Landing It: The Job Interview
The data confirms professionals are on the move. Around 55% of American professionals and 1:4 UK professionals seek new jobs. In Australia and elsewhere the numbers look about the same. Finetuning your interview skills might feel pressing — even urgent therefore; but how do we show up in ways which showcase our skills, personality, and work?
This week’s post explores how mental fitness (i.e. feeling love vs. fear and positive vs. negative feelings) can transform how we look and feel in these high-stakes moments. Communication best practices become part of the offering, too. The end goal? Helping you reframe your interview as a learning and practice for staying confident and calm. And my podcast this week on the top five communications myths about job interviews lives here.
Step One: Unpack Your Fears and/or Discomfort
As part of any lasting strategy, get curious about your fears or discomfort as you prep for your interview. With blameless discernment and with the kind voice of a curious relative, ask yourself: What’s my underlying fear with this interview? Popular responses coachees share with me include fear of:
- Disappointing others — like my family, mentor, or coach
- Seeming awkward, not authentic
- Becoming demoralized, doomed — or unemployable
- Staying stuck
By kicking the log over and seeing what’s there, hopefully you’ll smile and see the lack of merit some lies have. Also, get curious about what these fears teach us. Notice the parts you do and don’t have influence over to help build calm.
Step Two: Prepare and Research
Just like any high-stakes conversation, preparing helps reduce our fears. When we understand something about the hirer, the position, and the company, we’ve fodder for what we specifically bring to the table — and why. Also, the credibility of our Judge’s lies on how poorly we’ll do start to lose credibility from this step. Tips to research may include:
- Asking an insider for insight — even the interviewer. One job seeker gained fodder on how to frame his experience from his interviewer who, like him, had transitioned from the military to the private sector.
- Reading up on industry trends to help position your experience in more relevant, timely ways.
- Understanding the company’s challenges, triumphs, and growth plans via annual reports and the media.
- Learning about stakeholders via the company website or LinkedIn to help guide you on how to dress, connect, and share.
Step Three: Form a Cunning Plan/Strategy
Having strategy up front can feel more like a pull vs. push to action, less fear and panic, more ease and flow. Strategy builds calm within while also reducing endless hours of pointless prep and research. Consider these potential steps:
- Consider how your work experience and approach to life shines over others — and why. Really see and feel your accomplishments to build vital confidence — celebrate how far you’ve come!
- Get comfortable and strategic about the knowledge or career gaps — anything ambiguous — and how you’ll counter them.
- Manage your prep to include time to ground, rest, and find perspective to help replace fear of failure with love for learning and adventure.
- Preempt with a friend, coach, or mentor the questions you’ll likely field from your interviewer and what they truly ask? A question on how you got someone resistant onboard asks about your communication style and if you’re bossy or empathetic as you lead, for instance. Prepare your own questions, too, to show interest and curiosity.
Step Four: Practice Delivery and Brevity
You’ll want to also consider how you deliver your responses — and ways to stay brief. You may want to:
- Avoid sharing too much in the first question. Trust your interviewer will offer more opportunities for further depth. Check in that you’ve shared enough as you go.
- Manage your Judge who may assume wrongly that every question is perfect. Push back when a question asks you to cover too much terrain or sounds downright vague or confusing. Repeat back what you understand before proceeding.
- Try the rule of three for crisp, specific responses. E.G. I’ve three main strengths I feel I bring to this role: 1, 2, and 3.
- Vary your sentence pattern and length for vocal variety. Use all three patterns, especially the inserted idea pattern as I’ve done here, to naturally vary inflection.
- Avoid reading, if possible (when on remote calls). A prepared script yields complete answers. However, one hiring manager I’ve coached speaks for many by saying ‘reading’ in an interview signals a lack of courage to wing it and blows any chance to connect. You also risk sounding flat.
Step Five. Wow Your Interviewer With Story
Look for ways to use story which often save time while also revealing more about you. My article and podcast on storytelling provide a helpful framework and extra fodder. For job seekers, some helpful tips may include:
- Keep things brief (two minutes top) and relevant. If they want a global thinker, a leader who can speak across geographies, then think of those moments in your life where boundaries felt most invisible.
- Allow some vulnerability, personality, and weakness. Stories without a challenge or a shortcoming you overcame sound promotional, trite, and therefore, guarded.
- Weave in values and a powerful lesson you learned — and something others can learn from too. Add the ‘so what’ at the end.
I titled this article ‘Landing It. The Job Interview.’ But after reflecting on these techniques, I’m finding the ‘it’ becomes less about landing the job and more about finding the calm, peaceful mindset that feels less attached to the outcome and more interested in learning. I hope these five mental fitness and communication techniques help you replace fear, worry, or dread for your next job interview with joy for discovery. Let me know which tips you plug in and write to me about your interview experience at hangingrockmedia@gmail.com
Debbi Gardiner McCullough coaches and trains immigrant leaders to become more confident, concise, and authentic communicators. From Wisconsin, she owns and runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communication effectiveness fellow coach to leaders all over the globe with BetterUp.