[clarry]

> > That said, I'm always surprised how many candidates cannot even point to one problem they worked on they found interesting or one solution that they're proud of.

> It could be that this technique favors people good at telling stories.

Or people who think they're impressive. I know I would've been able to point out many problems and solutions I found interesting and were impressed with when I was 15. Today, not so much. The more I know, the less impressed I am with myself, and more and more stuff just feels "routine" and nothing special.

It could be that I'm just not impressive. At all.

[YCode]

I'm not a "look at me!" kind of person, but here's what has really helped me with these kinds of interviews.

Keep a daily journal of what you work on. Nothing fancy, just stop by once a day religiously and add a few notes on what you did, what meetings you attended, who you spoke with, etc...

Save your evaluations and especially any award packages you or your team might get submitted for. At least where I work both are your supervisor's attempt to make you look as good as possible.

Then, when you're job hunting review your notes and bullets and collect the ones that sound the best and perhaps ones that have numbers assigned to them (size, savings, productivity, etc..)

Preferably you'd memorize these few stories about yourself, but if you must you could also bring a notebook with prompts to remind you.

[Declanomous]

My grandfather used to do this. He had notebooks filled with what he did every day of his career. It's really cool to be able to go back and look through his notebooks and see what he was doing in April of 1971.

My notetaking is not as rigorous as my Grandfathers, but I do something similar. Every month I make a new manilla folder with the month and year on the tab. Each week I write down every project I'm working on and every meeting I have. If someone brings me a new project I put it on the sheet. Every note I take a meetings and during projects goes in that folder.

At the end of each week I go through the notes from that week and write down anything interesting on that week's note sheet. At the end of the month I go through all the notes and write what I accomplished on the front of each manila folder.

It makes it really easy to keep track of everything you've done, without consciously keeping a journal in the moment. It's also a really easy organizational system. When someone asks, "What did we do for [x] in the past", all I need to do is flip through my folders looking at the front for anything that rings a bell, rather than trying to keep up with a tagged organizational system.

This probably doesn't work if you don't have a file cabinet though.

[PJDK]

If someone brought along an notebook full of problems they'd experienced and how they'd solved them to an interview I was conducting I would be very impressed!

[et-al]

This is great advice, thanks. In the past six months, I've been better about keeping notes. Not specifically for this, but this is definitely another benefit of journaling.

[talmand]

At this point in my career I'd have to say I agree. Many of my team are at the start of their careers. I find it really interesting the number of times they seem impressed by something I did that I'm just "meh" about.

Oddly enough, the opposite is true as well. I'm constantly impressed at the level of ability they have at this point in their career as compared to my ability at the same point in my career. They just simply know more. Of course, there's more to know these days but still, I find it impressive.