Elite interviewees differentiate themselves by moving beyond standard advice to deliver authentic, engaging stories that demonstrate not only past capabilities but also future potential within the target role.
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Have you ever wondered how some people
are just so good at interviewing?
Maybe you have a friend or an
acquaintance or someone you know of on
campus or in your life somewhere who's
just really, really good at landing
extremely competitive jobs.
Today I'm going to share with you
something that I have learned over the last
last five
five
or more years that has allowed me to
land multiple roles in very competitive
industries including investment banking
in New York on Wall Street, management
consulting at BCG which is an MBB
consulting firm and most recently at
Google in in their internal strategy
department. I'm going to distill in
probably a video that's less than 20
minutes, five plus years of messing up
left and right and doing probably over a
hundred interviews at different
companies. I'm going to give that all
away to you now in a pretty short video.
And so, if you're still with me, make
sure you full screen the video, lock in,
and give me your attention for just 20
minutes. I promise it will help you out,
especially if you're job hunting or if
you plan to in the future. The way I
want to break this explanation up though
is first I want to talk about what most
people do. And when I say most people,
I'm talking about your average job
hunter. And then I want to talk about
what the elite interviewees are doing.
The people that are landing these jobs
that have less than 1% acceptance rates,
companies like Goldman Sachs or
McKenzie. Because what you have to
realize is everyone has the same
information available to them,
especially nowadays in the internet age.
Anyone can Google how to pass the interview.
interview.
But then why isn't everyone landing the
offer? Why isn't everyone landing the
job, right? It's because there's more to
interviewing than just what you see
online. And that information actually
only gets you so far.
But without beating around the bush,
let's just get right into it. So there's
two main components to answering the
behavioral interview. And I'm talking
about the behavioral interview today
because I'm not going to talk about the
technical portion of interviewing which
is specific to the various industries.
So for example, if you're in investment
banking, you have to study the finance
technicals. If you're in consulting, you
have to study the case interviews. If
you're going for tech, uh you know,
sometimes there's actual technical like
coding interviews that you have to do or
in my case it was also case interviewing
for internal strategy roles. I'm not
going to talk about that. I'm going to
talk about how to answer these questions
where you get asked to tell someone
about a time where you had to
demonstrate some kind of positive
quality. Maybe it's tell me about a time
when you had to demonstrate leadership
or tell me about a time when you had to
demonstrate that you were a team player
or that you were persuasive or that you
had integrity when you were put in a
moral or ethical uh conflict. Those
kinds of questions come up in 99% of
interviews regardless of what industry
they are. And for good reason because
oftentimes your interviewer companies
are looking to test a certain set of
core qualities that are universally
sought after for employees. Now what
does the average person do though when
they hear from the recruiter? Oh yeah,
you should prepare for these behavioral
type questions. Well, you're probably
googling online or you're probably going
onto YouTube and you know before you
find my videos, you're probably looking
at other career advice videos and you're
hearing things like, "Oh yeah, use the
STAR method." Make sure to write out and
list out in bullet points maybe or in a
paragraph format what you're going to
actually say or end the story with, oh
yeah, everyone was happy, everyone was
pleased, it was a success. And make sure
that you're professional in your
delivery, right? So, don't be vulnerable
or don't speak casually because it's a
professional interview, right? And you
want to demonstrate that you can be a
professional person. That's what most
people do. Now, there's nothing
inherently bad about any of this, right?
The STAR method, for those of you who
maybe aren't familiar, means situation,
task, action, and result. It is a very
good way to structure your stories
because it ensures that you actually
talk about what the situation was, what
actions you specifically took, and what
actually ended up happening, but it
should only serve as a guardrail. And
I'll talk a little bit more about this
later. But secondly, listing out what
you did isn't inherently bad either, but
it's only to guide you again and to give
you a sense of structure as you talk
through the story. with these last two
as well. I'm going to touch on these in
just a second, but what you're going to
see is that these things that most
people do that 90% of people are doing
are not necessarily bad, but there's
actually a ton of nuance with giving
behavioral interview questions. Now,
let's talk about what that nuance is.
But before I get into it, actually I
want to give you two stories,
exact same facts, but told in two
completely different ways. And I want
you to imagine that say you're
interviewing me, for example, you're the
interviewer, and there are two
candidates backtoback, same exact facts
to their story, same exact outcome, but
told in completely different ways. Let's
start with candidate one. So let's say
that the question being asked is, "Hey,
tell me about a time when you had to
convince leadership of your position."
Yeah, happy to. So my freshman summer of
college, I interned at a startup. It was
a tech startup. We were selling software
and I was a sales intern. Now the
company was based in Silicon Valley and
most of its customers were based in the
US as a result.
And at one point in the summer, the
founder of the company came to me and
said, "Hey, Matt, we're doing really
well in the US, but we actually want to
explore expanding into the British
market. You know, I think that because
the people in the UK are also English
speakers that they'll also like our
software." And so being the sales
intern, I went out and I started talking
to people and I realized pretty quickly
that there actually is quite a few
nuances between the US and the UK
market. And the people in the UK market
actually weren't as interested in our
product. And so I went back to my boss
um and actually before I did that, I did
a little bit of my own research and I
discovered that maybe the German market
would be a better place to start,
especially if we were going to expand
into the the European space. And I went
to him and I said, "Hey man, I think
that we actually shouldn't go into the
UK market. I think that we should go
after Germany because it's more
attractive." And he completely disagreed
with me and he basically shot down my
idea and I was really upset. But a week
later, I came back to him with a better
proposal. This time I had done a little
bit more research and he was totally
impressed when he saw all the work that
I had done. And ultimately we ended up
going through with that approach.
Expanded into the German market. Company
made a ton of money and everything was a success.
success.
Okay, I'm going to stop there. Now,
candidate number two, tell me about a
time when you had to convince leadership
of your opinion.
Sure, absolutely. So during my freshman
summer of college, I interned as a sales
intern at a fast growing tech startup in
San Francisco and we were telling we
were selling software to other
businesses in the US primarily. And at
one point the founder came to me and
said, "Hey Matt, I think that we should
try to expand our footprint into the UK
market." And the reason why I think this
is because they're also English speakers
and I think that the value prop is also
very clear to business owners and so it
feels like the right place for us to
start our international expansion. Now
as a sales intern basically smiling and
dialing all summer talking to tons of
customers getting a ton of rejections
but also learning a lot and getting all
those reps in. And so, you know, the
first thing I did was I went and I
talked to like 10 customers, potential
customers in the UK market. And very
quickly I realized that actually there
is quite a bit of nuance between the UK
and the US market. For example, the
regulations are very different,
especially for the type of software that
we were selling. There were some serious
privacy concerns. And so because the
difference in privacy regulations, a lot
of these business owners were actually
quite hesitant to adopt our product even
though they saw the value prop.
And so before I went back to my boss, I
decided to do a little bit of my own due
diligence. And I started thinking about
other countries in Europe that might be
open to this. And I realized through my
research that the German market actually
has very similar uh privacy regulations
as the US. And so I went right back to
my boss and I said, "Hey man, look, I
know you're super excited about the UK
market, but I actually think we should
go look into the German market because
I've talked to customers in the UK
market and they're honestly not that
interested." And he came back at me and
said, "Really, man? Look, I've been
thinking about this idea for months and
I hear you, but at the same time, we are
a startup and we have limited resources
and so I don't think we can just go
after some completely different market
just because of a hunch that you have.
And in that moment, you know, I'll be
honest, I was pretty upset because it
felt like he was just writing me off.
But I knew that I had to persist. And so
what I did was I said, "Hey, you know
what? Look, I totally hear you. Let me
get back to you. I'm going to do a
little bit more digging so that we can
have more confidence in this idea." And
for the next week, I basically talked to
10 15 more potential customers in the
German market. And I compiled and
synthesized all those findings. is I
also did a bunch of research on my own
reading through a lot of the regulations
and the legal requirements for this
market and ultimately compiled it into a
presentation a tightlyknit concise
presentation and went back to my boss
and said hey look I know we had this
conversation last week but since then
I've talked to 15 more customers I've
analyzed very closely the German
regulations and I've done a lot more
research and I have a much higher degree
of conviction now that this still the
right place for us to focus our efforts.
And I know and I hear you that the UK
market is very promising. I do still
think there is a lot of opportunity
there, but I just wanted to bring this
to you as a follow-up to our previous
conversation. And when he saw that I
genuinely wanted to help his company
succeed and that I wasn't just trying to
push my agenda around, but I genuinely
wanted to help him and his company. I
think something switched inside and he
was suddenly very open to this new idea
and he took a look at the analysis and
he saw that I had put in hours of work
into talking to all these customers and
really um being boots on the ground
doing a lot of due diligence and
ultimately what actually ended up
happening was we ended up expanding into
the German and the UK market but we just
had to slightly adjust our approach in
the UK market to work around those
regulations and the learning for the
company was that every time we expand
into the international markets, we have
to be very thoughtful about how we
approach the legal and regulatory side
of things because of the nature of our
product. And another big thing that I
took away from that experience was that
look, sometimes if you get told no once,
that doesn't necessarily mean it's the
end of that. And if it's an idea or
something that you really have
conviction in because you are the
closest to the the data then you
shouldn't be afraid to come back again
with an improved version of your
original uh product or idea. And I know
at McKenzie for example, there are going
to be many situations where you have to
deal with senior folks as a junior
consultant, whether it's your client or
whether it's your senior partner. And
many times they may disagree with me on
certain things, but as the BA, as the
junior analyst, oftentimes you're
closest to the data and you're closest
to the conversations with the customers.
And so it's actually in your best
interest to share your honest thoughts
based on what you're seeing. And so that
mindset I really see myself bringing
into a management consulting role at McKenzie.
McKenzie.
All right, I'm going to stop there. So
that was a little bit of a longer winded
story, but the reason why I kept it a
little bit longer is I wanted to really
show you how I tie in that detail and
that storytelling into the second story.
And you can really see and notice the
difference between the two stories even
though the facts are completely
identical. And so if two people walk
into an interview with the same exact
background and the same exact stories,
but one person tells the stories in a
more effective way, which I'm going to
talk about how to do that in just a
second, that second person is going to
win nine times out of 10. with that one
time being if like the first person's
dad works at the firm as a senior
partner or something like that. Uh no
shade being thrown. But now let's talk
about what you need to actually do and
what you can actually implement to turn
your stories into the type that land top
1% roles at companies where the
acceptance rate is literally less than
getting into Harvard. So step one is you
got to show don't tell. And this is
easier said than done. When I say show
don't tell, I mean you need to actually
immerse and engage the listener in your
story. You're not just doing a
regurgitation of facts. You're not just
doing a restatement of facts. And this
is why if you list out everything you're
going to do in a sequential order,
that's not a bad thing, but it's going
to automatically cause you to start
thinking in a sequential way. And if you
just think of your story as like a set
of facts and things that you need to
cover, and you're like, "Okay, I'm going
to say this, and then I'm going to say
that, and then am I going to say this,
and then finally I'm going to end the
story like that?" What you're doing is
you're actually going to make yourself
tell the interviewer what happened
without actually showing them. And so
how do you actually show them? Well, the
easiest way to do this is actually to
just talk about more of your raw
unfiltered thoughts. So talk about what
you're actually thinking in the moment
of certain parts of the story. For
example, when the founder of the company
disagreed with my proposal that we
should go look into the German market
instead of the UK market, what did I say
in the second story? Well, I said,
"Yeah, you know, no, in that moment, I
was I was really upset. Like I was I was
gutted. I felt like he just wrote me
off. Those are my raw unfiltered
thoughts." And the reason why this is so
effective is because you cannot filter
your thoughts. You can filter what you
say, but you cannot filter your
thoughts. And so therefore, by talking
about your thoughts, you're actually
being a little bit more vulnerable and a
little bit more authentic by admitting,
okay, this was my gut reaction. Now,
some of you might be thinking, okay, but
doesn't that potentially paint me in a
bad light? Well, not if you don't stop
there. After you've given your initial
raw thoughts, then you need to
transition into like, okay, what was
your actual response? So, even though I
felt gutted and I felt like he just
wrote me off and I was like, what the
heck? I also knew that look, I have a
lot of conviction in this idea and good
things come to people who persist. And
so I'm gonna go out and instead of just
taking the L and calling it quits and
curling up into a ball in a corner and
just crying, I'm going to actually go
out there and talk to like 10 or 15
other people in the German market. I'm
going to do a bunch of analysis and
research. I'm going to show the founder
that I actually believe in this idea and
it's not just some random
spur-of-the- moment idea that I had one
day and I just wanted to throw it at him
and and get my way, right? I'm actually
serious about this and I'm willing to
invest serious time and effort into
proving that my idea is valid. Whether
or not he decides to take it is a whole
another matter, but it's all about
showing that you actually care. But
what's the other thing I did? I ended
not just by talking about you know what
I learned or just saying oh everyone was
pleased and it was a success and you
know the company ended up doing it and
and everything went well right which is
kind of what I said in the first story
instead I talked about how okay I
learned that being persistent is really
important and oftentimes convincing or
changing someone's mind requires you to
maybe be okay with taking no at first
but not giving up and so at McKenzie I
know that there are going to be many
situations where you're working on a
high pressure case. As a junior
consultant, you have to deal with people
who are a lot older than you, like
senior partners. You need to deal with
clients who don't want to listen to you.
And you have to basically convince them
of your way. And so I can definitely see
myself taking the experiences that I've
learned from the startup to a consulting
role where I know I will run into these
situations, but I am empowered to handle
them in a way that is grounded in my own
convictions knowing that as a junior
person at a company, you are typically
the closest to the data or the analysis.
You are the boots on the ground and so
you're actually closer than your senior
managing partner who's like 10,000 feet
in the air. And so what I'm actually
doing there is I'm not ending the story
here. I'm ending by talking about what
it would be like if I actually worked
for them. I'm extrapolating. I'm doing
what's called future pacing where
essentially you make them think about
what it would be like if you were
literally working for them right now.
Forget all of this stuff, right? All
this interview prep advice. The only
thing that really matters in an
interview, well, I guess besides the
technical portion, which is probably
like 10% importance as long as you can
pass that, is can you convince them and
make them see you working for them? Can
they envision you working for them?
Especially if it's a very competitive,
high-powered job like consulting or
investment banking where you're going to
be spending like 80, 70, 80 hours a week
in the office with these people. They
100% have to see you in the office with
them. They have to be able to envision
it. If they can't, then too bad. Doesn't
matter how interesting your story is or
how good you are with the technical
portion of the interview. You're just
not going to get the job because you
have to convince them that they're not
going to make a a big mistake by hiring
you and they're not going to regret it
when it's like 10 p.m. in the office on
a Tuesday night and you're just like
being super annoying or a net negative
to the team. And so by extrapolating
into the future, talking about
everything that you learned and then
talking about how you will apply it in
the literal role that you are applying
for, you are essentially doing like an
inception play where if you've seen that
movie, basically the whole premise of
the movie is Leonardo DiCaprio goes into
people's uh dreams and plants a seed of
an idea so deep down that they don't
they don't even know that it is their
idea. That's essentially what you're
doing here too is you're doing you're
like incepting the idea that oh this is
what it would be like if Matt was
working for me. Oh wow he would yeah
like he would demonstrate he would be a
leader. He would be super proactive.
He'd be such a hard worker. Like I know
I could depend on him. That's what
you're trying to do. And so honestly, if
you don't take anything else from this
video today, I want you to just take
this one thing away, which is that at
the there are just a few things that you
need to accomplish with answering
behavioral interview questions. One is
obviously you do need to demonstrate the
quality that's being tested. So for
example, leadership or integrity, but
most people stop there. The other thing
that you need to do is with your
delivery, you need to make the story
engaging by really opening up and being
a little bit more vulnerable and
authentic about talking about your inner
thoughts a little bit more. And you need
to tie all those experiences together to
obviously demonstrate that you were
effective in that situation, but also
future pace it so that they can envision
you applying those same qualities on
their team in that job that you're
literally interviewing for right now.
And I guarantee that if you internalize
all of this that I've just told you
today, information which has taken me
probably more than 5 years of just
messing up to learn and you apply that
information, you don't just click off
the video and forget about it. If you
actually apply this information in your
interviews, you're going to see just a
step function increase in your job
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