The Case Study approach to interview preperation.

Interviewing can feel like a performance it can feel like you are being asked to jump through hoops, its a stressful situation you are being asked to "Impress me" and as someone who is highly skilled in your professional area of expertise you may have years of experience you want to convey.

But what is the best way to do this?

Preparation preperation preperation!

A quick way to cover a broad range of topics with real life example and experience during your preperation is creating case studies.

This approach is discussed in a slightly different manner in “The essential guide for hiring and getting hired” by Lou Adler. This is a very useful book exploring all elements of the hiring process and can give tips that are useful for everyone from a In-house, agency recruiter, HR professional, Hiring manager to a job seeker who wants to understand the process they are a part of. The principals of the ‘Case Study’ approach is how I have interpreted some of the ideas Lou Adler came up with. I am trying to get Lou's ideas out to a wider audience than just recruiters and full credit to him the man is an innovator in his field.

The idea of ‘Case Study’ approach is to allow you to focus your ideas, achievements and results into a snippet to represent the role in question rather than trying to explain all of the results you delivered in a five or ten year period and not really getting the message across. If you are able to draw on a case study it gives you a readymade tool kit to refer to, rather than thinking across the entire role for the right response.

Think of a project, assignment or task you are particularly proud of. Next, break it into building blocks to create the story which can be used as a framework for questions that are thrown at you. Include as much detail as you can manage:

• Skills demonstrated.

• The team you were a part of (this may be as a leader or a member of the team).

• Stakeholders you worked with (internal or external).

• Obstacles and problems (because no good story involves smooth sailing all the way).

• Skills learnt or developed.

• How you have improved or are improving as a result of the project.

• New things you tried that worked.

• Achievements and results that were delivered.

The idea is to go into as much finite details as you can, this will allow you to confidently structure your story and give a good account of your experience. You may choose to do multiple case studies for a role to reflect different skills you possess such as one to explore your management skills and another to show your technical abilities. This is especially important if you have been in a position a long time. Discussing a number of years as a whole may not demonstrate how you have progressed as there will be a lot of information to get across. If you can break it into segments, it gives your story defined chapters and shows progression.

This technique will be more relevant for candidates who have been in permanent employment for a long period of time rather than let’s say a contractor who has been in a short term assignment. This technique can be useful for anyone, as communication is key in an interview and having your thoughts organised before going in will allow you to clearly tell your story in the short window of time you may have.