How To Succeed In Interviews

Morning,

I hope you enjoyed your Bank Holiday Monday (UK readers).

Let’s get back on the Data Science grind.

Chances are, you spend 57% of your day refreshing your emails.

Checking if you’ve heard back from your job applications.

Am I right?

It can be easy to get caught up in finding interviews, that you forget how to prepare for them.

I bet you’ve heard of the STAR technique (situation, task action, result).

If not, it’s a structure you can use to explain previous projects you’ve worked on.

It’s useful because it shows off your skills.

But it’s limited.

Employers care if you can do the job they’re hiring for (i.e. what’s in the future).

But STAR only focuses on the past.

This is a problem my mate Akanbi was running into.

He’d had a few final interviews.

But he kept getting rejected.

Instead of focusing on his past work, he also started talking about how he’d approach the new job.

He made plans for these areas

• Development (how was he going to get used to the new environment?)

• Projects (what could he work on?)

• Relationships (how was he going to get to know people and work well with them?)

A few weeks later, he got an offer for a data analyst role in Bournemouth.

(It’s like Santorini but the UK version haha).

So don’t just focus on your past work.

Talk about how you’d attack your new gig.

That’s how you’ll land a job with exciting projects, opportunities to grow and good work/life balance.