Small Things, Big Impact: Lessons from Interviewing
Interviews can be nerve-wracking.
So, it’s no surprise that there are volumes of excellent advice on how you can best prepare when heading into an interview… solid tips on how to showcase your skills and how to make your unique experience shine.
Yet, when I reflect on some key interview moments in my own career journey, I’m struck by how many times it was the small and even unintentional things I did that had an unexpectedly big impact.
Below are three (3) real-life stories from my own experience where something other than education or previous work experience helped me move forward in the interview process or even land a job.
Some things are quite simple, and you may find them helpful to incorporate in your own preparation process for future interviews. Others are simply lessons learned and I hope sharing them will give you some insight and confidence if you ever experience something similar yourself in a future interview.
1. Showcase your analytical skills and knowledge of the company… all in one.
Some very common interview prep advice for data analysts is to:
- Prepare a project portfolio.
2. Do research about the company you are interviewing with.
What I stumbled on, almost completely by accident, is how powerful it can be to put these two elements together.
It happened while preparing for a second round of interviews for a new job opportunity.
Having made it through the initial screening, I was doing a deeper dive into research about the company when I happened upon the publicly available open data portal linked on their website. And, as luck would have it, contained within the available datasets was one that related specifically to the team the successful candidate would be supporting.
Although I was nervous that I wouldn’t fully understand the business context, I took the initiative to conduct my own analysis of that dataset and created some custom visuals to go along with it. My hope was that this would demonstrate my capabilities in Excel (my data tool of choice), but also show my overall interest in the company.
And it worked!
I was able to showcase my visuals and my analysis during that next round of interviews. Even though I didn’t get all the business nuances correct, it allowed me to initiate discussions with the interview panel around the type of work the group was focused on while demonstrating my own approach to analysis and communication style.
I wish I could say I had the foresight to know how useful this approach would be, but I am grateful for the knowledge now and it’s a lesson I continue to leverage!
When preparing for subsequent interviews or even selecting data for presentation now, I try to lean into datasets that are most likely to be both familiar and interesting for the audience.
2. Be prepared… and then from there, you just gotta roll with it.
As someone who lives with anxiety, it’s a constant practice for me to leverage that energy into ways that support my success.
This means I’m often thinking through new scenarios in advance and trying to identify what I can do to help make things go as smoothly as possible.
For the final round of this particular interview process, I was asked to prepare a 15-minute presentation based on a previous project. I arrived at the interview to find the entire peer team (~8 individuals) plus the hiring manager and senior leaders gathered around one of those large [and slightly intimidating] boardroom tables.
After a quick round of introductions, it was my turn to take over and begin my presentation…. but that’s when it happened!
The projector that had been working for each of the previous candidates suddenly stopped functioning. In fact, the whole computer system completely crashed.
After a few minutes of a very apologetic team member trying to resolve the technical issues, I reached into my bag and pulled out a set of printed handouts I had prepared. I offered to go ahead using the hand-outs as a guide, explaining that I didn’t want to miss my chance to showcase my work to the team.
In this case, not only had I prepared by practicing my presentation enough to go forward without the slides, but I had also created those handouts just-in-case.
I ended up getting that job and working with the team for many years.
After a few years in the role, I was reminiscing with one of the colleagues who had been there during that interview. They shared that it was my preparedness and ability to adapt to the unexpected situation that had made me stand out as a candidate.
It gave the team a sense that I would be willing to pitch in and help… even when things were going sideways.
3. Being willing to learn can matter… a lot.
Early on in my career, I dreamed of working for a particular company in my area. When I finally got the chance for an interview, I jumped at it even though I learned that the position was considered a flex role.
As a flex role, it meant that the successful candidate would work under two different supervisors to support two different teams. During the interview, it became clear that the role required a wide range of technical skills, and I was worried because it would be a challenge for me to meet all those requirements.
However, I did my very best during the interview to highlight my existing skills and talk about my interest in learning those areas that I didn’t currently have experience with.
What I learned after getting the job was that each of the supervisors had ranked me as #2 during their candidate selection process. They each had a different first choice based on very specialized technical skills, but both had thought I’d be someone who could work well with their respective teams and quickly pick up the missing technical skills.
Having a strong basis, the willingness to learn, and being someone the team would like to work with, really ended up weighing in my favor.
Final Thoughts
There is no way I could have orchestrated these moments, but overall, they’ve taught me the importance of showing up as myself, a whole person, to each interview opportunity.
Now when faced with an interview, I try to remind myself that I want to showcase my experiences and abilities plus be my authentic self to demonstrate what I’d be like to work with. For me, this mindset helps me relax. And hopefully brings out the best version of myself even in a nerve-wracking experience!
I hope my experiences can help you in your own future job search, and if you have your own lessons learned from the interview process, I’d love to hear them!
