“Don’t mistake activity with achievement.”
John Wooden
An Achievement is the result of your hard work, it’s those occasions when you have gone beyond the expectations of your role. In other words you are paid to do a job but where do you add value to retain it?
If you knew that at the end of the year the added value you brought to your role would reflect on the salary you received what would you do differently starting today?
In my last career blog I spoke about the importance of providing real life examples to support your transferable skills, thinking about your successes, your key achievements and including these within the content of your CV so that you stand out from your competition. An interview situation or performance review provides you with the opportunity to highlight your added value and accomplishments that could differentiate you from your peers or other applicants.
It’s important to keep achievements specific and ensure to inform the interviewer what you can do for them, address the interviewers or company’s needs rather than your own.
At this point I would like to share the STAR technique with you. This technique will help you to articulate your achievements in a concise and structured format. Whilst this is widely used in competency and behavioural based interviews it is also worth remembering that you can use this technique in any interview situation or performance review.
The STAR technique will help you to focus on your answer without going off on a tangent.
The acronym STAR stands for:
- Situation – It’s important to describe some background to the situation, make it concise, informative and relevant.
- Task – What needed to be accomplished?
- Action – Articulate what, how and why YOU did it, be careful not to talk about ‘We’ as a team. Whilst it’s important to go into detail REMEMBER to keep the information clear and relevant.
- Result – What happened? What was the result for you and those around you, it has to be a win/win.
Once you have identified a range of achievements then spend the time practicing them to ensure that you outperform your competition.
“Employers hire individuals whose features and achievements will benefit the organisation”