How to Win the Job by Communicating with Confidence

Fearless Interviewing

of what she actually could offer as a marketing director. Had I
been an employer, I might have had questions and doubts as to
whether she could really perform as well as she said she could.
How, specifically, could she prove her skills?

• For example, what did she mean when she said she was
  “extremely experienced”?
  Did she mean 2 years’ experience? 5 years’? Perhaps 20?


• And she says she has an “exceptional record of service.”
  What exactly is it that made her service exceptional?
  Did she mean she had exceeded her quotas?
  Did she mean she had handled accounts with an
  unusually high monetary value?


• What about her comment that she has “an outstanding
  sense of the needs of the marketplace”?
  Was she adept at market research?
  Could she give me a specific example of being able to
  understand the needs of a customer?

I was not surprised when she said that her greatest strength was
good communication skills. Most of us, in fact, believe that we
have good communication skills. The challenge is that, in an
interview, you have to be able to prove it.

Could she tell me about some presentations she had

made that won accounts?

Had she engaged in negotiations that resulted in the

favor of her company? When? With whom? How much

money was involved?

Perhaps she meant she was good at resolving conflicts

through communication.

It was hard to know exactly what Marie meant since she didn’t
really have the specific data to back up her assertions. This kind
of crucial data is exactly the kind of ammunition we’ll be
gathering in the next two chapters. You don’t have to make
the same mistakes that Marie made. You will know your skills