Attributes Employers Value Most – Would You Like To Know BEFORE Your Interview?

What do employers want?

In a nutshell they want YOU to possess the key skills and attributes they value highest.

Demonstrate them through the course of the interview, and the jobs as good as yours!

And when I say demonstrate, you have to give examples of how you have used these key skills to achieve previous objectives. Using tangible business language to describe the results of your actions. For example, “I used my problem solving skills to smooth a critical client problem, so saving our company the loss of a $450K per annum account”

And most important of all supply PROOF of what you say – we will focus on this later.

We’ve already discussed the shortcomings of most job adverts and even job descriptions and job specifications come up way short of the mark. So hopefully the research you’ve done (you have done or going to do the research aren’t you?) will have nicely fleshed out your target employers requirements, with additional skills / personality traits that will elevate you above the pack.

As an example the following is a pole of the top 10 skills employers look for.

• Ability to follow instruction
• Leadership
• Willingness to learn
• Decision making
• Problem solving
• Communication skills
• Time management
• Organisation and Planning
• Computer skills
• Conflict management

If you can identify the critical technical skills and soft skills / personality traits or attributes that apply directly to your target role and organisation, you’ll be way ahead of all your interview competition.

There are hundreds of these soft skills, and probably thousands of ways to describe them, what I want to introduce next is a more powerful way of harness them into your marketing messages.

I said on the previous page that our next task is to build you marketing silver bullet, your main marketing messages that employers will find irresistible, you will have differing versions of this core message, adapting it for use in letters and resumes, and expanding it within spoken answers to questions you will face through interview.

When it comes to answering tough interview questions I recommend a proven framework for building your answers. Called The STAR Method we will go into this in a lot more detail later.

But for now the STAR method ensures the critical elements that employers want in an answer are always included.

However the STAR method can be improved for the really critical questions and this is done by embedding your STAR method answers into a story form for delivery. The reason we do this is that stories are enjoyable, and memorable, for both you under interview pressure, but critically for the interviewer who may be interviewing many people. Rather than reciting lots of important but probably dull facts and figures about your achievements, wrap them in a story, add personality and interest. It works great!

So while were thinking about skills and attributes employers value most, and the forthcoming requirement to package these messages in powerful story formats, I want to sow another seed of an idea, that we will draw upon in greater detail as we build our STAR stories, but I feel is worth planting at this early stage.

The idea is that though there are hundreds if not thousands of ways to describe individual traits, it is even more powerful if these traits can be associated with an overarching Character type that employers value most…

Characters proven to be invaluable to every successful organisation. Introducing the:-

1. The BOSS
2. The EXPERT
3. The JUGGLER
4. The GOOD CITIZEN
5. The STAR
6. The TEAM PLAYER
7. The PROBLEM SOLVER
8. The SELF DEVELOPER

To explain the types in more detail.

The Boss – Is about leadership, ability to hire wisely, motivate and develop staff, demonstrate vision, inspire, manage change or conflict, and improve profit, shareholder value, efficiency.

The Expert – Is demonstrating that you, are an expert in either a hard or technical skill (accountant, plumber, salesman etc) or even a soft skill, such as listening or persuasion.

The Juggler or multi-tasker – It’s increasingly important in modern organisations to demonstrate an ability to manage more than one task at a time.

The Good Citizen – Integrity, respect, support and helping others, follows orders, likability. The sort of person that everyone likes to work with.

The Star – Achievement, accomplishment, recognised as the person who has made a significant contribution to the objective.

The Team Player – Work well with others, supportive, mentoring, able to put the team objective above your personal objectives.

The Problem Solver – All organisations have problems and challenges, and need people who can construct solutions for these problems.

The Self Developer – Another highly compelling trait, is to show that you set yourself targets measurable, timely, targets, and take action towards their attainment. Combined with the ability to review your results, and if necessary fine tune your PERSISTENT actions until you HIT YOUR OBJECTIVES.

So in summary the top of the page lists a pole of top individual traits, each of which is valuable, but become even stronger when enrolled and combined in one of your STAR story answers.

For example if asked about conflict resolution in the workplace, a very common interview question, rather than just explaining a situation where you may have demonstrated this skill, you role it into a STAR story answer that demonstrates how you managed a conflict successfully but ties it to a commercial benefit for the organisation.

We have written a free guide called Interview Sniper that shows you how to use this information to your advantage.

Please follow this link to get Interview Sniper the best free interview guide

Thanks for reading this article.

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