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Great list of research to conduct and how to prepare for an interview.
As executive recruiters with over 1000 searches under our belts in 25 years, and interviews with over 100,000 candidates, I can suggest that even with all this preparation, most candidates still blow the interview itself.
The primary reason is that they do not practice their "stories" as you termed it. There's a specific structure to communicate a "story" in the interview to convey competency, skill, past accomplishment, and giving the hiring manager enough specifics to be able to predict your future performance.
We call this structure D.R.E.S.S.U.P. for phone interviewing, and learning how to S.W.E.A.R. in the face-to-face interview.
Most hiring managers have never been trained in how to conduct an effective interview. As a result the candidate, must take strong action in making sure their key points come across vs. passively letting the hiring manager as questions.
Both of these techniques for preparing interview answers have at their heart the idea you mention of "telling stories". What was the problem, what was your role, what was the impact, issues you ran into, budget, resources, other quantification, how you would do if differently, and questions to ask the hiring manager about comparable expectations.
Your interview preparation provides you with the information to structure your interview responses. However, it takes practice to be able to WOW the interviewer with a response. The good news is that these two techniques for phone interviewing and face to face interviewing can be used for any question.
Barry Deutsch
Partner
IMPACT Hiring Solutions
http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com