If you are a sales professional or want to become one, or if you are looking for a new sales job, you will face one of the toughest interview processes of any job seeker.
Employers wanna know about more than just your skills and experience–they want to know how you’ll get along day-to-day. How will you react in stressful situations? What will you do when a customer gets cranky, or there’s some issue with the product?
One way for hiring managers to get to that information is to use behavioral interview questions, sometimes known as the STAR technique.
STAR stands for (thanks to http://www.quintcareers.com/STAR_interviewing.html for the chart):
| Situation or Task
|
Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You must describe a specific event or situation, not a generalized description of what you’ve done in the past. Be sure to give enough detail for the interviewer to understand. This situation can be from a previous job, from a volunteer experience, or any relevant event. |
| Action you took | Describe the action you took and be sure to keep the focus on you. Even if you are discussing a group project or effort, describe what you did — not the efforts of the team. Don’t tell what you might do, tell what you did. |
| Results you achieved | What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? |
What this does is, it provides the manager with real-world detail about how you do your career opportunity. You can’t just get by with “standard interview answers” here. But it also gives you a fantastic opportunity to set yourself apart from other candidates and demonstrate why you’re the best candidate for the position.
You should always be prepared for these kinds of musings in your position interview. They really are a great way for you to highlight your experience, and many hiring managers in laboratory sales, laboratory sales, pharmaceutical device sales, lab sales, imaging sales, laboratory sales, medical diagnostics revenue, and biotech sales like to use ‘em because they’re so effective. Your best way to prepare is to think back over your career. What situations can you think of where you resolved some issue, or successfully addressed a problem? Make a list. As you’re preparing for your interview, think about which of these stories best fits the requirements of the position you’re interviewing for (since you always tailor your answers to fit the position). Be sure to emphasize the positive outcome that was a result of your actions in each situation. Here’s a link to an article with an example of how to create a STAR Interview story.
Rich DeMatteo has a really great post that covers a little more for you: How to Survive a Behavioral Interview. One of his tips that I like is that you shouldn’t be afraid of a little silence in the interview. If you’ve to think a minute to frame your answer, that’s OK.
Also, don’t miss this transcript of my interview with a revenue manager, sales trainer, and a vice-president of sales and marketing. We discuss behavioral event interviews in-depth. It’s a great resource for you.
Article courtesy of Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized medical and medical sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved
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