News & Press

January 11, 2004

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D.J. Burrough
Special for the Republic

Let’s hear your story

Increasingly, if you are going to land the dream job you want, you have to learn to be a bit of an actor. It's not that you are going to be asked to recite a Shakespearean soliloquy during an interview, but more and more companies are using behavioral methods to uncover the best candidates. In behavioral interviews, candidates are asked to place themselves into hypothetical situations and play out how they would deal with the situation.

“It causes interviewers to be specific about how they would handle a situation,” said Linda Baugh, president of American Career Executives. “They are looking for certain characteristics, so they are asking questions that will elicit answers that will tell them.”

Don’t embellish or fabricate stories, Baugh said. It’s too easy to trip up when you do that and it could kill any changes that the interviewer will take you seriously. “It’s much better to say, ‘Gosh, that is something I haven’t thought about before or experienced in my career,’” she said.

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