I spend quite a lot of my time helping people who are looking for new jobs. Sometimes these engagements are formal coaching relationships, more often they are friends and former colleagues who make contact to ask for a reference and a bit of advice.
Looking for a job engages so many parts of the average person’s psyche that what is essentially quite a simple process, akin to making a bid in a blind auction, becomes complex and emotionally triggered.
To name just some of the triggers: imposter syndrome, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of commitment, mistrust of self leading to fear of success! There are many others. The interview process is a process, for many, of being judged. The deepest fear is that we will appear dressed in the Emperor’s new clothes, naked before an august and deeply perceptive interviewing panel, exposed by a penetrating Zoom interrogation or worst of all, assassinated by a colleague with a grudge.
Now I have sat on more interview panels than I’ve eaten pain au chocolat (and that’s a big number) and I have to say that many of them have not been particularly august, or perceptive, or technically competent to ask piercing and character shattering questions. This is particularly true for the more senior appointment panels I have either been on or been interviewed by. In panels at senior level, quite often no one is at the professional level of the candidates being interviewed. In that scenario, as with so many interviews, the resolution often comes down to personal fit and personality. I’m not saying it should, I’m saying that this is what I have seen.
There are many modern interview approaches much loved by HR professionals seeking to eradicate bias, align to skills matrices, score against functional competencies, generally rate, rank, weigh, measure and systematise recruitment. Again, I’m not saying that these are intrinsically bad things, certainly not those approaches seeking to reduce unconscious bias, but recruitment is not something that can be administered as a human algorithm. Why? Because we are humans not algorithms. Even using rating scales is flawed by the fact that I bring my head to the ranking and you bring yours. My head is the carved block of my experiences and your head is the carved block of yours. Our experiences are different and (to misquote Billy Joel) our separate conclusions are not the same.
So the friends and colleagues that I advise are often haunted by harrowing projections which see interviewing as something akin to personality surgery without anaesthetic. The results? For some, absolute paralysis. For others stories of anticipated failure leading to inaction: “There’s no point applying for that job, they won’t want a woman/man/50 year old/inexperienced person/asian/caucasian/three-toed parrot” Fill in your own reasons – we’ve all heard it and we’ve all said it. People comb job adverts, personal specifications, essentials, desirables and they look not for what they can do but they unearth, with grim triumphalism (and often some relief), the clear evidence that this job is not for them. “They want someone with 10 years experience, I’ve only got 8, so there’s no point…”
This is partly down to the pernicious self narratives of limiting beliefs and the resulting lack of self confidence but I think it’s more than that. Change is not everyone’s cup of tea and to be forced not to change, despite overwhelming evidence that it‘s time to make a move, is a mighty relief for many. With assumed indignation but the happy knowledge that no effort, risk or potential humiliation is required, people willingly enter The Cages of Stuckness and tell their stuck stories whilst happily slipping back into the old routine. Poor me. Phew.
So for those who wish not to be stuck, here is my Interview 101 advice, drawn from the experience of countless days spent compiling interview process, searching for candidates, interviewing and offering jobs. NOTE: it’s not rocket science, anyone can do it.
- Buy a ticket. It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend arm-wrestling with yourself about whether this company might or might not want you, you will never find out unless you apply. Pre-application speculation is a waste of time and emotional energy.
- Personalise your application to the company – anything generic is going into the reject pile. Know the business, the mission, the language of the people you are asking to work with – or don’t bother to buy a ticket, you’re wasting your time again.
- Think about what the people you are writing to might want to hear…I don’t mean ‘do I tick all the boxes?’…I mean what are they really looking for? Then don’t tell them what you can’t do, excite them with real stories about what you have actually done and why you’d like to do it for them.
- Write as you, not what you think you need to project to make them like you. If being you isn’t good enough, it’s the wrong job for you.
- If you get an interview offer, now you have to get serious. If you really want the job, treat the interview like preparing for a test in school. You would be amazed how many people don’t do this and show up without any idea about the job or the company they are applying for. I’ve seen hundreds of people thrown by the question, “Tell us about yourself”. Just like your school test, when you worked out there were 10 possible topics and made revision cards for each one, think about what they might ask you and prepare short notes so you don’t have to think on your feet in an interview at the moment your reptilian brain is already trying to strangle the supply of blood to your thinking systems in case you have to make a run for it.
- There is a finite number of questions you can be asked in an interview. They come wrapped up in different words but the job is to prepare and spot the intention of the question. For example:
- Tell us about your weakness
- If I gave you some professional development funding, what would you spend it on?
…is the same question. If you have prepared a strengths/ weakness/ example of success/ example of a failed project answer, you just knock this one out of the park.
- Do not approach an interview as a test of your value and worth as a person. These strangers who are engaging with you know nothing about you. They are not in a position to judge your worth so don’t put that on the table. Failure to get a job doesn’t mean that you are a failure as a person. If they are looking for triangles and you are a circle, you won’t get the job but that doesn’t mean you are not a brilliant circle. Remember always that you are a brilliant circle, let no one take this away from you.
- If you have prepared and if you haven’t shown up with the idea that you are going to allow people to judge you, you should be able to relax and be confident. Smile. Mix up the length and cadence of your answers. Don’t be too brief but don’t talk too much either. Interviewing can be quite a tedious job – wake up the interviewers with your energy, your body language, with some questions (not a list of), with a sense that you are there to share and engage as a peer, not as a supplicant. Supplicants don’t get jobs.
- If you don’t get the job, ask for feedback. You don’t always get it but many people will give you really thoughtful insights that can help next time you take the circle out for a spin.
…and remember always, you are a brilliant circle.
