Over the weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Young Alumni Mentoring program’s Sophomore Summit at my alma mater. The program is for recent graduates to mentor sophomores in the business school; so far I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to meet with these sophomores and help out where I can, even if it’s just reassuring them that the job search isn’t hopeless.

I was part of a group of alums helping out with interviewing skills. Given that I just recently completed a months long interview process, it was all very relevant to me.

Our group was responsible for covering the basic ‘get to know you’ interview questions as opposed to behavioral or resume questions. We pretty quickly realized that every group had the same questions. I recently read that you should do repeatable work that benefits everyone instead of one or two people – instead of writing an email, write a blog post.

On that note, here are some of the lessons that our group tried to impart for college students internship searching and interviewing.

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Show, Don’t Tell

The one thing that we noticed most is that, by default, people new to interviewing end up telling instead of showing. For example, students often tend to say something like “I’m interested in Marketing” or “I work well in teams” but leave it at that.

Instead, show that you’re interested in Marketing. Tell a story about what piques your interest about Finance.

Example: As a sophomore I’m taking my first marketing class now so I’m still learning, but it’s definitely what I’m interested in doing professionally. Last year my professor gave this great marketing example of when the first iPod came out. Since your iPod is going to be in your pocket when you’re using it, they came out with the white headphone cord so that people would still know that it was an iPod they were listening to. Previously all headphone cords were black and looked the same. With a white cord, you could see immediately whether someone was using an iPod and it was really genius marketing for them.

Another student told me in a mock answer that she’s a good communicator. When I asked her to expand on that a bit, she told me about a position she held in high school as community liaison that required her to speak publicly. She said she gave 74 speeches in three months.

74 speeches?! That’s amazing! Use that story at every opportunity; it’s a huge selling point for an employer!

Don’t Ramble

In my experience, one of the biggest mistakes that college students make is to ramble in their interview answers. The interviewee starts an answer without knowing where it’s going, meaning they don’t know when they’re done. The end result is that they run out of things to say and end up trailing off with “so… yeah, that’s a little bit about me.”

Best case, the interviewer overlooks it. Worst case, they’re dreading getting stuck in a never-ending hallway conversation if you get the job.

Instead, shut up when you’re done. This will not only show that you can organize your thoughts and communicate effectively, it will also allow the interviewer to ask follow-up questions instead of feeling the need to jump in and interrupt you.

If you’re thinking “but if I don’t tell all about this thing, how will they know how [smart/talented/amazing] I am?” think about it this way – if what you mentioned is important or interesting to them, they’ll ask a follow-up question. Besides, you should be telling stories instead of statements anyway.

Interviews are supposed to be conversational. If you’re rambling that makes you a pretty bad conversationalist. Besides, you don’t trail off when you’re telling a friend a story, so why do it with an interviewer? (Answer: you might not be approaching your answer like a story. See above.)

So how to do it? Practice purposefully. For the standard questions, know exactly the point you want to make. Maybe you have three things to say when somebody asks you about yourself. Write those down, using exactly the words that you’d like to use. Practice them. When I say practice I mean answer the questions out loud, not in your head.

For questions that you weren’t prepared for, have what Ramit Sethi calls a ‘story toolbox’ ready with a few stories that you can apply to several different questions or situations.

How to Answer ‘Tell Me About Yourself’

When asked this question, most people respond with a timeline. I was born here, went to high school there, came to college and my major is this. They might throw in something personal, maybe a sport they played in high school. Great, but you’re there for an interview and that answer hasn’t improved your chances of getting an offer.

I’d suggest instead answering the question and telling a story about yourself. Talk about a personal challenge you overcame growing up, or talk about why you’ve chosen your major. Figure out what’s an important skill or character trait for the position and work in a story about yourself.

Which of these do you think is more impactful?

Option 1: My name is Max. I was born in Denver and went to East High School. I played tennis and drums in high school, and then went to CU. I’m a sophomore Finance major.

Option 2: I was born and raised in Denver. I loved Colorado so much growing up that I decided I wanted to stay in state for college and I love Boulder so far. In high school I played tennis and grew into my competitive tendency a little bit. Before my senior year I decided that it was really important for me to make varsity, so I worked offseason with our assistant coach to make that jump. It was really gratifying to see my progress and success when I made the team. I’m a sophomore at CU now and a Finance major. I chose my Finance major last year after my Intro to Business class. I actually went home over spring break and was telling my dad about what I was learning, so he brought out his company’s balance sheets and income statements and we talked through them. It was a really cool experience to get to show what I had learned in school.

I asked one of the sophomores to answer this question for me and he told me that he’s “really interested in the hospitality industry.” When I probed him a bit further, he said “growing up my family and I would travel a lot and stay in hotels. I always loved being in hotels and thought that it would be a great place to work. I grew up wanting to be a hotel general manager. Most of all I really like the idea that hospitality and tourism is something that people are happy to pay for and it’s your job to make their day better.”

WOW! What an amazing story! See how much more powerful and credible that is than “I’m passionate about hospitality”? Bottle that up and use it to really make an impression on your next interviewer!

How to Answer ‘Why are you interested in working for our company?’

This one is pretty much always going to come up, with good reason. They want to see that you’re not just looking to fill a seat. Since most people answer this question so badly, if you’re able to answer this question well you’ll look better than 90% of the applicants.

First of all, you could be asked ‘why are you interested in working for our company?’ or ‘why are you interested in working in [position]?’ I’d strongly advise answering both of those questions the same way – 75% about the position and 25% about the company. This is for a few reasons:

1. They’re interested most of all in whether you can perform the duties needed for the job
2. The job is a much more specific and detailed thing than the company, so it’s easier to talk specifically
3. Unless you’ve advanced through a few interviews already, you probably don’t have a lot of intimate knowledge about the company yet.
4. If you do know a lot about the company, a little bit goes a long way.

The classic fallback on this answer is to say “I love the company culture” which is vague enough to mean almost nothing at all. If you are going to mention the company culture at all, hone in on a very specific part of the culture that you admire and show how that fits with your beliefs.

The other night one of the students told me that she appreciated a certain firm’s culture of diversity. When asked to elaborate she told me that she is the Public Relations Chair for the campus multi-cultural students’ program. That showed me that she really does care about diversity and that she’s doing something about it. Again, it’s SO MUCH MORE effective to be direct!

Most People: I read on your website about your company culture and I think it’s a really good fit for me. I really like your culture and it’s a great place to work. Also your website says that you have really competitive benefits. I’m a marketing major so the marketing analyst position is a good fit. I took three marketing classes last semester and I use Facebook all the time so it makes sense that I should do social media for work.

You: I’m glad you asked! It seems like a good fit for a few reasons. First of all, I interpreted the job description to mean that I’d get to work as the liaison between the social media and the direct marketing teams which sounds like an amazing experience. I actually managed the social media account for our marketing club at school, and I just took a really great class on corporate branding. This position seems like I could really learn more about those two topics.

Also, you take in a large class of interns every summer which means that you have the training, infrastructure and planning in place to make it an excellent learning opportunity. While some companies don’t know what to assign interns, the fact that the program has been running for so long means that the teams understand how to work with and develop interns, which is amazing.

On another note, I read that your company does a summer Habitat for Humanity build. I’m a huge fan. In fact, I hope I’m not too late for it this summer as I’ve done a Habitat build each summer for the past three years.

I’ll admit that in that second answer I kind of cheated – it had way more specific information. That’s not an accident, it’s the result of actually knowing the company. It’s going to take some more research and digging, but it’s the difference between browsing the company’s About page for five minutes and reading some articles on them for a half hour. The time difference is minor but the effectiveness difference is ENORMOUS.

In Conclusion

Although some people say “I just don’t interview well,” I don’t think that’s a valid excuse because everybody can improve with some practice. It’s a skill like anything else.

As a college student it’s tough to point to specific experience or even feel qualified for an internship or a job. Remember, they know that a job offer is an investment in your potential so don’t be afraid to play that potential up with some really great stories that SHOW instead of tell.

In reality, most students aren’t as far from great interviewing as they think. Did you notice that any time I mentioned little mistakes that these students had made, that they also had the perfect answer underneath another probing question or two?

The default instinct is to be as vague as possible in interviews, so if you just open up and share the why and the how with your interviewer you’ll stand out as infinitely more genuine and credible!

Bonus: Internship Interviewing Cheat Sheet

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