Interviewers these days want to hear speci?c data. If you don’t provide the interviewer with concrete, quanti?ed examples of what you did, the interviewer will very likely ask you to. It’s much more impressive to be prepared to offer them yourself, without prompting. And in the opposite direction, it is most troubling if the employer asks for examples of your skills and you can’t think of any. To prevent being caught off guard this way, you’ll want to prepare several Q statements (targeted to each speci ?c job) before every interview. If you can learn how to quantify your skills now, it will become an ingrained habit, at your command whenever you need to use it.

Let’s take a look at the structure and content of some other concrete, quanti?ed statements:

• Since I’ve become the director of operations, I’ve been responsible for helping the company to decrease waste by 20 percent, resulting in an overall savings of $1.2 million a year.

• I ran a bicycle sales and repair store with 17employees and gross
annual sales of $193,000.

• I operated a multiline phone system and personally handled over 200 calls per day.

Taken From: Fearless Interviewing