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Tweet your Career: A Recruiter's Perspective

Twitter Visual | Kooroshication  -  Foter  -  CC BY
Twitter Visual | Kooroshication - Foter - CC BY

Social media can be pretty intimidating. It is a platform built on sound bites and thought capsules. If you can’t say it in 140 characters, no one will hear you.

If your career or management style has always involved story telling, you might want to think about evolving a little.

It can be tricky in an interview situation. Ten or twenty years of experience is going to give you an awful lot of material. The key is to find enough to answer but not so much that you lose the listener.

I am not suggesting that you should answer a question with a shrug. Although it is highly efficient and therefore tempting, it is not the answer. But you would do well to practice talking in short paragraphs and making sure that you are not repeating yourself.

If you want the brutal truth about this, check with a teenager – your kids, a niece or nephew. Ask them if you have a tendency to go on and on.

If the answer is yes (or worse, a shrug), then you know what you have to do.

Write down five typical interview questions and open the timer app on your phone.

Practice answering the questions in one minute. When you feel good about this, get a friend and have them ask you different job related questions. Don’t forget the timer. That’s the only way to know if it’s working.

As you get better, your brain will adapt and your language will become more succinct. You will be able to get more examples into a short answer. That’s how you cram twenty years of experience into one answer. #Bazinga!