3 Types of Memory Recall for Your Interview

An interview is not the time to put your memory to the test. Memory recall for your interview should be on point.

You don’t want to be sitting there with a blank look as you desperately seek to recall the details of some past glory. Worse still is telling an incomplete story and filling in the gaps as you go along. Interviewers can sense when your account doesn’t quite add up.

Put the memory hard yards in long before the interview takes place.

When you think about changing jobs, you should be revisiting your past at least as much as you are dreaming about your future. Your history does not need to define your destiny. To reassure an employer that you are the person for the job, you have to frame your future potential in the context of your past achievements.

If your stories are compelling, employers can imagine you achieving similar feats for them. Take them on a journey to your past. They will have a foundation upon which to build hopes of a shared future.

But first, you have to remember the juicy details.

During memory recall, we revisit the same neural pathways that were laid down in the original encoding of the memory. While we won’t remember everything about our careers, we will likely have replayed the stand-out moments enough times since for them to be accessible enough to build upon.

These replays echo the original event. Our brain does its best to piece together the scattered pieces of the jigsaw. We fill in the gaps with a little creativity. The more we seek to recollect this narrative, the more gaps we will fill in.

3 types of memory recall

There are three main types of memory device that may help us piece together our previous career stories. Free recall, cued recall and serial recall.

Free recall is when we try to remember anything about the event that we can. We might not be able to remember the dialogue at the meeting, but maybe remembering who was sitting where might trigger something. Focusing the mind on the visual contents of a presentation could help us not forget some of the detail. The more complete the picture, the easier it will be (over time) to fill in the gaps.

Cued recall refers to recalling items using closely related cues or guides. You might not be able to remember how you constructed a commercial deal. You can put yourself in the same mental place by accessing the story by going through the motions and guiding yourself in how it felt at the time. Write down how the terms of the deal were structured. Other details will fall into place.

Serial recall is the recollection of events in the order of their occurrence. It is a little more regimented. Studies have shown it to be helpful in more recent events. You will often be asked to tell interview stories of how you achieved something, so take the time to create a timeline for all your recent successes. What happened, when, and why? Telling them what you did is one thing. Detailing a logical flow of how you achieved it is a whole different level of impressive.

There are many different things that we can all do to improve our memories that will help us to lead more successful and fulfilling lives. Our brains are incredibly complicated organs, but as you start out on a job search, you could do much worse than invest some time in boosting your recollection of times gone by.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).