How to Start Every Job Interview Answer the Right Way

It is really, really hard to tell good immediately, but great and terrible, I can tell that within seconds. And your interviews are a lot like that. Your interviewers are sizing you up very, very quickly. Life is like that. Every Tuesday morning, I put out a new YouTube video on my channel. It goes out in the morning. The end of the day, end of the workday, when I'm doing my reflection, I go into the YouTube studio, I look at it to see the analytics. And when I say I look to see the analytics, there's only one metric that I actually look at, the first 60 second retention rate. I don't even bother to look at the retention rate for the rest of the video because I know it's good. What I don't know is if anybody else out there thought it was good enough to stick around to see the lesson and to learn. That book behind me, that zebra code right there, that's 36 years of professional wisdom. You give that book cover one second. You know what I'm saying? Movie trailers, a balmy two minutes. So the question for you is, what makes you think when an interview is scheduled for an hour that the interviewer is giving you all of those 60 minutes to actually form an opinion about you? They probably did that in the first couple of minutes. So you got to strike early, you got to strike often. And the way you walk in the room, I mean, do you raise the damn temperature? The way you shake their hands, the way you show up on the screen, the first words out of your mouth, are they powerful or are they meek? And we want you to score early and the best way to score early is what? To think about them. What is it that they want? You know what they want. They want more customers, they want more revenue, they want lower costs, they want no risk. The only question that they have is, have you solved the problem that's standing in their way of getting that? Who gets what I'm saying? And so if that is the case, why not come out early with that? Why not make that first thing on your list? So how do we do that? All right, let's go. Let's talk about the here's how. So that's what today's all about, is how, when we respond to their questions, not just in the beginning or the first few minutes of the interview, but each time you start over with a new question or a new set of dialogue, how do you score early? That's what today's all about. I'm going to teach you what that is, what to come out with, why it's so important and the mistakes that you're going to make. So I'm grateful that you're here with me, whether you're here with me live on a Thursday or watching this on a recording on a Tuesday or whatever day of the week it is, I'm always grateful to have you. So I got some note cards like I usually do. Spent a lot of time putting these together. So let's talk about just job interviewing and interview responses in general. First thing is, I want you to know that I have a formula. I know that there are a lot of different formulas out there. I like mine the best, as you would imagine. And I call mine the CAR technique. It's C-A-A-R. I'm going to tell you ever so briefly what that is, but we're not going to spend this session talking about all the components of that. We're going to talk about the C, the context, the first part, because if you can get the first part right, where you immediately grab them, you capture their attention, it will be easier for them to follow along, but it will also really give them, they'll make a number of inferences about you that I want them to make. It's going to go to the benefit of the doubt for you. So first thing is, I just want you to know where you can find more information. So my CAR technique stands for, it's C-A-A-R. There's the context, and we're going to talk about that at length today. Then what you're going to do is the first A is the first part of what I call the approach. I call it my approach one, where you're actually going to tell them the steps you took, just the steps. You're going to just run through the steps. The second thing you're going to do, the second part of the approach is you're going to bring them back through the steps, and you're going to put a little meat on the bones, only germane details, but you're going to fill in a little color around what activities that you performed within each of the steps. And there's science behind why you want to give them the steps first, and then why you want to go back and fill in the steps with some of the activities. We're not going to go into any of that today. And then the R is the second part in the beginning with the context, which I'm going to explain to you. We're going to prime the result. We're actually going to come out early with the result, and I'm going to explain to you why we want to do that. But the last thing that you want to do is you want to remind them of what you achieved, but you also want to crescendo with all of the additional benefits that you have created as a result of whatever it is that you're sharing with them, the project that you worked on. Now, I have a video on my YouTube channel that I always refer people to. It's one of my favorite ones where I talk about the CAR technique, and that's the job interview formula guaranteed to get you hired. If you're here with me live, Carol will drop that in the chat for you so you can go and watch that later. I go through the formula. I go through a case study. I really try to bring it to life. But in the interest of time and in the interest of getting you the ROI that I want to get you, and we're talking about the literally the step in the process that most people screw up. And I think you're going to see why that's the case, and I'm going to try to bring to life with some examples and analogies of what they do, why they do it, and how you can fix it. Okay, so the CAR technique, we're going to talk about the C. Who's charged? Who's already loving this talk, right? We're only six minutes in. All right, I'm loving it. Well, anyway, and I know Starla and Rocket who are resting cozily behind me while they're under the blanket. They don't think I'm very exciting. Anyway, I hope you do. All right, the context itself. What is the context? Now, some of you might know the STAR technique where there's an S, and that stands for situation. Other people might have their version of a CAR technique. They might call it a challenge or something. I call mine the context because I think there's more items that I want you to encapsulate in the beginning part of the story. Now, I want to go back to my opener, my couple of minute opener where I was trying to help you understand why opening up with the problem is so important. Because sales, psychologically, we're all consumers. I know you are. So when you buy something, generally, generally, not always, but generally, people buy transformation. They don't buy features. So in your terms as a job seeker, I want you to remember that employers buy their transformation. They don't buy your skills. They buy the application of your skills and experiences in their environment. But what they're ultimately buying is what you're going to do in their environment to improve their lives. And every single great seller in the world always knows how to, what we call in the business, sell to the gap. You have a problem. I have solved that problem. You have a goal. I have helped others achieve that goal. So the result is I helped them achieve the goal. I helped them raise their revenue by so much. Same thing on your resume. We always want you to come out first with the result. The result goes first in the resume bullet. Here's what happened as a result of me doing what I did, and here's what I did to make that happen. That's the sequence. The same holds true when you're in an interview and you're responding to a story. Now, here's what I want you to, I want to break this down for you and give you all the components. The first principle in the context is you start with the actual problem. Okay, wait, I'm going to go through this painstakingly slow. And if you think that what I'm saying is obvious, I'm telling you not with hundreds of data points, with thousands of individual data points, meaning me coaching individuals, that people absolutely struggle with this. Okay? And I'm trying to bring this to life. You want to start with the actual problem or, because I didn't want to take up another quote card or here a little index card, or the opportunity or the aspiration. As an example, you might be losing money. That's a problem. You might want to expand your revenue. And while your company is doing fine, maybe there's a market in Europe that you have not tapped yet. So while that's technically not a problem, it's an opportunity. Same thing. But it's, it's, it's, what is the actual business problem? Okay. That's, that's point number one. And then point number two is we want to show or help the listener understand based on what the result or opportunity is, what you actually made happen or what you were attempting to make happen. Why do we want to do this first? Well, the first thing is the result is the most captivating element of your story. And I want you to think about everything that you want out of your life. Do you want a bigger bank account? Well, wouldn't you rather I start the story with, I helped somebody gain a million dollars, right? Not, hang on, let me tell you how you can build wealth. And there's the first step and you need to invest in this, and then you need to wait a hundred years and so on. No, it's, I helped this person drop 50 pounds, right? Do you want this flat stomach? Do you want this flat tummy or flat abs, I should say, or whatever it is you want your abs to look like this, right? You want to come out early with the result. Now you don't necessarily need to say, I achieved 58 million in revenue. You could say, I looked at this and I knew if we could penetrate that market, there was probably going to be somewhere between 50 and $60 million in revenue in the first year that we could capture. Okay. And to be that specific, that's going to capture their attention. And the other thing about these two things, the other thing about these two things is when you give them out the results early and you help them understand the business problem, I assure you that when you state an actual business problem, that is what's going to register with them related to their transformation. That's ultimately where we want to go. But there are a lot of things that people don't understand about how to articulate the actual business opportunity or business problem. So let's get you situated with that. And then let me show you what you have a tendency to do, again, based on all the people that I coach. So the other thing is the business problems or the opportunities are found in what I call the great eight, not in the activity that you're trying to fix. So let me give you an example of what I mean by this, or actually, you know what, let me give you the great eight first, and then I'll give you an example. All right. So the great eight, it's my testimony that every organization, no matter who they are or what they do, no matter what their product or service is, no matter where they are geographically or where they are on their evolutionary landscape, these are the eight most important goals that they want to achieve. Everything that any one of you does falls in at least one or more of these categories. You either generate revenue, so you make money. Maybe you're a seller and you're at the tip of the sword, but maybe you help create documentation that the seller goes out and uses to sell. Right? That could be generating money. All right. You help your organization market themselves, increase their brand awareness. You could do that many different ways. You could be on the marketing team and all of you have these types of great eight goals in alignment with your positions, but you also could be the engineer who is working on optimizing the website so that you show up higher in the Google search rankings. Well, that's also increasing your marketability. So there are many facets to this. There's customer attraction, customer happiness, right? Keeping the customer happy, making the customer happy. Maybe you're a customer service rep. Maybe you're an account developer who works in account. Who knows? There's company growth, so elements of anything that has to do with organic or inorganic growth of an organization. It could be mergers and acquisitions, an IPO, a divestiture. It could be a number of things. And I would also lump in company growth, risk management, compliance, accounting, auditing, any legal, anything that well positions the company or creates compliance or reduces risk would fall into this category. Then there's employee happiness. I think you get what that is. Some of you might be on the HR team working on employee happiness. Others of you might be managers who are managing a team who need to work on employee happiness. So you can come at this from many different angles. There's cost reduction from a perspective of saving expenses. Are you somebody in the accounting team who's evaluating opportunities for reduction in costs? Are you in the purchasing department evaluating the vendors and optimizing them as well as the contractual agreements that you have for what you're paying and getting better volume discounts? That's saving money. And then there's process efficiency. Are you tuning things? Are you the accountant that streamlined the closing process from 10 days to five days? Are you the internal Six Sigma person who's streamlining processes? You get the idea. Now, I have a video on this if you want more on this, but I wanted to make sure that you understood what I was talking about when I said that the story starts with the great eight. So if you want more on the great eight, there's a video out there, Eight Ways to Show Your Value as an Employee. You're welcome to go and watch that. But now I want to help make it a little more clear what I mean when I say start with the problem. So now you got to remember this. When you are in an interview, your job is not to answer their questions. Okay? It's not. I don't know who told you that, but that's not the case. You are in an interview, you are talking to somebody, and it's your job as the job candidate to provide them information that they need to know to make a good decision about hiring you. The information that allows them and enables them to do that best is information that helps them understand how you're going to operate in their environment. Your history, I'm not interested in your nostalgia. I'm interested in my evolution. Okay? So when you think about the projects you've done and all the scenes from your life, you are assembling stories to paint a picture for the interviewer so the interviewer understands how you will operate in their environment and how their life will change as a result of you being there. You will use scenes from your life to do that. But the scenes that you use from your life need to be chosen carefully because not all scenes help me get the data I need. Who understands what I mean? What most people want to do is they want to what I call report their history. I don't care exactly how it happened. I need you to be able to tell a story that elicits feelings from me that gets me to project how you'll operate in my environment based on insight you want to share with me about how you would do something and how you know to do that. That's it. And not all data and not all your history and not all elements of your five-year project matter. So what you need to do is you need to be thinking about where am I in any story that I want to tell and how do I want to package that story? You are the center of the universe. Everything happens around you. Everything is told from your viewpoint. Write that down. Everything is told from my viewpoint. You do not have to have worked on every single element of the problem of the project of everything that's done in order for you to tell a story about what happened. Who gets what I'm saying? I need this to register because what most of you do is you start your stories where you start and that's not when the story starts. The story never starts when you start. I don't care if it's day one on the job for you. You were hired because of a problem that started way the hell over there. Do you get what I'm saying? This is a big freaking deal because when you start your story, the reason you start your story in the wrong place is because you start your story in your first activity and that's not when the story started. I need this to sink in. Mistake alert. Big mistake. Let's work this with an example. You pick part of the solution or an activity instead of starting with the problem or opportunity. I was coaching this woman. I've used this maybe a time or two over the past couple of weeks because it's fresh on my mind and I love the story. This woman, Vivian, came to me. She needed some interview coaching. She's in my job search coaching program. These job search coaching program members can access me for individual coaching sessions. She came to me and she wanted to work on what we call a power story. A power story is nothing more than the most representative story that you have in your background that aligns to what you would be doing in the future at your prospective employer. When I coach people, I don't want them to read me their story. I don't want them to tell me their story. I want to ask them questions and I want to get their minds focused on exactly where I want their minds to be focused so that they start the story in the right place and they go through the story in a right and orderly fashion. When I said to Vivian, okay, what was the problem? She said, we had these two systems and they weren't connected and talking to each other. I said, that's not the problem. Go back further. Why were you even looking at this in the first place? She said, oh, well, people were paying claims that shouldn't have been paid because the systems weren't talking to each other. Now we're getting somewhere. Well, what are we talking about? Well, you got claims people who pay claims and medical claims were being paid and they were being paid at rates that they shouldn't have been and they were being paid when they shouldn't have been because the medical system wasn't talking to the drug system so the claims adjudicator didn't have a holistic view of what the benefits should have been based on deductibles and what was paid and this and that and so on. Okay, well, how much money was being paid in claims that shouldn't have been paid? She said $50 million. Okay, now we've got the problem. The problem isn't the systems aren't talking to each other. That's just where it's broken. The story starts with what? With the business problem because we were losing money. Okay, we're losing money that we shouldn't have been losing. We shouldn't have been paying claims to these people or reimbursing doctors at these rates or whatever it was. Now, when she got in there to look at it, she discovered the reason they were being paid incorrectly was because the systems weren't talking to each other. That is a symptom and that's an activity that she's going to work on to integrate the systems. Get what I'm saying? Okay, well, your story doesn't start with, oh, so I got called in because I needed to hook these two systems together. Okay, do you see the difference? She had nothing to do with the $50 million. She's the cleaner. She's the hero in the story. And by the way, all of you, none of you created the problem. If you ever tell a story where you talk about the problem you created, I'm going to come to your interview and I'm going to tackle you because no interview of yours ever has room for any story like that. Something happened, there was a problem or an opportunity, in came you with the cape and the big S on your chest. That's the way the story goes. I want you to now think, where did the story start? Where was the real problem? Why was I doing this in the first place? The only reason Vivian was asked to investigate this is because they realized they were paying claims they shouldn't have been Okay? Get me? I really, really need this to register because this is what you do. Because every coaching session that I ever have, people start in the third chapter and that's not where the story starts. And why do you want to do it this way? Well, number one, it's the right sales technique. But number two, it gives you importance, it gives you heft, it captures and keeps their attention. The first part of the context is, what's the business problem? In as grand a fashion as you can make it, as detailed as you can make it, if you say, well, we had this customer and they were going to leave us, I get nothing. I feel nothing. Now, while you are sniffing around the business problem, you've not given me any color of the gravity of the situation. It was our largest customer. They paid us $9.6 million in service fees last year and they were upset. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I'd really love to know what percentage of your total portfolio they are. Right? So, as much detail as you possibly can. That's the first part. The second part of the context is not only what was the business problem, but you're foreshadowing the result. There was $50 million in overpaid claims. I'm telling you, without telling you, I solved that. So, I'm going to save us $50 million right off the top. You foreshadow the result. And then the third part is, you want to make sure that you are taking the opportunity to clarify exactly why you were selected or took it upon yourself or whatever. I was chosen because, use this word, literally use the word because. Insert whatever skills and experiences you would like to keyword stuff verbally in the beginning of your answer. Okay, so, Vivian could say, there was $50 million in claims that shouldn't have been paid. They asked me to investigate it because they suspected that there was something broken with these systems. And since I have run 15 different data blah blah projects using this software and these functions, I was the one selected to investigate this. Since I have opened markets in the European countries, I was selected because I've done that for three other companies. So, what you're doing is you're very quickly getting to rationalize or justify why you were selected. This gives you a chance to go, right, I've got all the goods. And I literally want you to state exactly not only why you were chosen, but I want you to match it to what is being asked for in the job description. So, now what they're hearing is, oh, she's got this skill. Oh, she's got that skill. Oh, she's got this trait. And now they're all, remember, they're thinking four times faster than you can talk. So, I got a lot of room to imagine how awesome you are if you're giving me the right clues. Okay? So, don't forget this. This is the segue that links you from the context part into the first part of the approach. So, now you might be wondering, how long does this take? It takes 15 to 20 seconds. If you can't get this in 15 to 20 seconds, you've got a ton of dead weight in your story. Okay? If you want to say 15 seconds to paint the picture and five seconds or 10 seconds to paint the keywords, that's fine too. But generally speaking, if it's taking you longer to get to the business problem, to immediately convey, I have solved the exact problem that you want me to solve here. That's what you're saying. That's how you map it. I'll save you money. I'll optimize your systems. I know how to organize the data. I know where to look for the cracks. I know how to open the markets. I know how to build the sales team. I know how to account for the books. I know how to service the PCs. So, all that's got to come out early. And if it's taking you longer, like Vivian's story, it only took me seven seconds. We timed it of how fast she could say her context before she gets into her segue. So, if you can't get it done in 20 seconds, then I'm telling you, you've got, it's like you putting together a six-page resume. You've got a lot of dead weight in there that is not painting a crystal clear picture and getting right to the point of the business problem that they need to understand that you fixed. Okay? And then, why do I want you to do this? Well, I started to tease this before, but why does all of this work? Why does starting with the big business problem or the opportunity, then priming the result, meaning foreshadowing what you already fixed, and segueing with the keywords of your skills and experiences that are music to their ears, because you're matching up what they want to hear. Why does that work? Because number one, it immediately points them to how their life is going to change. If I went to you and I said, hey, let me tell you a story. I've got a job search coaching program. I spent years sitting at this desk recording videos for you, and I outlined everything so perfect. And all you need to do is go and watch 400 hours of videos. And then after you watch the 400 hours of videos, I'm going to take you through some exercises. And then what you're going to do is you're going to have some questions for me, and I'm going to answer those questions. And then I'm going to get back to you. You're going to have the questions. You're going to channel it in. And then eventually, yawn, you're going to get a job. That's literally how you guys tell interview stories, or at least many of the people that I coach. It isn't about all the work that I did. It isn't about all of that. It's about you're going to find your job faster. You're going to get paid more, not only because you're going to interview better, but you're going to know how to negotiate your salary better. End of story. That's it. Then I say, well, how long have you been looking? And then you say, five months, five weeks, five days. Okay. The five dayers are probably not in the same pain as the five weekers or the five monthers. So you have to get them right to the transformation. What's the outcome that happens as a result of me putting my system together and supporting you? It isn't what you're going to go through, or you don't need to relive every detail. Get right to their transformation. That's in the problem. It also shows them that you are a strategist in addition to a doer, because the signal you're sending is, I'm a big picture thinker. I look holistically. Your story starts over there. You spent some time doing something over here, and the story continued on with the results and the benefits after you were done. Okay. So your story started before you and it ends after you. Every single interview response that you ever say for the rest of your life starts before you and ends after you. There are no exceptions. There are literally no exceptions to that rule. So when you are a strategic thinker and you could see the whole picture, when you're articulating your story in high level terms, I'm not talking fluffy words. I'm talking it's a high level problem that I understand. And I was able to get it down, get in there, get inside the patient, fix it all up, sew her up, and kick her out and let her go live a good life. That's basically what you want to be able to convey. And starting in that spot sets you up for that. And as a matter of fact, the rest of the CAR technique, which I'm not going to go into, also positions you for being a strategic thinker and helping them understand that you have a big picture view of the world and you understand all the steps, even if you didn't work on all the steps. And then the other thing that it does, and this is really attention capturing, and I like to use these terms, but it gives you heft. It gives you cachet. It gives you importance. Oh, it's a $50 million project or problem that they entrusted Vivian in doing. She must be important. She must be trustworthy. She must be responsible. The four times faster thing, this is what's going through my head when she says $50 million versus what's not going through my head when she said, well, we had these two systems and they weren't hooked together. I needed to put an integration in. I don't care what the solution is. You're solving a big problem. It doesn't matter how long it took you. It doesn't matter how much time. It doesn't matter how much money. It's the gravity and the level of the problem that you are solving that makes all the difference in the world. That's what captures and keeps their attention. That's what makes them think you're important, trustworthy, responsible. You're going to deliver. You know what you're doing. You can examine big problems and big opportunities. This is a big, big deal. Now, to wrap this up, I want to give you the action items. I want you to come up with a power story. If you don't know what a power story is, comb my channel and look for power stories. This is the most relevant story that you've done in your past that maps to what your potential employer wants you to do in the future. The more skill sets that they will be able to deduce you have as a result of you telling a story, the better off you are because you want to get that power story into the interview itself as early as possible because this is what's going to get them the most excited about you and make them feel that you're the best match. I want you to identify the great eight items that you're going to be speaking about. Start there. Then practice the opener and iterate until you can get it inside of 20 seconds. 20 seconds is an absolute eternity when it comes to this. The first multiple parts of the CAR technique should only take you 20 to 30 seconds to say even the A part. You should be halfway done with your response with the first two letters should be halfway done inside of a minute. Easy, easy. The A part, the first A part only takes 11 seconds to say. I know that for all of you because I've timed it. I'm telling you, this is the way to go. All right. Just to recap, I just as a reminder, first principle, you start with the actual business problem, not your activity. You are always coming out with the result early. Anybody who tells you to hold the result to the end should be taken out and flogged. They should lose their career coaching license. Anybody who came up with the STAR technique, I wish I literally could time warp myself back and erase that from the face of the earth. It is the absolute worst way to tell a story. You never hold the result to the end. You always want the result out first. You're in a sales call. Results come out first and fast, and you got to repeat them. It's always a great eight problem. If you start and you don't tell me what the great eight is, I'm going to stop your story. I'm going to make you start over every single time. What's the business problem or what was the business opportunity? Don't tell me what you fixed. That's not the problem. That's what you fixed to eradicate the problem. You can check out the great eight. There's videos out there on the car. There's videos out, right? Job interview formula guaranteed to get you hired. There's eight ways to show your value as an employee. Check those. The only other thing that I want to remind you of, 15 to 20 seconds. All right. I hope you enjoyed that. If you're here with me live, we're going to the Q&A. If you're watching this on the recording, I'll see you next week. Any which way, if you enjoyed this, please click the like button. Share this with people. People need help interviewing as hard as you could probably tell from the last half hour. Please make sure you subscribe. It would mean the world to me because it hurts me when you don't get my new stuff every Tuesday or come to my live shows on Thursday. All right.