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By Randall Kaplan
Two candidates can claim to be excellent problem solvers. One describes being hardworking, resourceful, and comfortable under pressure. The other explains a problem, the choice they made, and what happened afterward.
The second candidate gives the interviewer something to evaluate. That is where standing out begins. We don’t need bigger adjectives. We need to make our contribution easier to understand and our judgment easier to see.
For many of us, this is uncomfortable. We may worry about sounding arrogant or taking credit for work that involved other people. Preparation helps us speak accurately about what we did while recognizing the people who helped us do it.
A strong interview example begins with a responsibility relevant to the new role. If the position involves coordinating people, our example should reveal how we helped a group accomplish something. A technically impressive story may still be the wrong evidence.
For example, suppose several departments kept sending incomplete requests to our team. We created a shared intake form, clarified the information required, and tested the process with the people submitting requests.
That example becomes useful when we explain why we chose that response. Perhaps adding another approval would have slowed things further. Perhaps the missing information followed a pattern nobody had documented.
Now the interviewer can see how we diagnosed the problem. The form itself is only part of the story. The judgment behind it is what makes the experience transferable.
Specificity does not require a dramatic number. If we don’t have reliable measurements, we can describe observable changes without manufacturing precision.
“Requests arrived with the information we needed to begin” may be more defensible than an unsupported claim that we improved productivity by a particular percentage. If we do have a measured result, we should know what was measured, over what period, and who contributed.
We also need to separate our responsibility from the team’s result. We might explain that we designed the first version, colleagues tested it, and the manager approved the final process. That is a clear account of leadership and collaboration.
An interviewer should not need to untangle our contribution from a cloud of “we” statements. Nor should our explanation make everyone else disappear.
Preparation can become a disadvantage when we insist on delivering everything we rehearsed. A thoughtful answer gives enough context to make the result understandable, then allows the interviewer to explore what matters to them.
One useful practice is to record an answer and listen for the point at which our contribution becomes clear. If several minutes pass before we reach it, we probably need a shorter opening.
We can prepare the core explanation first and keep supporting details available. The interviewer may want to explore resistance from another department, how we tested the change, or what we would do differently. Those questions let us demonstrate depth without forcing every detail into the first answer.
Extreme Preparation® means knowing the experience well enough to discuss it from several directions. Memorizing one polished speech gives us much less flexibility.
Sometimes the interviewer will ask about something we haven’t done. That moment deserves the same care as our strongest example.
We can acknowledge the gap, identify relevant experience, and explain how we would approach learning the missing part. Someone who has coordinated a project without managing direct reports should not imply that those responsibilities are identical.
A more credible response would explain the coordination experience and then recognize the additional responsibilities of formal management, such as ongoing development and performance feedback. We can describe what preparation we’ve begun without pretending it replaces experience.
A coach can challenge that answer before the interview. Where are we making a useful connection? Where are we stretching it? That distinction helps us remain confident without becoming defensive.
The details people remember are often the ones that clarify how we work. We noticed something. We made a considered choice. We involved the right people. We learned from the result.
Before our next interview, we can select a few experiences that reveal different capabilities and examine each one closely. The goal is to understand the evidence behind our own story.
When we can explain our work with that clarity, we give the employer something stronger than a promise about our potential. We show how our potential has already begun becoming contribution, and we make it easier to imagine what we could bring to the next opportunity.
Randall Kaplan is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and executive coach. He’s a co-founder of Akamai Technologies and the founder and CEO of JUMP Investors, which has invested in more than 100 early-to-late-stage companies, including Google, Seagate, and Lyft. For 25 years, he’s coached hundreds of entrepreneurs, business owners, and executives. He created Extreme Preparation® to help people pursue their boldest ambitions, overcome the obstacles standing in their way, and change the course of their careers, businesses, and lives.
He also interviews some of the world’s most successful people, including Mark Cuban, Tony Robbins, Mike Tyson, David Solomon, and David Rubenstein, on his podcast In Search of Excellence, which has reached as high as #3 in Entrepreneurship and #10 in Business on Apple Podcasts.