142 How to Sell Yourself
The approach of highlighting your general skills has two main
advantages.
First, it’s flexible and you’re flexible, depending on the needs
of the potential employer.
Second, it stands alone, stripped of ties to your previous em-
ployer and open to future applications. As your interviewer, I’m
not as interested in what your duties and responsibilities were in
your last job as I am in what you can do for me now.
Cite specific examples of
your accomplishments in measurable terms
Give numbers that quantify what you were responsible for,
how effective you were, the changes you brought about, the vol-
ume you handled, the number of people you supervised, the in-
crease in sales or productivity, the size of your budget, and the
scope of your function. Use whatever yardstick is appropriate,
such as degrees of growth, improvement, or accuracy; honors and
citations; promotions and bonuses; decrease of complaints; in-
crease in income, membership, output, or stock value. These kinds
of objective measurements say more about your ability and actual
accomplishments than any claims you may make. And wherever
possible, use the techniques of storytelling, anecdotes, and per-
sonal examples.
Learn what you can about
your potential employer and the business
Check out the company’s Web site. Learn what you can about
the company, its problems, strengths, plans, operations, goals, and
past successes and past failures. There may even be information
available on the company’s hiring practices. This will allow you to
orient your statements to the company’s needs and also establish
that you’ve done some homework and know what you’re talking
about.
Getting across these three points is the primary objective in
any interview. No matter what the interviewer wants to talk about,
you want that person to hear what you can do, how well you can
do it (or how well you’ve done it in the past), and how your skills
and experience relate to and can benefit that company.