We can’t research everything about a job unfortunately. There are often huge invisible elephants in an interview room, like the boss that nobody stays with very long, the team with unrealistic goals, the routine nature of a lot of the job. And just like all major life moves – going to live with someone, buying a house or having a baby – you only discover the full picture when you are in there.

But what we can identify or make informed guesses about, at least, is what problems face the business. Or ‘challenges’ if we want to be gentler. Most businesses, for instance, will be concerned with how they connect with customers and how they keep those customers in conversation. And most businesses will be concerned with margin, the difference between what they buy and sell their goods and services for. You won’t go far wrong if you start with consideration of market and margin.

And generally in business, market and margin are currently subject to specific influences. For instance:

• where customers  place their attention across live and digital media
• where the most lucrative customers hang out
• competition from emerging markets like China and Asia

In the public sector, almost everyone has slashed budgets and needs to increase their resourcefulness within limits. Creative and innovative thinking is at a premium.

It’s important not to be disingenuous about this: to match your skills to the problem, rather than identifying the problem and then faking it is the sort of thing that you tackle well…

Here’s an exercise to help:

Review your life and think of three problems which you’ve overcome. All problems involve contradictions – one force pulling against another. For each problem you’ve chosen, what were the opposing influences you tackled?  They could be something like:

Problem1:  We were set a tough target for 3 months.  Opposing factors: achievement required v very little time and money.

Problem 2: A specific project needed to be built. Opposing factors: team effort required v we were at war with each other.

Problem 3: We did not know what we were doing . Opposing factors: no clue where to start v urgent need for knowledge.

So the third thing to add in here is what you did, for example:

Problem 1: We were set a tough target for 3 months. Opposing factors: achievement required v very little time and money. What I did: broke it down into small components with lots of ongoing motivation.

When you’ve tackled three problems, a common theme should emerge for you as to  the type of problem solver you are: maybe a strong  organizer, activist,  diplomat or analyst?

How you solve problems is valuable to an employer and this should become a backbone of your job search content, to help them believe they should invest in you.

This is a specific value you offer, whether it be pulling people together in adversity or driving improvement through in a task focussed way. You can get more on this exercise and the pdf to go with it here:

You are identifying here the particular buzz you get from the way you solve problems. And if you review your life so far, it is likely you will find that this approach has given you a buzz time and time again – especially through periods of adversity and much change.

It is a key driver, and one you need to enjoy talking about and expanding upon with specific examples from your career history to back it up.