Mindset and Interviews

Human beings are biologically designed to be negative, stemming from an evolutionary survival development. When the bushes shook, we needed to be able to immediately think ‘Tiger!’ not ‘Squirrel.’ This reflex is excellent when it comes to being out on the savannah, but it is less helpful when facing the frantic nature of heavy workloads, deadlines and ‘do or die’ projects. It is even less helpful when you are facing an interview, which is an examination of your skill and experience in a one on one setting and is a pass/fail test.

Most people before attending an interview will have some negativity in play in their minds. Thoughts such as: ‘what if they reject me’, ‘what if I mess-up’, ‘what if they don’t offer me the position’, ‘what if they do offer me the role and I don’t know if I want to move’, ‘what if my current employer finds out that I’m missing work for this interview’, ‘I am not that unhappy in my current role’, ‘I am not that underpaid’, ‘I love my current position- what am I doing here challenging myself for the next step – let’s go home and sleep!’ Having all these thoughts might be an exaggeration, but I bet most people have at least some of them!

To combat this negative-thought-swirl, there are some simple steps you can take to ensure your mind is in the right place for a good interview:

3 Rules to Successful Interviews

• Three Ps - preparation, preparation, preparation! The more you prepare, the more confident and relaxed your mind will be.

• Be yourself – you only really need to make minor adjustments in an interview. If the interviewer is at a ‘3’ in terms of energy obviously don’t come in bouncing off the walls at a high ‘10’…but don’t change too much. Ignore the Carnegie/NLP nonsense, you want to get this position as you, not someone else. Look to match the interviewer’s tone and pace, but there is no need to change your personality.

• Be driven – Being driven isn’t some Meta ultra-hyper ‘The Apprentice’ cliché, half the battle is just eliminating distractions – take Facebook and Candy Crush off your phone, use your time to create positive helpful habits; prove to them why you want this role.

You do need to express a positive attitude in an interview (the opposite is a killer) as people want to hire someone who is going to make their lives easier, who is going to push forward their projects, their businesses, their organisations etc. You don’t need to be referring to yourself in the 3rd person to be positive or take on board a crazy positive thinking ritual, you just need to have the right habits in place, do the 3 things above, have the right perspective and demonstrate your strengths. You are invited to the interview because the hiring manager believes you can do the position, the interview is time to prove you can excel in the position.

The final step is that even if you aren’t successful at an interview, don’t let it taint your job search or future interviews with negativity. Remember Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times before getting the light bulb right and Colonel Sanders had over a 1,000 rejections before a restaurant bought his chicken recipe – you can’t always succeed, but you can always control how you respond to failure.

If you’re in communications and would like tips on how to be great at interviews as an interviewee or as an interviewer then please do get in touch with us at info@electus-group.com or call us on 0207 593 5533.

Follow me at @JoshClements01

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