Drive Your CAR Story to ACE the Interview
Your resume should paint a portrait describing situations that reveal how you applied your skills, abilities, and experience.
The same strategy applies to answering interview questions, too. Employers want to see evidence of your expertise, so they will look to your resume for topics to discuss. Expect to answer behavioral questions such as, ”Give me an example of how you used your interpersonal skills to solve a problem on the job.”
People love to hear short, interesting stories. Take advantage of that by describing your achievements in narrative form. Be prepared to provide details about your accomplishments.
The Challenge-Action-Results (CAR) technique is a powerful tool to use in this situation. Describe the challenges of a problem you faced, the actions you took, and the results you achieved.
How to develop your CAR story
- Identify one key story for each accomplishment. Focus only on strong, clearly defined results.
- Describe a particular situation or problem (your Challenge) that you needed to resolve. Give details to add credibility to your statement.
- Concisely describe what you did (your Action) to solve the problem. Be ruthless in eliminating activities and accomplishments that do not fit with the CAR strategy.
- Describe how your organization benefited by your actions (your Results). Provide numbers to quantify the results and explain how your action affected the organization’s bottom line.
TIP: Focus on your results. Be careful not to provide too much detail in describing your action steps.
Example of a CAR story
Challenge: I was hired by an electronics firm to turn their sales department around and return it to profitability. They had been plagued with poor sales, dissatisfied customers, and massive annual losses.
Action: I rebuilt and retrained the sales team and implemented a team-based work culture in our department.
Results: The new sales team achieved and surpassed our turnaround objectives and returned the operation to profitability in the first year. We did this by delivering strong and sustainable gains, including 70% improvement in operating efficiency, 75% improvement in customer service ratings, and 100% on-time customer delivery. I also upgraded the sales department by replacing obsolete equipment with state-of-the-art systems, and restored credibility with one customer generating over $500,000 a year in revenues.
Your CAR story will be particularly effective if it aligns with the kind of challenges you expect to deal with in your future position. Keep it relevant.
You don't have to do it alone; we can help you prepare your resume and other career documents. See Resumes and Cover Letters. For interview strategies and resources see our ebook, Interview Checklists That Get You Hired; also see Interview Coaching. We're here for you if you need assistance.