Don’t be a candidate
In last week’s blog post, I discussed the importance of taking control of the narrative during an interview.
When you lead the narrative, you’re doing what executives do: taking ownership of an important outcome and making sure the right information is exchanged to enable a good decision.
Today, I’d like to cover how to structure your narrative so it lands with impact.
Because you’re being assessed on dimensions most interviewers can’t clearly articulate, and using criteria they’ve never been trained to evaluate, it’s important to understand what’s actually being judged:
Your readiness: relevant experience and leadership competencies
Your growth enablers: systems thinking, curiosity, resilience, social intelligence
Your potential: self-knowledge, values clarity, sense of purpose and legacy
Even when interviewers are using a proven methodology, they are often relying on generic behavioral questions designed for mid-level managers, not transformational executives.
“Give me an example where…, describe a situation when…” The old-fashioned competency-based interview model needs to be refreshed. The quest for STAR answers — Situations, Tasks, Actions, and Results — is stifling for both people on either side of the interview table.
Yes, past experience predicts future success. Therefore packaging your past experience into stories that connect the dots for your interviewers is critical. Package them wrong and you’re just another qualified candidate. Package them right and you’re the leader they can’t stop thinking about. So forget STAR.
Introducing the CLARITY framework.
CLARITY is designed to give interviewers what they’re actually assessing, without necessarily knowing how to ask for it. While STAR keeps the focus on what you’ve done, CLARITY reveals how you think, how you lead, and who you’re becoming: your readiness for the role and potential to grow with it.
The CLARITY Framework is your secret weapon for the strategic planning of your conversations. Each dimension of CLARITY maps directly to what research shows interviewers are decoding about you and your potential fit in the role and the organization.
Building and telling your career stories with CLARITY is what separates candidates who survive interviews from leaders who own them, and get invited to the next stage.
Download the complete CLARITY framework and Story Bank guide to start building your leadership portfolio of stories that will make you unforgettable, not just employable.
If your networking conversations and interviews lead nowhere, and you’re exhausted from your search, you’re following the wrong playbook.
