Interview Like a Performer
Interview skills can be completely different than job skills. The unfortunate reality is that employers often evaluate interview skills when they should be assessing job skills, and they often don’t even know it. Therefore, strengthening your interview skills will allow you to more eloquently communicate your capacity for the job. Interviewing can be like a performance. Preparing correctly for the interview will also make you better at your job by forcing you to reflect on your own professional values, beliefs, and skills. Follow these quick steps for a better interview, which can also lead to better performance on the job.
Know yourself! You can do this by compiling sample interview questions that are related to the job and write out your answers. The purpose is not to memorize your answers. Instead, this forces you to reflect on who you are and what you believe as a professional so you can more readily talk about yourself during an interview. This exercise will also help you dig deeper into interview questions. Every interview question has a purpose for being asked. Most people answer questions on the spot and haven’t taken the time to think about them. Employers are often trying to assess who you are as a person and what you will be like on the job. Sometimes there is a deeper meaning to the question. For example, a very basic and generic question is, “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” On the surface, it is an obvious question. However, the deeper meaning behind the question is to identify how reflective and metacognitive you are. Employees that grow the most are reflective, self-aware, and can identify what they are good or bad at in order to do something to address it. Those employees are the most successful.
Get in the zone! A good performer gets into the mindset and plays out the performance well before the curtain opens. Most people go into the job interview and wait to perform once they are called into the interview. First, examine the questions that you prepared earlier. You are not memorizing your answers to the questions, you are thinking about what you believe, value, and achieve. This will help you answer the questions that attempt to get at who you are as a professional. Second, practice out loud. On your drive to the interview, pretend that you are in the interview answering questions that you anticipate. A good performer visualizes the performance before the curtain opens. Then, when the curtain opens, they are already in the performance mindset and the shift is not as significant. If you wait to “perform” when the curtain opens, it takes time to adjust, which can come across as nerves or uncertainty.
Don’t improvise! Good performers don’t “wing it.” Even when improvising, they draw on previous experiences and knowledge as a foundation. Pause and think through your answer before starting to talk, especially if it is a difficult and complex question. Use that time to draw upon your knowledge about yourself that you prepared earlier. Interview teams often judge your answer and qualifications based on the first few sentences that are stated first. Even if you eventually get to a great answer, it’s already too late. Instead, it is okay to write down the question or take quick notes about the question or examples that you want to make sure you cover. Although it may feel a bit awkward to have that silent pause while the interview team is staring at you. However, it is significantly better than answering a question with a poor response. Use this technique for the most complex question or a two part question. Most candidates usually only answer one part of a two part question and then have to ask to repeat the second part of the question.
Second act: Take advantage of the experience! Don’t let NOT getting the job be a lost opportunity. Job interviews are a competition and the employer may select another candidate and you may never know why. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from this opportunity. Immediately following the interview, write down the interview questions that you can remember. This will build upon your interview questions that you can reflect upon and prepare for the next interview, should you not get the job. Reflect upon your answers and performance and write down better answers and what you should do differently next time.
Know your audience! Do your research about the organization, school, or people that you are interviewing with. Interview teams will often ask questions about why you want to work for their organization. On the surface, they are asking how you see yourself fitting into the organization. On a deeper level, they are assessing your preparedness and work ethic. Therefore, you should research their social media and websites and assess the type of climate and culture that you think exhibits. Look at the mission and vision statements and compare those to your values and beliefs that you identified when you wrote out your sample interview question answers. Reference those aligned values into your answers throughout the interview. Again, be true to yourself. You want to make sure that you will fit within the organization just as much as they want you to fit.
End with an encore! The interview team often asks the candidate what questions they have for the team. The most common question is, “What are you looking for in a candidate?” This is not a bad question if you use it correctly. Based on the interview team’s answer, use it as one last opportunity to provide evidence of why you are a good candidate, especially since the team just gave you the answer to what they are looking for. However, there is a better question.
By the end of the interview, the team has often already decided about your qualifications as a candidate based on your answers already. Interview teams often are left with questions or worries based on your answers, but they don’t ask them. They are forced to infer or judge you as a candidate rather than get more information about what you really mean. Giving the interview team the opportunity to get more information will increase the likelihood that you can clarify your answer. Therefore, a good closing question is, “Is there anything about me or my answers that you are wondering about or that I can clarify for you?” This allows the team to fill in those judgment gaps that worried them.
So, preparing for the interview isn’t asking you to sell yourself as someone or something that you are not. Rather, it forces you to identify who you are and then eloquently describe and qualify that with examples. Aligning your own professional values and skills with interview skills will allow you to best represent yourself.
