Do you get very nervous about a forthcoming interview, hating the thought of having to sell yourself … and knowing you find it hard to both sparkle and provide competent examples.
A substantial element of my interview coaching process is working on ‘mindset’. What my clients say to themselves. Too often the stories they say to themselves are things like
‘I hate interviews’
‘I never do well at interviews’
‘I’m bound to blow it’
And guess what happens. They do exactly what they are thinking about.
You’ve got to change your mindset, you’ve got to change the self talk to things like
‘I’m looking forward to this interview’
‘This is going to be a great opportunity to show how I meet the job spec’
A friend of mine says that people approach an interview as a goal keeper or a striker; I thought this was a very useful concept. Most people see themselves as the goalkeeper, waiting for questions to be fired at them and making a save, working hard not to make a mistake. Seeing the interview as a striker can help to change our mindset and help to present a much more desirable persona.
To take this approach you have to be clear on your achievements and to look for great ways to answer the questions, be you and strike!
You should also be more willing to share negative information about yourself. Some competency based questions will ask for examples of failure. So many want to kick this type of question away from them, nope they don’t have failures and everything is rosy. But it’s not, and it is not a sign of weakness to say you made a mistake or you didn’t get the outcome you wanted. Be ready to discuss a time when things went wrong but also be ready to discuss what you learnt from this. It helps show you as a real person and willing to reflect and improve.
It’s not them against us, it’s a conversation
When you are in the interview stop thinking of it as ‘them and us’. It’s not adversarial, it’s a conversation. I get my clients to imagine that it is me who is asking the question and they are talking to me, not an unknown interviewer.
You can also make sure that you do your research and you also prepare questions to ask at the end of the interview.
Much more on this within my online interview coaching module – https://www.amazingpeople.co.uk/interviewcoaching.htm
