Interview coaching
My approach is based on three foundations:
Expertise - My deep knowledge and practice of technical consulting interviews allowed me to get an offer from one of the most selective firms, McKinsey (the average offer/applicants rate is 1%). My experience coaching many candidates has enabled me to quickly spot my clients' strengths and areas for improvement. I leverage my expertise in communication to teach candidates to be more concise, structured and convincing when presenting themselves. I am a strong believer in feedback: I deliver structured and action-oriented advice tailored to my clients needs. Last, my sessions are all designed to provide the right balance between practice and theory, to ensure my clients' success
Confidence - I believe that confidence is one of the most important criteria for passing interviews, and I make it a priority to ensure that my clients feel like rock stars! "Its all in the mind" is one of my motos - and I helped and watched several candidates (including myself) go from a "I will never get this job" mindset to confidently walking in the interviews feeling like they already belonged to the company. Leveraging my natural positive "you can do it!" attitude and personality, I use three techniques to boost clients confidence: 1) practice, practice, practice, 2) a set of tools and methods to increase self-esteem, and 3) focusing on strengths
Personalization - One of my coaching strengths lies in my ability to adjust the content of my message to my audience. Far from a preset and fixed "one size fits all" approach, I adjust to clients' needs, preferences but also strengths and areas of improvement
My personal story with interviewing
I started learning about the science of job-interviewing when I prepared my own interview with McKinsey & Co.. The company is often listed as one of the hardest to interview with and has an average offer/application rate of 1% - getting a job-offer from them is an excellent testimony of solid interviewing skills.
I had never done a single interview before, all of this was new to me, and felt overwhelming. And even worse, I only had 1.5 months to get myself ready. Where to start? I had to learn everything about case-interviewing (an exercise specific to consulting interviews), how to present myself and talk about my experiences in a clear and convincing manner, and make myself stand-out to the interviewers.
I started by learning on my own, reading as much as I could find on interviewing. I tried practicing alone. But I knew this was not enough. To be truly ready to give a stellar interview and improve my skills, I needed to get feedback from other people and practice in real-life settings. I reached out to other candidates (mostly students from my university) and set-up weekly practice sessions with them. This became an obsession. I wanted to learn everything about interviewing, how to truly stand-out to interviewers, and how to help others develop their skills. I practiced over 100+ mock-up interviews, and gave about the same number of practice sessions to fellow candidates.
That is when I realized I had a gift and passion for coaching candidates. More and more students were reaching out to me to practice interviews. I loved seeing them grow from one session to the next and apply the advice I had given them, and move on to more and more difficult interview questions and situations. I saw what common mistakes were made, I saw what excellent looked like. I was keeping track of it all, learning practical tips on how to improve and be able to give a stellar interview. This continued during my time at McKinsey, where I got trained on how to conduct interviews and participated in recruiting events.
This was really eye-opening.
I understood the power of self-confidence. So many excellent candidates with perfect resumes and outstanding work experiences were letting their self-doubts and self-judges get in the way of shining during interviews. Because I, too, struggled with this issue, I developed a practical toolkit to help boost candidates confidence.
I observed the power of practice and feedback. The candidates I coached were implementing the practical feedback I gave them, and from one session to the next, were making terrific progress. To be effective, feedback has to be delivered in a very specific way.
I realized the power of effective communication. Time runs fast during an interview, and every. single. minute. has to be used to stand-out. Interviewers form their opinions very fast. Many candidates were wasting time on details that were irrelevant to the recruiter. I taught candidates how to be structured, concise and top-down (i.e., answer first, details later) in their answers, and focus on what truly made them shine.
Interview-coaching was not only something I was passionate about, but also something I excelled at. It was from this passion that I founded MyStellarInterview so that I could empower thousands of people around the world to truly let their true self shine and learn how to stand-out in their interviews."
