Mastering Interviews Part Two with Jenny Cole

Jenny Cole: 1:02

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Positively Leading the Podcast, and this episode and the previous one are particularly for those of you in school leadership who are navigating the complexities of the job application process. I'm Jenny Cole, and today we're unpacking the topic that brings a lot of stress and second guessing, and that is job interviews. Specifically, I'm going to walk you through the four or five common mistakes I see people make and how you can avoid them to show up with more confidence and clarity. As I said at the beginning of the previous episode, for the past 15 years I have been doing leadership development in the education space, and so I've been working with new and aspiring leaders in my Launching into Leadership and Rising Leaders program, but I've also been coaching people as they transition out of one role and into the next.

Jenny Cole: 2:05

Generally, these days, there are roles that you need to apply for and that you need to get to interview for, and so here are some of my mistakes. I'm going to try and remember to put them in some kind of order. Mistake number one is trying to be perfect rather than authentic. You will never perfect an interview. The panel will be different, the questions will be different, you will be different, and you don't need to walk into an interview thinking you have to have all the right answers polished to perfection. You don't need to remember every single policy that was ever written. You don't need to know verbatim their business plan. Instead, what you need to shine out of you is your confidence and your authenticity, and you know Breno Brown says that vulnerability is courage and not a flaw. Instead of trying to impress, focus on expressing who you are, what value you add, how you would be an excellent addition to the team that already exists and how you lead. So shift your mindset from proving yourself, because that feels hard. Proving yourself, because that feels hard, that feels really difficult. When we don't win the position, it often feels really wounding because we've tried to prove that we're enough and they have decided that we're not. Instead, it's about sharing your purpose and the impact that you've made over your career in the positions that you've held, and say to yourself I've earned myself a seat at this table, I've earned this position and I'm going to demonstrate how they would be silly not to have me Mistake. Number two and this is the one that I want to spend some time on, and it's about under preparation now.

Jenny Cole: 4:12

I have never seen anyone go into an interview just winging it. In fact, I've seen people prepare thousands well, it feels like thousands, tens of pages of tightly typewritten script about all the things that they've ever done and all the things that they want to say. Most of that is already in your CV and you've written the really important things application. Instead, I want you to choose three to five really good examples. They can come out of your application they don't need to be new and use the SAO framework to script practice, shape, compelling responses. So if you are doing merit selection in a government school, you will have a set number of criteria and people can only ask you questions from those criteria and, sure, every single question is going to be different. But they want to be able to get out of you the key attributes, the key skills and the key knowledge that you have, and they come through your examples.

Jenny Cole: 5:35

I want you to write out a script for a response and rehearse them. So here's the story that I say to people I would not expect you to give a keynote presentation for 30 minutes without first scripted, written some slides and practiced it over and over and over and over again until it becomes fluent. What we're trying to do here is not over prepare and over rehearse, but I want you to go into the interview with three to five examples that you have already practiced so hard that you can draw from them because they're in your muscle memory, they're in your long-term memory. Them, because they're in your muscle memory, they're in your long-term memory, you don't have to remember them. The point here is you should go into your interview knowing what you're going to say, and if you've rehearsed them, then all you need is a couple of palm cards with some key points on them, some key words that maybe you always forget, some policies that you might want to refer to things that are going to slip out of your brain, but just palm cards. And they are the palm cards of the three to five examples that you've already written, already rehearsed, already talked about a thousand times to the dog, to your husband, whoever you're talking about.

Jenny Cole: 7:10

And so the questions are pretty common A time that you've led through change, how you've improved outcomes, how you've managed a conflict situation. They might write them in fancy words, but there's some pretty standard questions and and I am not the expert on that I would suggest that you write to your networks and ask them what kind of questions they've been asked at interview and gather some. But they will be taken from the selection criteria and you just need to rehearse your say or your star to the point where it is stuck and even if you're really wobbly and lost your confidence or lost your track, you can draw on one of those straight away. Tip number one yes, you can bring notes to interview. Just don't bring 10 pages of typewritten notes that you're going to fosset through. Bring five or six or 10 palm cards that you can look at really quickly. Other thing about having these palm cards I often do it on post-it notes is if you do have the opportunity for reading time, as you're reading through the questions, you take your palm cards or your post-it notes and go. That example matches that question the best. That example matches that question the best, because mistake number 2.1 is the first time you do any preparation is at reading time. No, no, at reading time you are matching your already planned responses to the questions that they've asked and then adding any dot points as the question requires. So in reading time you're trying to be really clear about what it is that the question is asking you, matching it with your best response and then jotting anything else down that you want to remember. I don't know what mistake we're up to, but I'm going to say mistake number three, and that is when you tell rather than storytell. Delivering flat, generic answers that anybody could deliver is not going to win you the job.

Jenny Cole: 10:19

As humans, we are hardwired for storytelling. We like narrative. We like, at the very least, a beginning, a middle and an end. But a narrative framework like the hero's journey is also useful, or just a narrative genre framework. So in the hero's journey we've got the ordinary world where everything began, and then we've got a call to adventure. So the ordinary world using seo, is your situation. So we're a school with a very low ixia, with a high transient number of students with english as a first language, and we decided that we really needed to create some progress maps for X, y and Z. That's your call to adventure.

Jenny Cole: 11:06

What was the challenge that you faced? Number three is the obstacle and this is the part that I often find people miss in job applications is that they don't talk enough about the challenges. They will say I was supposed to implement progress maps. I got a committee together, we got some examples of good ones, and we implemented them. I call that a fairy story.

Jenny Cole: 11:34

Inside that was a whole lot of obstacles. First of all, you've got to lead people through change. They don't like change. How did you do that? First of all, you've got to lead people through change. They don't like change. How did you do that? Maybe you got some real pushback from your ethnic assistants, who really didn't like the way you were doing things. Maybe right in the middle of all of that, there was a flood in the school and you had to abandon your plans because all the classes got moved to the library.

Jenny Cole: 12:00

Right, it's not only the situation that made it tough, but how did you lead your way through those really challenging situations, breakthrough, what did you do? What did the data say? How did you move the needle? How did you get out of the learning pit and into really making progress? And then what was the transformation, the result and what you learned? So what would you do differently? What would you do again? What was the big learning that you took out of that?

Jenny Cole: 12:32

So, instead of saying I improved team collaboration, share how you led a team through resistance, how you co-designed a solution and how you rebuilt trust, let the panel, feel the tension and see your growth. So here's the hero's journey. Can google it. It's everywhere the ordinary world, the call to adventure, the obstacle, the breakthrough and the transformation narrative. Narrative is so important. We get hooked on stories. We follow a story. If you've ever been on a panel and you've listened to someone and you're like all the words are right but they're not making any sense, it's because they've not turned it into a story where you are situated as the hero in the story. But that doesn't mean you have to do everything.

Jenny Cole: 13:25

Mistake number four, which is either getting stuck in the weeds or staying at too high a level during the interview process. So some interviewees get really lost in the nitty-gritty detail. They spend so much time explaining what they've done or explaining every tactic or action that it makes it hard for the panel to understand their strategic thinking. And my guess is, by the time you're applying for these kinds of roles, you're applying for leadership roles. So sure, there might be some deputies, positions that are quite operational, but it's about connecting those that operation to a bigger purpose or to a higher level. Likewise, there are some folks that stay too high level and forget to explain how they actually turn things around.

Jenny Cole: 14:22

So the trick is to to strike a balance either start with the big picture the vision, vision, the context and the why and then zoom in to the practical actions that you did and how you led and what the challenges were that you overcame, and bring in both strategy and execution, because this helps the panel see not just what value you add but how you deliver. So an example of this might be we had a target or a vision to boost engagement across the school. That's still quite school level, and you might say I led a staff wide professional learning initiative focused on student voice, blah, blah, blah. The strategy was collaborative inquiry and the implementation involved weekly team huddles and coaching and you'd explain it more. And by the end of the term we saw a 25% lift in student feedback. That's pretty mid-level, but I would encourage you to connect that to an even higher level.

Jenny Cole: 15:22

So you might say the department has a strategy for student wellbeing and student voice and this is outlined in the focus first document and as a school, we also have a target to boost engagement across the school, and then you go on with the example. Or you could start with the example and go lower, as in what that looks like. And so we've got a group of year nine boys who did this and didn't do that and who were school refusing, and we collected some data and realised that we had a real issue with engagement. And then you might go up to the more strategic and the more higher level. So I always think of it sort of like a funnel. It starts with the department or systems business plan, their policies, their procedures, their guidelines, the things that they're focusing on, then how, as a school, you turned that into school level priorities and plans and operational plans, and then what it is that you did to lead a part of that or a section or a particular focus or an outcome, and then what it might look like all the way down to individual behaviour management plans for some kids, and of course, those examples would include data and strategies and tactics that you did. So you either start big in your funnel or you start small with a specific example and you work up to how you connected it to the big picture.

Jenny Cole: 17:05

I always like, as a panellist, to know that you are a member of a larger school or a larger system and that everything is connected, that it's not random, that we are trying to improve outcomes and someone much higher up and much cleverer than you has decided on some focus areas and strategies and that you're connecting with those. So don't get stuck in the nitty gritty in the weeds of the. You know, 2% of kids did this and 4% did that, and the year threes did this and the year nines did that. That's important, the ability to analyze the data really important. But what's the transformation you are trying to achieve and where does it fit into wider level system level policy and strategy? Of course, if you're working in an independent school, it might look slightly different, but you might want to connect it. If you're a faith-based school, you might want to connect it to your vision and purpose and values.

Jenny Cole: 18:15

State number five is actually forgetting that you have values and a vision of your own, and the error that people make here is focusing only on technical skills or achievement rather than forgetting to convey your leadership values, your leadership philosophy, your educational philosophy, how you believe education should or could be. So don't forget to speak clearly from your values, know your why. What kind of leader are you? Are you a servant leader or a host leader? Are you transformational? Are you a constructive leader? You don't have to say that in interview. But knowing who you are and what you bring is so important. What kind of culture do you want to build? What kind of pedagogy do you know is important and what do you know about that Without just sprouting the next big thing, talking about what it is that drives you? Because interview panels are looking for alignment, because when you lead with vision and values, you leave a very lasting impression. People know exactly what they're supposed to think of you. If you are speaking in your values, you're speaking to your strengths and you're aligning that really clearly with the school or the system that you're working in.

Jenny Cole: 19:38

But of course we know that what gets in the way for many of us is letting our nerves hijack our performance, a lack of confidence and allowing anxiety to shrink us, shrink our presence or derail our message. If you've been around me for a long time, you know that I work a lot in the confidence space. There are podcasts on confidence. In my Launching into Leadership program I spend an entire module on confidence At interview. This is the in-the-moment confidence that says I'm not going to shake so hard that I can't speak, I'm not going to let my anxiety shut me down so that I sound ridiculous, and there's some pretty good, in the moment things that you can do Beforehand.

Jenny Cole: 20:36

It is knowing that you can go into the interview having already rehearsed, having already practiced. As I said, I wouldn't send you onto the stage to have a very important keynote presentation without first having practiced and rehearsed and being very clear about what you're going to say. It could also mean making those palm cards or post-it notes so that you enter the interview with some things that are going to remind you of what it is that's important to say. There are also the strategies around the Wonder Woman pose or the confidence pose, which is prior to interview going into the bathroom or in a closed off room and making yourself as big as humanly possible to trick our brain into thinking that we are more powerful and that interview. What this means in the moment is making sure you sit up nice and straight, with your shoulders back, with your legs apart, underneath the desk, which is going to trick your brain into thinking that you are more confident than you are.

Jenny Cole: 21:43

Also, your brain is not very good at knowing the difference between nerves and excitement, and so Mel Robbins teaches us this shift, the simple shift that says I'm excited to share my story instead of I'm nervous. So don't, whatever you do, say when someone says, how are you for you to say I'm pretty nervous? Or when you stumble, and you and you will, in that first couple of seconds, don't say I'm nervous. Say I'm so excited, I have so much that I'd like to share with you. This will trick your brain into thinking you're excited rather than nervous, but this will also make the panel feel more at ease.

Jenny Cole: 22:27

If you've ever been on a panel, you know there is nothing more. There is nothing more excruciating than watching a good performer fall into an anxiety puddle and lose their words. So they want to feel assured. So walk in If possible, shake hands If not possible. Give really nice, clear eye contact to the other members on the panel Smile, nod, don't forget your body language, don't forget that you are prepared and that you're ready for it, and just let your authenticity, your passion, your values shine through. These aren't things that you have to remember. These are part of you and if you've done the deep, hard work of making sure you know what your values are, being really clear on your leadership purpose and who you want to be as a leader and what value you can add to the school, because the next person is not you. You very likely have very similar experiences, but your personalities will be different and what you bring will be different.

Jenny Cole: 23:43

I'm going to talk once more about rehearsal, and so when I say rehearse, I want you to come up with three to five possible examples that go broad and deep, that you can turn into stories about your leadership impact. And then I want you to practice saying them out loud, say them into a voice recorder, talk to the wall, say it to your kids, whoever will listen to you. The idea is to get used to hearing the sound of your own voice. Most of us are pretty shitty when we can hear ourselves. We don't like the way we sound, and so that we self-edit, practice, practice, practice. I personally like talking into a voice recorder because I can play it back and I can also see how long it is, and I can listen and print out a transcript that tells me how many times I've said um or ah or some of my overused phrases. I can actually hear it back. And the idea is you start practicing with the script that you've designed and then you practice without the script and then you get a trusted colleague to ask you some random questions and your job is to take the script that you've practiced and finesse it so that you can say it out loud when there's somebody else in the room in the room. So there we have it.

Jenny Cole: 25:19

Some pretty common mistakes Trying to be perfect rather than authentic, underpreparing your story, so going into interview having not already practiced or being prepared. Mistake number three was telling people what you've done rather than leading them through a story that makes sense. Mistake number four getting stuck in the weeds or stuck at a too higher level and and losing the panel. Number five was forgetting your own values and vision and what you add. Number six, of course, is letting your nerves hijack your performance. Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode gave you something to reflect on or to practice before your next opportunity, I'd love to hear about how you went and how you put some of these tips into practice. Leadership begins with ourselves, how we show up for ourselves, what we know about ourselves, and nothing is more important than demonstrating this at interviews. So, until next time, keep leading with heart and with purpose. This is Jenny Cole, and you've been listening to Positively Leading.

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