In my experience, most job applicants are not sufficiently prepared for interviews. And this, even though some of them spend several hours getting ready: they research the company they’ve applied to, read press articles – some even study annual reports from previous years. But they fail to prepare the most important part.
One of my last job interviews, where I was the candidate, was a total failure. I could hardly answer any of the recruiters’ or hiring managers’ questions well. At times, I even had mental blanks. It was humiliating. As I walked dejectedly down the company’s stairs after the interview, everything suddenly came back to me: I had experienced many of the situations the interviewers had asked about. I would have had good answers to most of their questions. So why hadn’t they come to mind during the conversation?
I remember going into interviews with little preparation, convinced that I’d be able to answer the questions well. After all, the topic was me – and in that, I considered myself the ultimate expert! I also believed that too much preparation would stifle spontaneity and authenticity. But the opposite of all these assumptions is true.
Successful action is mostly unconscious…
In the article «Long live the practitioners», I explained that the best practitioners are often the worst at self-promotion. Why is that? Because we humans are built to automate tasks we perform repeatedly – and once automated, we carry them out unconsciously. This is also how school learning through repetition works. Automation conserves our brain’s limited working memory, making it available for new challenges.
The more skilled we are in a certain area, the more unconsciously we act. That’s one reason why people aged 50 and over often feel they’re falling short: they see younger people doing things they no longer can, and they overlook the unconscious competencies they’ve developed through many years of experience (see the article «50plus – (self-)underrated potential»).
…While good communication is conscious
And what defines good communication? The exact opposite: consciousness! This is the challenge in job applications: recruiters and hiring managers would love to observe you at work. But the «doing» mode that applicants are used to is entirely unsuited for this. If you want to be convincing in an interview, you must switch your state of consciousness – from doing to speaking. With strong stories, you allow your interviewers to watch you at work with their mind’s eye.
So, your most important preparation for job interviews is preparation about yourself. Along with reviewing your potential future employer’s annual reports, you should also go through the annual reports of your «I-corporation». Look for job-relevant achievements and stories worth telling – and prepare to share them in the interview.
#application #personalbranding #storytelling
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