A Case Study: Stand Out In A Job Interview by Starting With Why
Take from Find Your Why by Simon Sinek, David Mean And Peter Docker
“The HR director, dressed in a crisp, grey business suit, looked up at Emily and barked his standard opening question “So , what can you bring to our company?”
A few months before she graduated from College, Emily applied for a position at a large global corporation. A straight-A student who had gone to university on a fullscholarship, she easily made it through the first cut and now found herself in a panel interview, where she sat across the table from the HR director and three other executives. They could see from her application that she was bright, but they worried about her lack of real-world experience. More important, they wanted to find out if she would fit their culture and how she would cope under pressure.
The man in grey elaborated: “We have a lot of highly qualified applicants for this position. Tell us what you have that they don’t.”
A conscientious student, Emily had prepared for the interview by learning everything she could about the company. But every other candidate had access to the same information. So Emily went a step further. Emily unleashed her WHY.
“Before I talk about what I might be able to bring to your company,” she calmly told the HR director, “let me first give the reason why I get out of bed every day. “I strive to help people be the best version of themselves. That’s what inspires me. Based on your website, I sense that this is precisely what you believe in too. So, why wouldn’t I apply to be part of your organisation?”
That caught their attention.
The interviewers stopped shuffling their papers and looked her in the face. Emily then segued to a more traditional pitch about her skills and strengths, but the battle was already won. That first exchange, which less than thirty seconds, had already persuaded the interviewers to hire her. By starting with her WHY, Emily had spoken directly to the limbic, decision making centres of their brains. By showing who she was, not just what she could do, she formed an instant and genuine connection. That’s all it took. They knew in their gut that they wanted her on their team.
It was relatively straightforward for Emily too. Instead of using prep time to come up with clever answers to a host of hypothetical questions, she’d focused on being comfortable with communicating her WHY. Once she faced the panel, all she had to do was speak “from her heart” (i.e. her limbic brain) about what inspired her to want to work there. The rest of the interview felt much more like a conversation than an inquisition and all her answers validated the panellists’ intuition. Afterwards, her cell phone rang even before she got home. It was the HR director offering her the job.