by Svenja Pelz Vetter

There is more competition... the number of available candidates is increasing! Employers and recruiters have access to more on-line information about candidates.

So interviewers rely on behavioral techniques to get as many details as possible about a candidate. They need to know how the candidate behaved when faced with a critical situation. So the inevitable simple question that will come is: "How did you do that...?"

Recommendations to a candidate preparing for an interview:
When being interviewed - it is not about what you have done, but about how you have done it. Interviewers want more details, want to understand how you performed in each job, how you developed new ideas or strategies. If your answers are vague or inconsistent... the less convincing you will be.

Prepare yourself to deal with questions as follows:

• Where, when, what? What was your position at the time, when was it.
• What was the challenge? What were the obstacles to overcome?
• Which precise actions did you take, step by step?
• Which result(s) did you get?

So: best way for you to prepare for the interview is to write down all your achievements, one after the other.

An example of what you should prepare:
"In 2008 I was Marketing Executive at XYZ. The market for our products was not going well and I had no budget to launch my new product. I co-ordinated internally all the tasks to design a communication plan. I developed a new way of communicating our product using internet ie blogs. I created a partnership with a sport brand to co market our product. From the launching, the product got 5% of market share."

Doing that, you are specific and you give details. It is not anymore about "Yes I am good at..." but "I created this product and implemented... and got these results.".

You are proving things by examples and not by self-affirmation.

Interviewing is not about boasting, it is about telling what you have done and how you have done it. The more interviewers will know about the "how" and which behaviors you developed, the more interviewers will be able to identify if you are a good fit for the company.