Chapter 19
How Does Your Experience Help Us?
In This Chapter
Recognizing questions that target experience
Focusing your answers on an employer’s needs
Studying sample questions for practice
In the classic adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Karen Allen (playing Marion Ravenwood) hasn’t seen Harrison Ford (playing Indiana Jones) for awhile and comments that he’s not the same man she knew ten years ago. Ford’s Indiana Jones has a great comeback:
It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.
And so it goes with experience. You can have ten years of skill-building experience — or you can have one year’s experience with nine years of reruns. Solid experience is yet one more confirmation of your ability to do a top-notch job.
Making Your Experience Relevant
Psychologists insist that past behavior predicts future behavior. True or not, interviewers look at your yesterdays for clues on how well you’ll perform in your tomorrows.
Simply reciting your experience isn’t going to excite an employer. You have to make the connection between then and now. You have to show exactly how your experience-based ...