In a recent blog post for the National Associations of Colleges and Employers, Kevin Collins offered “four ways to help students to showcase their full range of strengths in their applications and interviews.”

Practice, Practice, Practice. We all know or have seen people who are blessed with the gift of storytelling. Whether reciting a speech or just describing something that happened at work, their words just seem to flow out in a natural and unforced pace, and they seem completely comfortable throughout their narrations.

It’s a shame that we can’t all possess this gift, but we can work on feeling more at ease in situations requiring storytelling. As many verbal interactions with employers represent opportunities to use stories and examples to illustrate skills and strengths, it’s important for students to become more accustomed to this process.

Too often, however, students mistake memorization for preparation and as a consequence, their elevator pitches and interview answers sound flat and…well, memorized. It can be difficult to break students of the memorization habit. As described earlier, having students talk in general about their passions and interests during a career center appointment (without trying to answer any of the standard practice interview questions) can help them feel more confident when articulating their strengths.

Subsequent practice sessions employing more structured interview questions can then be used to help students answer these types of questions in a more natural style, and be more willing to include both hard and soft skills in their responses (and, in today’s virtual recruiting and interviewing environment, naturalness is a plus).

At the same time, it’s important to stress to students that brief hesitancies or stumbling over words when talking to employers does not mean that their candidacy is doomed. Answers do not have to be perfectly recited and flawless to be considered great responses. What is more important is the ‘authenticity’ of the candidate’s answers—to what extent are their responses truly reflective of who they are and what they have to offer?

Kevin Collins is a Senior Assistant Director and Career Consultant at Carnegie Mellon University.