack of preparation is faulty because interview questions, or at least general areas of interview questions, actually can be predicted to some degree, and lists of frequently asked interview questions are available in any number of books, articles, and on numerous Web sites. See, for example, the Interview Question Database and lists of interview questions.

Agreeing that it is impossible to predict exactly what questions a given interviewer will ask of a job-seeker, interviewing guru Carole Martin nevertheless notes that “the secret to success in any interview is preparation.” Author Tom Washington points out that since so few job-seekers prepare for interviews, those who do will “gain a real edge over others through preparation.”

Career experts are virtually unanimous in their view that responses to interview questions should not be memorized but should be prepared, in some fashion, ahead of time.

Since you know that lists of typical interview questions are widely available, you can review them to gain an idea of what types of information the interviewer likely seeks. Taking this advice a step further, you can use these question lists to organize your thoughts about high points you want to share with employers and develop a list of the characteristics that might be needed for success in the position for which you are interviewing. You can then craft stories about these characteristics using the guidelines in Chapter 2. You can also engage in verbal mock or rehearsal interviews; however, Janet Emig points out that “writing tends to be a more responsible and committed act than talking.” Thus, writing-as-interview-prep includes these suggestions:

• Writing an autobiography, which can reveal areas that you may not wish to discuss with an interviewer
• Practicing describing yourself by citing professional characteristics with examples from school and work experience
• Writing detailed proof statements/success stories that are tantamount to 30-second commercials about yourself
• Identifying about 30 accomplishments and writing 100-400 word stories on the top 12 of these, followed by isolating skills demonstrated by each accomplishment.

OK, so you're sold on the idea of telling stories in your job interviews. Can you simply think about the stories you want to tell? Sure, but composing written story responses to questions typically asked in job interviews provides a relatively painless way to prep effectively for a job interview.

Based on our research, personal experience, and anecdotal evidence from the college students we have taught, we are convinced that preparing written stories in response to job-interview questions will accomplish these goals:

• Increase the interviewee's level of confidence in responding to questions;


• Show evidence of preparedness by providing thoughtful, non-rambling responses;


• Increase the level of relevance by specifically addressing the questions;


• Provide more detail and thoroughness in responding to questions;


• Allow the interviewee to focus more on response delivery in the interview setting.

A number of years ago, we discovered that preparing written answers to job-interview questions helped us perform better in job interviews. That discovery prompted us to assign our students to compose responses to frequently asked interview questions. Because this assignment frequently has seemed to enhance performance both in mock interviews and actual job interviews, we turned to two disparate areas of research to understand why the technique was effective. We concluded that the phenomenon is closely related to Writing to Learn theory.

Dagliano next coaches clients them through the process of thinking through a story to illustrate how they used each skill they have listed - again using the SOAR process. Once they have developed the details of their stories, Dagliano advises them to give their story a title (using as few words as possible) and write that title on the right side of the “T” on their cheat sheet.

“Once they have the stories worked out,” Dagliano says, “they will be ready to answer almost any interview question that comes their way. To prove it, I ask a few typical - and some not so typical - interview questions and coach them on how to use elements of the story in answering. I encourage them to take the cheat sheet to the interview with them and have it with the notepad where they take notes during the interview.”

Dagliano notes that our brains have a remarkable ability to locate things in a pinch as long as we have “told” the brain where we have filed them. Dagliano says that if clients draw a blank on how to answer a question, by merely glancing down at their cheat sheet and seeing the story title, their brains will quickly retrieve the details of the story and the best answer.

To flush out key accomplishments from her clients, resume writer and job-search Coach Norine Dagliano encourages them to tell her specific stories, guiding them through the SOAR or STAR process. Among the questions she asks to trigger these stories are these:

• What was challenging about that job?
• How have things changed from the time you took the position (or joined the company) to the present?

When teaching interviewing classes or conducting interview coaching, Dagliano teaches clients how to create an “interview cheat sheet.” She asks them to draw a big “T” on a sheet of paper. On the left side of the “T,” clients write the word “Skill” and on the right side, the word “Story.” Dagliano then guides them through the job posting or job description they are targeting to pick out key skills mentioned. She also instructs them to go through their resume to pick out the key skills that they want to talk about in the interview. They then list all these skills on the left side of the “T.”

To be continued …

What suggestions do you have for our organization?

After examining several sources, including your company’s annual report and Web site, as well as some of your competitors’ sources, I see that you have a strong product line with good demographic segments, in a growing industry. I did notice that your competitors seem to direct more of their efforts to the baby-boom market, and while that is certainly a large market for your products, I think you have a great opportunity to expand your target market and increase your market share by marketing your product line to the Baby Boomers’ kids - Generation Y. These teens and preteens are extremely brand-conscious and have a high discretionary income - and you are in a great position to attract them to your product and build a very large core of brand loyal consumers on top of your existing customer base. In fact, I recently walked by a store display of your wall art and t-shirts centered on 1960s rock-star themes. I expected to see mature folks looking at the products, but what I saw was a group from middle-school age to college age clamoring excitedly around the display. I also know my teenage nieces and nephews have grown up highly influenced by their parents’ devotion to The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Beach Boys, and they all own at least one of your products.

What would a good manager do to build team spirit?

Most importantly, any plan to build team spirit has to be authentic. We’ve all seen — or experienced — work environments like in Office Space or “The Office.” Anything less than authenticity will be seen as simply rah-rah — or going through the motions.

A good manager brings the team together — perhaps even a retreat - to foster communications and develop common goals and objectives. During this meeting, the manager should also show how all the team members play a role in making the team successful — and that only by working together and respecting each other can the team fully succeed.

Sometimes, too, when the team is from different departments or backgrounds, it’s important for the manager address this issue from day one — if possible. I was once put in a team with a mix of marketers and accountants and the manager sat us all down and told us a story of a successful competitor and how their accounting team thought like marketers and how their marketers understood the importance of return on investment for new marketing initiatives. The story of a successful competitor helped us realize that we had more in common than we had differences and that we could come together as a team and be successful.

The situational question is fairly common in job interviews and is similar to the behavioral question. Instead of asking you how you handled a certain situation in the past, the interviewer asks how you would handle the situation in the future. You can answer this kind of question with the same kind of story you would use to answer a behavioral question. Simply explain that this is the story of how you handled the situation previously, and you would expect to use the same skills and knowledge to handle the situation if you are hired for this job.

Occasionally an interviewer will ask a hypothetical question about what you would do if you were hired by the employer, such as what would be the first few things you would do in the job or what suggestions you have for improving the organization. Here, too, you have the option of responding to the question by telling a story from your past experience, but another option is to tell a future story. The future story is different from any other story discussed in this book because it’s essentially fiction; it hasn’t happened (yet). But you have the opportunity to describe a future scenario in which you would play a major role in meeting the employer’s needs and solving its problems. You can paint a vivid picture of what it would be like if you were hired.

Example[s]:

How would you organize the steps or methods you’d take to define/identify a vision for your team or your personal job function?

I believe a good team vision starts first with a strong understanding of the organization’s mission. So, my steps would be as follows. First, review my organization’s vision. Second, develop some rough ideas of how I would word a team vision statement in preparation for a team meeting to discuss the issue. Third, I would call a meeting of the team and have a discussion of what we do best, how what we do fits with the organization. Then I would discuss the organization’s vision and ask for ideas and suggestions for the team’s mission. If asked, I would mention some of my thoughts on our team vision. Fourth, following the meeting, I would craft a vision statement - perhaps with the help of one or two other team members - and then distribute it to the team and ask for feedback. Fifth, I would finalize the vision statement from the comments and feedback from the team… and then post our vision statement in places where all the team members could see it on a regular basis.