Don’t Focus on Just One Customer
The top "mistake" candidates make in interviews with me is narrowly focusing on one customer in the example they're providing, rather than acknowledging all of their customers. Or, not knowing who their customer is at all. This has been a dealbreaker in many interviews, even with otherwise qualified candidates.
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Too narrow of a focus can look like identifying your stakeholder or client as your customer but not the end customer of what you're working on, or the other way around. Obviously, certain customers will take priority in each situation and context is important, but it goes a long way when you are able to demonstrate to an interviewer that you understand you have multiple customers to serve.
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So how do you make sure you communicate this properly? My personal philsophy is to treat everyone as a customer, which makes this really easy even when you're not really sure who your customer "should" be.⠀If you do this and make it a habit to go above and beyond for all customers, you will have many examples to share when you're asked a customer focused behavioral interview question.
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I usually kick off a non-traditional customer example with something like, "For this project, I was creating a report for my director so I considered both her and my manager my customers as it needed to convey the message my manager was trying to send, and provide the information my director needed."
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Have you ever done this in an interview or interviewed a candidate who forgot their customer?
