Some more professional wisdom straight from Johnny Roccia, my Praxis career coach. In this bit of advice, Johnny explains why you should treat interviews as a getting-to-know-you session, instead of approaching it as an interrogation.
Here’s what Johnny said about interviews
As I fielded questions from the participants and learned more about what kinds of skills they wanted to develop, I noticed a strong common theme. Participants were worried about “having the right answers,” and concerned about their ability to come up with those answers on the fly.
There’s an important lesson to take away from this, more important than all the practice we did and all the techniques we learned. And that lesson is: An interview is not a quiz. It’s a conversation!
When a potential employer asks you questions during an interview, they’re not looking for answers; they’re looking at you. The hiring process is built out of a basic need, the need for a solution to a problem. But the solution isn’t hidden in your answers to hypothetical questions. The solution – is YOU!
No hiring manager or interviewer has an answer key hidden in their notebook that says “If any applicant gives exactly these answers to the questions, hire them!” Every question an interviewer asks is designed to get closer to THE question – “Can this person solve my problem?”
So take some time before your next interview to really look at the company, the job description, and the industry, and determine the core problem they’re looking to solve with the hire. Are you the solution to that problem? Why? Once you know that, and feel confident about it personally – the rest of the questions will be easy to answer.