You’re excited, you’ve got an interview! So you go to the internet and google the 50 most common interview questions because you’re high speed and shit so you’re going to be ready. Particularly you’re thinking about how you’re going to answer that “What are your weaknesses question”
Well guess what Airborne, every other swinging dick out there is doing that, and companies are getting wise to it. The point of the job interview is to see what you’re going to be like as an employee, not to stump you, and recently companies have started to move to behavioral interviewing.
Behavioral interviews are the best way to figure out what a person is going to be like when they’re on the job because past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior. Questions sound like this:
Tell me about a time when you had to make a difficult and unpopular decision
Tell me about a time when you had to negatively counsel someone
Tell me about a time when you had to identify a customer need and deliver to that need
Yeah, not so easy now huh hotshot?
I wasn’t ready for this, and really, haven’t started getting good at it until the last year or so. Luckily I have a gift. Some people are gifted athletes, or amazing singers, or incredible artists, I have none of those skills. God’s gift to me was the ability to think on my feet and bullshit like a real-life Axel Foley. So when I encountered these questions for the first time, I was able to maneuver my way around them.
Let’s be honest though, i’ve seen plenty of you fuckers at promotion boards, even when you know what the question is going to be, you still screw it up, so here are some tips for you.
All your answers need to be in the STAR format
Situation- what was going on
Task- what was your role
Action- what did you do
Result- the result of course
One of the mistakes I made was trying to explain too much of the Situation when I was giving a civilian a story about the military. It went something like this:
Our unit was finishing our deployment and the incoming unit was going to relieve us. This is called a RIP/TOA or Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority. Our AO or Area of Operations encompassed about 128km of main highway from a bit South of Baghdad almost all the way to Kuwait. We did right-seat/left-seat rides which basically means you’re driving for a while, then they are….
AAAAAGGHHHHHH!! Stop! I’ve talked for several minutes boring the shit out of the interviewer and I haven’t even started talking about what I did! Here’s this same example today:
The situation was that our unit was leaving Iraq and we were getting replaced, which generally is the most dangerous time of the deployment. My task was to create the plan….
That’s it. One sentence. You don’t need to educate these people on military operations dude. Just give them exactly what they MUST know to understand your story and nothing else.
I know some websites are going to tell you not to do this, but memorize what you’re going to talk about. You need to have 5-8 solid examples of what a badass civilian you’re going to be. Go back to your OER or NCOER and find some of your favorite bullets of things that don’t involve direct enemy action (if you can’t think of them off the top of your head). Write them down on a separate sheet of paper in the STAR format.
Most of your time needs to be in the “Action” section talking about what you did. You want to highlight your initiative, and remember this interview is about what YOU did. So if there was a group of you on something, then highlight what your role was and what your contributions were.
For double extra super points, read the job description and know what qualities they are looking for in a candidate and prepare to highlight that in your responses.
Finally, now that you have your answers/stories memorized, be prepared to adapt them to the question asked. The same example can be used to highlight different traits.
If you want more specific advice, please ask!
Good luck!
