Interview Strategy - Scenario, Solution, Outcome

[00:00:01] Welcome to Business Finance and Soul, my name is Shaun Enders and I'm a curious entrepreneur. I love exploring business, personal finance and consciousness. I'll jump around topics, offer my opinions and occasionally interview interesting people. Looking forward to going on this journey. Let's be curious together.

[00:00:27] Welcome back to another episode of Business Finance and Soul. Today I am going to give you some interview hints, tips, information. And this can go from both sides. This can be you interviewing someone. And this can be you being interviewed.

[00:00:47] And I think that's an important distinction because sometimes we believe that interview strategies are kind of a one way street where if you're about to get interviewed, you are in a space where you have one strategy. And if you're interviewing someone, you have a different strategy.

[00:01:05] And let's be clear. There are a ton of different interview strategies. There are a ton of different questions you can ask and the way that you probe into a situation or somebody's background or company.

[00:01:23] This is not that. This is not to cover every strategy. This is to give you one strategy. But because this strategy is very important, it is something that we need to cover over the course of a few minutes. And I want to talk about how this unfolds.

[00:01:40] So we call a transition staffing group. We call this SSO. And what SSO stands for is scenario, solution outcome. Some people may have heard of different techniques like the star method.

[00:02:00] I've heard of that method for interviewing and the star method and SSO are both loosely tied to really behavioral interview questions. I think that's where we're kind of starting is this is a behavioral interview question. Star stands for situation task action and results.

[00:02:27] SSO is really easy to remember because it's scenario, the solution, the outcome. So whether you subscribe to star or you subscribe to SSO, this is a behavioral methodology. And you really want to differentiate yourself in the marketplace when you're interviewing with someone through this method and the strategy.

[00:02:57] Now, I'm going to cover both sides. I'm going to start from the candidate perspective first. Then we'll talk about it from the client perspective or the interviewer perspective. Let's be more specific in our world. We would call it client candidate.

[00:03:11] In your world, you may call it the interviewer. So the interviewer uses SSO in the following way. Let's give it an example. Clients have you ever been exposed to kind of, you know, deadline driven environments. We run a pretty fast shop here.

[00:03:38] We've got a lot of deadlines and I'm curious. You know, if that's something that you feel comfortable with. Now you have two choices on an answer here. You've got one choice, which happens more often than you think, which is the answer says something like, yeah, I actually,

[00:03:58] I like deadlines in environments. I thrive under pressure and have no problem working in that type of environment. So there you go. Mr. interviewer, I love deadlines. I would thrive under pressure. I'm ready to go.

[00:04:18] You're going to leave a lot on the table there and let's talk about where you go from the SSO methodology. The SSO is give a scenario. So it might be something like this. Yeah, in fact, I do thrive in deadline driven environments.

[00:04:40] If I could, I can share a story with you about a recent deadline that that we had in our department. And the interviewer says, yeah, absolutely, please. So now you're painting the picture.

[00:04:54] You say, well, we had, with this situation where we had to produce a budget for a department that was making a big acquisition. Now, we already had our typical work that need to be done. This is very ad hoc. It was last minute.

[00:05:13] And we need to get this budget out quickly. And so this was something where I had to take point because the other stick team members had a lot on their plate. I wanted to run with it and kind of put my stamp on things.

[00:05:33] And so what I did is I prioritized different parts of this budget who was going to help with it and quickly gave them actionable items and a deadline in terms of time frame. And we communicated that to the department that needed this.

[00:05:51] And all of us in concert came together as an end results and produced that budget faster than they actually did. And they were happy with the results. So in that scenario, what you can see is I've given a scenario, which is, hey, we have this situation come up.

[00:06:15] The solution was I took point and the outcome was that the department that needed it was extremely happy because we came in faster than expected. Not only are you saying, yeah, I thrive in deadline-driven environments. You're given an actual tangible scenario of where you did show up.

[00:06:40] And this is so important. And then people miss this all the time. Now, you can apply that to any question that comes about. Have you ever dealt with a difficult manager? Have you ever dealt with a difficult co-worker?

[00:06:55] How do you feel or do you think that we're getting a new system? And how do you feel about learning new technology? The standard answer of, yeah, no, I love learning new technology. That's not going to paint the picture. That doesn't paint you into the role.

[00:07:20] That just says, yeah, I'm a meatable. What about painting yourself into the role? What about giving the comfort that, yeah, actually in my last role if you don't mind, we actually had a new ERP system that we were implementing or a new ATS or a new CRM.

[00:07:37] Whatever role you're in, whatever technology and I got to be part of the implementation team. And so now you're showcasing your true tangible skill set that they can rely on. They can see you in a space of where they're acquiring new tech and guess what?

[00:07:57] You already feel comfortable in that space and you can immediately add value and they can see you adding value. So just think about why SSO is so important. And if you want to use STAR again, not a problem.

[00:08:11] I think STAR is just longer as an acronym as a SO. So clean, scenarios, solution outcome and this again applies to everything. But you got to practice it. You've got to have some stories that you're able to recall. And it's got to be a good outcome.

[00:08:26] Keep in mind, I know I should now have to say this but it has to be a good outcome. It can't be a failed outcome. So it has to be a positive story, something that you're proud of and that you want to share.

[00:08:37] And sometimes just having stories written down, you know, not the full story but something that helps You know, really get the memory to recall back to that. It's good to have a few bullet points on your folio when you go into an interview that helps you recall stories.

[00:08:57] So whatever system you need to use for that, that could actually be a whole mother episode because I think too many people don't come prepared with notes. Something to really make sure that they can pull that recall.

[00:09:10] Some are better than others, you know, at their own ability to recall a memory and, you know, if that's you that's great but if it's not, you got to have a system. Now let's talk about the employer side.

[00:09:29] The reason this is important, it's different, right? You're not actually saying give me a scenario solution outcome like that. But in your mind, you really are. You want to see how this person describes.

[00:09:48] You don't want to give them the cheat sheet but in your mind, that's what you should be expecting. You know, and I don't mind if both parties know that each one is trying to do this because what we're trying to see is what tangible experiences this person have.

[00:10:02] And we should be judging the candidates that we're interviewing. We should be judging them based on their tangible ability, right? Like their experience. And if they don't have a story, then I'll have an experience. That's fine. Let's talk about it.

[00:10:17] I would love to tell you that I have experience in that I don't but that's why this job is exciting to me because I'm eager to learn that experience. Perfectly acceptable. Own it. If you don't have the experience, don't lie.

[00:10:30] But if you're interviewing somebody, you should look for them to be able to articulate the scenario in which they have the experience. You should look for them to be able to give you the solution and you should look for them to tell you how it ended up.

[00:10:44] So when we talk to candidates that are going out to interview, you know, we want to prepare them in that space. We're not going to give them the story. We're not going to help them deliver it.

[00:10:59] We're not on site with them. But we are, in fact, saying, hey, you should know. It's your background. It's your experience. You've got it. These are all actionable and very tangible, very real examples that,

[00:11:15] frankly, the whole point in the interview is to be able to talk about and brag about your highlight reel, what you've been exposed to.

[00:11:23] So I thought this was a great episode to just talk about, introduce this idea of SSO if you've been a candidate and you worked with us over the course of the past two decades.

[00:11:33] You know, this is something that we talk about. This is something that we say, hey, come to prepare prepared to go speak about your experience. Make sure you have a highlight reel that you can articulate and I think that that's really cool.

[00:11:46] It shows that all of your experience, all of what you're going to expose to matters. And sometimes you're a lot less nervous in an interview when you know a story because it's your story because it's your experience.

[00:12:02] And you don't have to worry about how you're going to feel the next question. You worry more about how do you articulate your history and your exposure. So that's what I've got for you today.

[00:12:17] From time to time, I'll put out a little helpful hints. I really thought about this on the podcast. I went, you know, I've been helping people get jobs for over 20, let's just 25 years.

[00:12:32] This is this is 25 years this year in the industry and I've successfully seen jesus thousands of people get new jobs and helping with this guidance both from the client side on helping them interview

[00:12:51] and on the candidate side with helping them interview really, really, you see the value and the impact that you're having when two people get to actually get to the point of real communication.

[00:13:04] And where what they say matters and so I just see this and I'm like, gosh, I should be talking about this a little bit more.

[00:13:10] I'm going to put this out there because there's so many cool stories of people landing jobs that they deserve that they might not have gotten because they didn't have some of these tools in their toolbox.

[00:13:20] So until next time as always, stay curious and I'm looking forward to sharing some insight down the road.