Hi and welcome or welcome back. It's issue #51 of The B-School Hub

Read time: ~9 minutes

Meme of the week

Since we're talking about interviews today, this seemed appropriate...

One of the most frequent questions I get is...

It's a great question and is so important.

For most jobs, there are going to be hundreds of resumes to sift through for maybe a dozen or so interviews.

Then when you get to the interview stage, you still have to out compete the people who made it that far.

So how do you stand out among that crowd?

There are two parts to really standing out and being memorable in an interview

1) Having a background/resume/story that is impressive

2) Being able to communicate that it is impressive

So What's The Problem

The big challenge students run into is that they don't typically plan in advance how to have a story or background that is obviously memorable. It doesn't mean they don't have strong backgrounds, but just not memorably impressive.

Complicating matters further, many who do have impressive and memorable stories don't stitch it all together to get the most out of it.

As a result, they stand out far less than they deserve.

Today we're going to go through 4 ways to set yourself up to stand out and then ways to package it.

At the end I'm going to show you how to amplify the effectiveness of it.

Before jumping in, let me throw in 2 quick points.

1) Unless outstanding grades are generally required to demonstrate something I'm highlighting in my examples, I'm not going to mention them specifically.

The default assumption is that you get grades at least sufficient for the roles you want in the different examples below. If you're struggling with this check out my free 7 day email course on how to get better grades using evidence based study techniques.

2) Most of the examples I give are accessible to most B-School students. You may have to build the skills to do them or versions of them, but especially if you start early, you should be able to pull off some of these.

Ok, with that done, let's get to it.

Method 1 - I Excel In Everything I Do

This one is pretty straightforward.

The message you're trying to convey here is that you excel in everything you do.

Part 1. - What Might This Look Like

What's necessary to make this pitch is that your resume is filled with accomplishments. Top notch grades, chess champion, scholarships, student council president, athletic awards. You name it, you've got it.

I mentioned some accomplishments above but there's no "approved list" of things that count. The fact that you're a successful varsity athlete in whatever sport is not in and of itself what's impressive.

What's impressive is that you're able to succeed at a high level in multiple domains.

If you are excelling in a different area that's just as good.

The main point here is that there are sufficient examples to credibly build a case that you perform at a high level in everything you commit to.

Part 2 - Telling The Story Effectively

So how translate this into an effective storyline in an interview?

First off let's list a few things "I excel in everything I do" might suggest about you.

• Hard working
• Self-motivated
• Able to build and execute a plan
• Disciplined
• Leadership skills
• Able to learn effectively (learning skills not just brains)

There's probably more but let's start here.

One of the overriding themes here is that since you excel in everything you do, you're going to perform really well in the role you're interviewing for.

At least that's the case you want to make.

And that's true and important but there's so much more.

You likely have multiple ways you can come back to this theme without beating it over the head.

You can talk about

• The specific ways you manage your time to be able to accomplish everything.
• Why you're intrinsically motivated to succeed in all these things
• How you tackle something new to learn it quickly
• The teamwork required to succeed and how you used your leadership skills to bring everyone together to accomplish the tasks
• How you maintain focus to do difficult things.

You have an embarrassment of riches to discuss.

You may actually have to limit yourself and be selective about what to highlight - so pick the best examples to tell the story.

This may seem obvious, but you'd be stunned by how many candidates have such a great story to tell but leave so much on the table because they don't effectively squeeze the value out of what they've done in an interview.

Take full advantage of what you've got.

Method 2 - I'm Deeply Knowledgeable In Areas That Matter To You

I love this one.

It lets you pursue your passion and dive really deep into a topic.

Let's say you're interested in HR.

Part 1. - What might this look like

1. Read extensively on how to effectively conduct interviews.
2. Write about your takeaways on LinkedIn.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with podcasts.
4. Use this to connect with other HR professionals on LinkedIn to get their feedback on your thinking (and build your network at the same time).
5. Offer to do A LOT of practice interviews with your classmates.
6. Give them feedback on what they did well and what they could do better.
7. Track things that people often struggle with. Write about it on LinkedIn. Include some ideas on how people can improve their interview skills.
8. Make sure to highlight this on your resume. Use this and your network to get the interview.

I bet there are not that many candidates that you'll be competing with who've already built this level of expertise in one of the core functions of HR.

So now that you've done the hard work of becoming deeply knowledgeable how do you leverage that in your interview?

Part 2 - Telling The Story Effectively

Well, the first step is to ask yourself, "what does this demonstrate about you?"

One big mistake someone could make is to think that the only positive attribute about this is that you've gained experience interviewing.

I'd suggest it shows

• Motivation
• Initiative
• Creativeness
• Insight (what is a valuable skill and how to build it)
• Ability to make a plan and execute it
• Generosity (helping your classmates - who doesn't want generous people on their team)

The next step is to find ways to bring up these characteristics that you've demonstrated a couple of times in your interviews.

For example, you might get some form of a question about what interests you in the job. It's easy to integrate your desire to help coach people (generosity helping your classmates) into an answer.

There are a lot of different aspects of most HR roles so you can highlight your initiative and organization skills, while highlighting this depth you've acquired.

In addition, there are a fairly diverse range of skills you'll benefit from acquiring. This is perfect because you just demonstrated to them that you can make a plan to acquire skills and execute that plan.

Method 3 - I'm Able To Do Remarkable Volumes Of Work

This one matters more for some jobs than for others.

If you're interested in investment banking, consulting, accounting, sell side equity research or certain other areas, well, you should be expecting to work quite hard.

One of the best predictors of someone's future actions is their past actions.

So how to show this?

Part 1. - What might this look like

1. Really high grades - this is critical because it shows you can do that extra bit of work even in subjects you don't love because you care so much about the outcomes. That takes quantity of work in addition to quality (effective study skills).
2. Serious commitment to outside activity - this could be a sport or hobby (i.e. chess) but you're aiming for something that you are able to take to a reasonably high level. It could even be a side hustle where you built a business or large audience on YouTube or Instagram.
3. A WOW project - Something outside of class where you are pursuing intellectual mastery that is at least tangentially related to your field and the scope of it makes people say, wow. Be creative about what that could be and then write about it on LinkedIn to share in public your journey.

Part 2 - Telling The Story Effectively

This demonstrates

• Work ethic
• Motivation
• Creativity
• Broad interests
• Lots of accrued knowledge
• You're interesting
• Time management
• Discipline
• Organization
• Endurance

There are so many different ways to use this in an interview.

Highlight that you care deeply about great results so you made sure to work as hard as necessary to get high grades. In and of itself, this enhances credibility in these jobs that require lots of work.

Beyond that however, you can bring in time management to accomplish all of this.

Where it gets interesting though, is when you start to get into what you've learned from a wow project or hobby.

There are endless possibilities.

The best part about this is that you are both directly and indirectly saying you can do massive volumes of work.

Method 4 - I'm The Only Person You're Going To Meet Who...

This one has some overlap with the wow project I described above.

The key difference is that it is really, interesting, unusual and imaginative.

Part 1. - What might this look like

I think the best version of these will have some overlapping professional aspect that will make you better at your job.

For example, you could have built a course on using Excel and sold it online. This requires putting together a series of skills and using initiative so is a good possibility.

One possibility I thought about if you're interested in investment banking could go like this.

Use the fact that you're a student to try to connect with as many CFOs in the S&P 500 as possible and ask for a 15 minute informational interview.

You won't get all of them but even 100 would be incredible.

In terms of time, if you spend 30 minutes preparing (more initially, less later as you get better at it), and then 15 minutes on the call, that amounts to 5 hours a week over 15 weeks.

I'm not going to go through a detailed explanation of how to pull off something like this but the attempt and the degree you succeed is a win in and of itself.

Part 2 - Telling The Story Effectively

Think about how you could leverage all these discussions in an interview.

First, the very fact that you did this (as long as it wasn't a check the box exercise and you didn't really get any value from it), is impressive.

Beyond that, it's almost inevitable if you're asking good questions, you're going learn in enormous amounts about I-banking clients and how to be good at I-banking at least theoretically.

Of course you'd be nuts not to maintain this network once you build it.

You'll be able to highlight in your interview that you're able to manage and maintain relationships (a critical task as a banker) and you'll have a better network than almost anyone at your level in the firm.

You can also highlight your ability to generate trusted relationships with people even if you didn't know them before.

Like I said, there are more ways to do it but this was one interesting one that came to mind.

Putting It All Together

I hope you can see by this point how effective this can be.

It just takes a little planning and some work.

Believe it or not, you can actually take it up a notch and make yourself the most obvious choice for the job.

Individually these are potent, but imagine stacking these. You'll come across as unbelievably impressive.

Let's say you stack "I excel in everything I do" with "I'm deeply knowledgeable in areas that matter to you."

Or "I excel in everything I do" with "I'm able to do remarkable amounts of work" and "I'm the only person you're going to meet who..."

What are they're going to be thinking after your interview? Probably that they should cancel the rest of the interviews.

Closing Thoughts

This ran a little long so that I could flesh the ideas out a little for you and provide some examples.

Hopefully you found it useful.

Make sure to

1) Take advantage of setting yourself up to win if you have time before interview season and

2) Make sure to squeeze all the value out of your background once you get into interviews.

As always if you have any questions about what I've shared today, don't be shy to email me back and I'll do my best to help clear it up.

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How Can I Help You?

• If you want higher grades - check out my FREE email course 7 Days to Higher Grades...Without the Grind​

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• I have a very small number of coaching slots open at the moment. This is focused on 1 of 3 areas in particular - getting higher grades, job search and interview success and career progression. Please email me if you're ready for that.

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• I'm always looking for topics to write about that people are interested in/struggling with in these areas so feel free to email me or connect on Twitter if there's a topic you'd like me to explore.

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That's it for this week...don't be shy to reply if you have any questions.