New Year’s Resolution for Job Seekers: Ace Your Interviews

If you are transitioning from the military soon or seeking a career change, start the year off right and take actions now to positively impact your future career, by taking the time to perfect your interview process.

One of the best ways to set yourself up for success when interviewing is to prepare answers for the typical interview questions. To equip yourself for those frequently asked interview questions, start by “researching yourself.” List out any skills, strengths, and experiences that you feel are valuable to a potential employer. Organize your experiences into common interview topics, like leadership, problem solving, process improvement, strengths, weaknesses, and accomplishments.

This list serves two main purposes - it prepares you for handling interview questions, and also reveals what area you should focus on as a career path. It will help you to build up a library, or a list of stories and experiences, that will help you in the interview process. Focus on examples on where you had the most impact, and then match up your list with example interview questions.

Once you have thoroughly researched yourself and have a good list of stories about your job performance, the next step is to organize these examples into the STAR format. The STAR format stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Results, and is an excellent guide to help convey job experience and performance in an interview setting.

Watch this short video for more information on the STAR format

Check out our From the Battlefield to the Boardroom podcast episode, Everything You Need to Know about Preparing for the Interview Process:

For more interview help and to learn more about the different interview types, common mistakes, and an interview play-by-play, visit our military and veteran job seeker transition resources page.

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