"So, what do you do for work?"

I remember being asked this question a lot when I was dissatisfied with my career. My usual strategy would be to give a pat answer and immediately turn question back on person who asked it.

My avoidance of question wasn't so much that I was considered unsuccessful or that my work was embarrassing, it was more about fact that I didn't feel personally successful doing what I was doing.

I longed to be excited not evasive when asked this question. I wanted to be able to speak for more than 2 seconds before I turned question back on my inquisitor.

What do you do when asked this question and how do you feel? If you find yourself avoiding and not feeling all that great about your answer, it's time to change your answer and here's a simple way to get started...

Ask yourself this: "What do I REALLY want to say when someone says, "So what do you do for work?""

Competency Based Interviews - 6 Steps to Success!

More and more organisations are using a competency based framework for interviewing. Here are 6 steps to help you make best impression - and get job!

Competency based interviews are intended to get best from you, candidate, whilst also fulfilling needs of organisation to get very best person for job. There are some easy steps to make most of yourself and have a much better chance of success.

1. Prepare well, but keep it sensible As long as you know job you are going for, ask for details of what you will be measured against. Ask for a set of competencies. Ask for a job description. This sets you up to succeed, not just because you are better informed, but also because you have asked - which will impress decision-makers, before you even get there!
2. Get Creative Here is time to use your own experiences to create 'stories' which you can use in actual interview. These 'stories' are real scenarios that you have been a part of, which over a period of days and weeks beforehand, you write up. Maybe you will have 20+ initial ideas.
3. Leverage! Take very best scenarios and write them out, bullet points first. Then flesh them out, whilst referring carefully to competencies you've been given. It is amazing how you can 'tune-in' your scenario to include many, if not all of competencies. And if you can't fit them all in, there will be a use for them - later!
4. Practice By reading through your scenarios (and by now you should not have more than six or seven) you will familiarise yourself with contents, so well, that they will become second nature - even in scary experience of an interview.
5. In Interview There are some tactics in here too!