Reframing Your Interview Mindset

Interviews can be stressful. The pressure to prove you’ve got the right experience, answer questions correctly, and impress your interviewer can be a lot to handle. These pressures often cause people’s focus to shift from connecting with their interviewer to their personal nerves and tension. Candidates start to worry more about themselves and their responses, instead of staying present and in the moment.

That’s why it can be helpful to rethink the interview situation. I like to think of a job posting as an organization’s formal request for help. They want to move forward with a project but they can’t until they find someone who has a certain skill set and specific experience. They need someone so badly that they are willing to pay you for your time, share their internal resources, and give you benefits in exchange for your help.

An interview isn’t about answering answers correctly, it’s a conversation where you share a bit about yourself and how you’ve been able to help people in the past. By sharing your past experience, your goals, and your skills, you can figure out if you’ll be able to help the organization in the way that they need.

Shifting your focus from proving yourself to helping someone else, can make it easier to connect with the person in front of you. When we try to help others we don’t feel as self-conscious or nervous because we are focusing on someone else. When we help others we aren’t desperate or trying to prove ourselves, we are just listening to the person in front of us and have a shared goal of figuring out what needs to be done to move forward in the best way.

Author: Bri McWhorter, MFA
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