Welcome to the Impactful Engineering newsletter, where you’ll gain access to actionable tips, strategies, and the mindset for an exceptional career. Every newsletter you will learn a new skill, key mindset, or overall perspective that will empower you to reach your goals and increase your impact.

Ace Your Interviews with Genuine Stories

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“Telling stories, not hypotheticals, is how you connect with the person you are talking to. It makes your conversation more real, more genuine, and builds up the trust that you are sincere in what you are saying and that you have the skills that you say you have.” - Steve Maxey, Episode 16

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What are interviewers really looking for?

Modern interviewing practices, even in engineering, is not entirely technically focused, but centers around the concept of finding the right fit for the team. You may face some key questioning around the critical technical requirements of the role, but over half of your interview will be situational based. The worst thing you can do is to give vague short responses to these questions. The interviewer is looking for evidence of how you will fit into their organization, and how you operate not only with various teams, but even when no one is looking. So, how can we implement the Impactful Engineer mindset to ace interviews to land the next amazing engineering role?

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Take Action: Match personal stories to situational questions! 👇

Research common situational interview questions and write down concise, but impactful, responses to each (some topics are given below to get you started). Your responses must showcase where you’ve brought value to a previous organization, lessons you've learned and where you’ve applied those lessons, relationships you’ve turned around, etc.
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If you absolutely do not have a story to align with a specific question, the next best thing is to use a personal experience where a different action would have made a favorable outcome (partial hypothetical), but keep these to a bare minimum.

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Now practice these responses in mock interviews with another person until they are completely natural. The real stories will not take very long to master conciseness. Utilize these same answers in every interview unless they do not land well. If they do not, jot down the follow up question to see where the response was lacking. If no follow up was asked, but you know it was not well received, just ask why. Adjust and move on.

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Now here are a few subjects you will see in your interviews:

• Time management
• Prioritization of work
• Conflict resolution
• Ownership
• Decisiveness
• Empowering others
• Overcoming setbacks and challenges
• Teamwork and effective collaboration
• Communication failures and successes
• Why your specific degree/industry

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Now go ace your next interview!

The Impactful Engineering Project's purpose is to bring awareness, access, success, and mentorship to all new and aspiring engineers. But it doesn't stop there. What we talk about on this podcast applies to seasoned engineers as well.

The community that will be built from this project has the potential to change the lives of everyone who is a part of it. We sincerely hope to reach and help as many people as possible. Your participation will bring the project to life.