Watch only if you take too long to answer questions
[transcript of video below]
Hey everybody. Don Georgevich here.
Some people some people just feel they need to talk. But I think the real root of the reason that people talk too much in the interview is they’re not sure how much information the interviewer wants from them and they don’t get a verbal or nonverbal cue from their interviewer to stop talking so they just feel like they need to keep talking and keep talking because the interviewer didn’t stop them or interrupt them. So they feel the need to just keep going on and on and on.
Well what happens is you end up talking in circles. You end up talking over what you said and if you were to listen to yourself you probably wouldn’t even understand what you said. So I’m going to teach you how you can avoid doing this. Now I’ll take one of the big reasons that people do this is it tends to be people who have a lot of experience. So if you have a lot of work experience you’re more likely to give long winded answers with an overwhelming amount of detail. Let me tell you why you’re doing that. It’s because you have so much experience and someone asks you a question.
The process that your mind is going through is it reaches up into its long term memory to go pull out a story. It’s kind of like if you ever go up into your attic an old attic to get something you walk up there and you want to be there with a specific purpose to get one thing but you instantly got distracted by everything else that’s up there and you end up spending more time up there than you plan your mind is kind of like an old attic when you answer interview questions about your past experiences. Your mind goes up and read and it pulls out that experience that you did that project or whatever it was and it starts assembling an answer for you on the fly.
And what happens is it grabs your our mind just organizes our answer in no particular order at all. So your mind goes up there and it grabs it grabs a project or an experience that wants to talk about and it kind of starts in the middle or maybe the end or wherever it just picks a spot that it wants and then what happens as you start talking about it you start remembering other things about that and then you telling her oh wait a minute wait this happened first and then I did this.
And what happens is it’s just a disaster. All this garbage just starts pouring out of your mouth. That doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s in no particular order and it just confuses people. And like I said this happens to people with a lot of experience.
So what you want to do is take those experiences that are stored in your long term memory and move them over into your short term memory. And if you think about it if I asked you what you did a year ago you could probably think about it and scratch your head and maybe eventually pull something out but it might take you a little bit of effort. Now if I asked you what you did yesterday you’re going to be able to tell me very quickly and very succinctly what you did yesterday. So what you want to do is take those projects that you worked on a year five years ago get yourself out some paper console and write them down.
Create a framework of what you did how you did it when you started what you needed and refresh your mind your memory on that entire experience and what that’s going to do is that’s going to pull it from your long term memory and it’s got to put it in your short term memory.
And when it’s in your short term memory and you go into an interview you’re going to be able to answer questions in sequence. You’re going to be able to pull out specific pieces of that experience or project and talk about it intelligently and succinctly. It works this works wonders.
And like I said if you have a lot of experience if you have a tendency to talk too much and digressing and give people more information than they want and just bored to tears do this exercise before your interview pick me maybe three projects three projects that are related to the job that you’re going to be interviewing for and write out those experiences in detail and it’s going to take them from your long term memory into your short term memory and then you’re going to be able to talk about them quickly and succinctly.
Next get yourself in front of a video camera get a video camera pointed at you and pretend that the camera the interview or even put a picture of some people in business suits by your camera so you can pretend this isn’t an interview setting and then pretend they asked you a question and then you answer it. From your experience you should be able to get this off within maybe 30 to 60 seconds. Keep your answers short. Now we know that you’re a talker and you love to talk and you could you could talk for 10 minutes but save that.
Just answer the question briefly and succinctly just give them the core elements of the answer or the experience or whatever it was. Just tell them basically what happened. And then if they want to know more they’ll ask more questions. So keep your answers short and if they want to know more ask you more. And by practicing this in front of a video camera this will get you comfortable talking about your experiences in front of a camera.
And if you can do it in front of a camera you’ll be able to do it in front of other people and you’ll teach yourself to talk about your experiences succinctly and just getting the bare minimum details of what they need whatever they need to satisfy the answer for the question they want to know more.
You are more than happy to go in and give them more detail but you have to think about it from their point of view. They have a limited time to interview you so they don’t want the big story for all of your questions or for offer all of your answers. They want a short story. Certain ones they want. They might want something longer but they’ll tell you they’ll ask you more and that’s your cue to give them a little bit more detail. But the key here is to refresh those long term work experiences put them in your short term memory so that you can talk about them in the interview in a very succinct and intelligent and chronological order of importance.
Otherwise you’re just going to go into the interview and you’re going to go blab blab and nobody’s going to know what you said and then you’re going to wonder why you didn’t even get the interview. So remember interviewers don’t want to hear your life story. They don’t have time for your life story. Give them the short version and they will thank you for it.
Trust me. And when you adopt this style of answering interview questions you’re going to come across as a more genuine candidate the type of candidate that they’re going to want. Working for them. So if you show them in the interview that you like to prattle on endlessly with your answers and you just never know when to stop talking.
Trust me that’s the kind of person they don’t want working there. Put the shoe on the other foot for a minute. If you were interviewing somebody and they just talked endlessly about everything they ever did. Do you think they’re going to be any different if you hired them.
Now they’re going to be the type of person that talks and talks and talks and nobody wants that in the organization it’s it’s unproductive. So show them you know how to give short answers that are on point with one thing. And trust me they thank think if you’re ready to do your next interview then don’t leave anything to chance. You can’t just show up for a job interview and expect to mail it. You know that you have to give yourself an advantage.
So if you’d like to learn more from me in this video then I encourage you to grab a copy of the complete interview answer guide and prepare yourself to answer interview questions the right way. Inside you’re getting like 20 years interviewing hiring experience and I’ll teach you what you need to say to employers.
So they want to hire you. So if it’s been a while since your last job interview or you had an interview today don’t spend countless hours figuring out the stuff. Instead let me take you by the hand and show you how right now when you order your copy from job interview tools Don you’re supporting my channel.
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