3 Skills You Need to Excel in Interviews And Your Career

What needs to happen before you can interview successfully? There are three essential skills you need to master before you can rock at your interviews and make the most of meeting new hiring managers and leaders at new companies:

1.  Know and communicate precisely what you have to offer and what makes you, you.

Again, in working with thousands of professionals, I’ve seen that that vast majority or working people simply can’t answer these fundamental questions:

• What are you especially great at?

• What stands you apart from the competition?

• What do you adore about your current work, and what would you like to let go of?

• What are visions for how you’d like to contribute professionally, in an ideal world and workplace?

• Why should we be interested in you over others with your same training and experience?

• What’s the ideal next role for you?

• Why are you interested in us?

• What types of people motivate and inspire you best?

• What kinds of work outcomes are you most excited by?

If you can’t answer these questions, you can’t present a compelling story of who you are and what you have to offer. Secondly, you’ll not be able to guide your career to the level you want it. Amazing careers require a great deal of planning, vision and management, as well as a big dose of clarity, courage and connection.

2.  Network socially.

After reviewing so many LinkedIn profiles (and hearing from lots of my followers – now over 170,000), I can read your LinkedIn profile and in three minutes, identify a great deal about you that you didn’t realize you were communicating.

The harsh reality is that how you approach developing your digital profile and footprint is how you approach your professional identity. If you’re lazy, shy, uninspired, scared or reluctant to do the work to build a profile and connect with others in a committed, excited way, this is a strong indicator of how you’re operating at work as well.

Read: 10 Networking Mistakes You Need to Avoid in Your Career

In addition, you can’t just rely on digital networking to move you forward. You have to meet new people in person as well. Get out of the doldrums by “bringing yourself to market.” Attend industry association meetings, conferences, meetups, build a new networking group, etc. In other words, bring yourself forward in all ways possible to show the world who you really are. The people you meet with inspire, uplift and support you.

3.  Envision and articulate what you want next.
Because the majority of professionals I see come to me when they’re stuck, I’ve observed that human beings see only what’s at the tip of their noses. They forgot who they’ve been at their best or who they can be. If they’re unhappy in their careers, they experience only limitation, confusion, paralysis, exhaustion, toxicity, crushing politics, disillusionment, fear, malaise and reluctance to change.

The problem with all that is that if limitation is all that you see regarding your own abilities and your past – then limitation is all you’ll get coming back at you in your future.

What to do instead? You need to think bigger and higher than what you see in front of you, and what you have been. Find new ways to be inspired by what’s possible for you, and talk in those terms – what you’re looking for, what lights you up, what compels you, what you’re capable of — rather than only what you’ve done and focused on to date.

If you need new sources of inspiration, go out and get them. For instance, watch one TED talk a day, or connect via social media with people who are 100 steps ahead of you doing what you long to do, and share their tweets and posts. Write an article on LinkedIn, or take a class that will inspire you. The more you connect with others who are making the impact you dream of, and with work that lights you up from the inside, the more you’ll see that what you dream of is not as far out of reach as you imagined.

Forbes