[Right Job Interview Tips to Get Hired]
'Tell me a story ' - An Important Question Frequently Asked During a Job Interview
Steps Explained Below On How to Answer it to Create Immediate Pull on the Interviewer that Speeds You Ahead of the Competition
Interviewer: Tell me a story.
Candidate: Aaaa...umm...cough – cough... What kind of story?
Interviewer: Nothing specific... Any story you would like to share.
Candidate: Aaaa... I can’t think of any story...
If you don’t want this to happen to you in a job interview, then read on as I will be sharing with you how to tackle this job interview question that appears a very casual question but plays a very important role in evaluating a candidate for a job position.
Hello first time job seekers.
A job interview is an occasion where the interviewers experiment with questions to eliminate or shortlist candidates for a particular post. They take this liberty to surprise and sometimes even shock the candidate and see how he responds.
And, 'Tell me a story' is such a question.
Most of the candidates might not even have imagined that they will be asked such a question. After all it's a job interview and who asks such questions in a serious job interview?
But that’s what a job interview is – you don’t know what questions will be thrown at you.
The reason being, there is no syllabus for the type of questions that can be asked in a job interview. So the candidate is mostly at a loss as to what questions to prepare. Because of this most candidates don’t prepare and think that whatever question will be asked they will come up with some answer on the spot to satisfy the interviewer. And when such questions are asked suddenly, they are not ready for it. Result, their mind goes blank, they fumble for answers and leave a bad impression on the interviewer.
They may even get rejected.
Before we look into how to prepare for this question, let’s understand why such questions are a part of a job interview process?
By asking the candidate to tell a story the interviewers are testing the psychology of the candidate.
The kind of story you narrate tells a lot about how you think. Yes. People with high experience in conducting job interview can tell about your character based on the story you tell.
They want to test - when given a chance - what kind of story do you choose to tell?
Is it a positive story or a negative one?
Is it a story of success and triumph or a story of failure and depression?
Is it about kindness or about being selfish?
Are you criticising someone in your story or are you getting inspired by someone?
Interviewers love to put such googly questions in fron of the candidates to catch the candidate off guard and see how they respond to it.
With such questions they also test the candidate’s capability to respond to sudden, unprepared situations that may pop up in workplace.
During a job interview there is not much time to think and prepare. Even though you must have read or heard many stories, at that particular moment what kind of story jumps up in your mind, and out of those stories, the story you choose to tell the interviewer will give them an opportunity to peep into your inner personality - who are you deep inside?
If you are a first time job seeker and have never thought that this kind of question can also be asked in a job interview, now you know. Now you are no longer ignorant. Now it's time to start working on it.
So, now let’s look at how to go about preparing answer to this question.
Firstly, let's understand the meaning of the word prepare.
To prepare means: to make someone ready for something that will happen in the future. Like, a job interview.
This means that to make someone ready requires time, effort, and practice.
Now, before you start practicing answering this question in a job interview, you should have many stories in your mind.
These stories can be fictional or real. It can be based on someone’s life or it can be an incident from your own life. It can be dramatic, tragic or inspiring.
In order to have stories to narrate you need to do two things:
1. Read a lot of stories in the form of storybooks, novels, magazines, even newspapers.
2. Be observant about what’s happening in your life and around it. Document the interesting incidents that occur in your life. This can become a great personal story.
Once you have your collection of stories you have to learn to narrate them.
How do you do that?
Share it with your friends or anyone willing to listen.
Make sure to keep your story short, simple, and interesting or inspiring.
Because you will be asked to tell a story you need to practice narrating it, not writing it. Be excited about the story. It will keep your audience interested.
With friends you can share any kind of stories. But during a job interview you need to be careful because you are sharing the story for a purpose and not merely entertainment. The purpose is to reveal your character in front of the interviewer. What impression do you want to create in the minds of the interviewer, will be decided by the story you choose to narrate.
Remember, when you go for a job in an organisation, it’s a place where your capabilities are tested every single day. Whether you are feeling down, whether you had your breakfast or not, doesn’t have much value. If you are on job, you need to do your job keeping all your personal feelings aside.
That’s why the story you choose to narrate in the job interview should have certain characteristics that goes way beyond you liking the story or not.
Here are a few points that will help you choose a story:
Make your story based on real life. If it’s about you or something you witnessed you can relate to it quite well and narrate it with great passion.
Make your story about something that changed your life for better. Make it positive and inspiring. It will have instant connection.
Even if you are narrating a fiction or a fairytale, keep the theme of positivity, inspirational or triumph in your story.
Never tell a story of pity, failure or about unfairness.
Never tell a story that makes fun of a human being.
In all, through your story you should come out as someone who is optimistic.
You will get best results if you are true to yourself as you narrate the story and are not telling the story just for the sake of impressing the interviewer.
Remember, once you get a job, it’s not permanent. If you don’t deliver on what you said during the job interview, you may be fired. So, it pays to be genuine and authentic in the long run.
There can be a situation in a job interview where the interviewer can ask you to narrate a story based on something specific.
Lets understand this by an example.
Say, in your Resume you have mentioned that one of your strengths is - you are a team player.
The interviewer can ask you to narrate a story from your life wherein you demonstrated the skills of a team player, where you showed the qualities of being a team player.
Here you should have a story based on a situation from your life that should impress upon the interviewer that yes, you have the qualities of being a team player and you can be a strong member of a team.
This is the reason I stress repeatedly that whatever you write in your Resume have strong proofs in the form of real stories to justify it.
Remember, your life is a movie.
Your movie.
You have the potential to be the hero of your movie.
What story would you like to tell the world?
You can only tell the world the stories based on the kind of life you have lived.
Make sure you live a life worth narrating.
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