Interview Tips: the Accusation Audit
When your career history has problem areas, it can seem counterintuitive to raise it yourself and early in the interview. Yet, such an approach - called the Accusation Audit - can yield exceptional results.
The elephant in the Room
We all know when there is something in our career history that can trigger fire alarms with potential employers: a career gap, a fact of having been fired, a patchy career trajectory, a lack of certain skills or credentials, etc.
If you have made it to the interview, it usually means that you have something that the hiring people find interesting. But the negatives are still there, like a proverbial elephant in the room. How do you go about them?
Of course, out of worry or fear you can pretend that the elephant is not there and try to delay or avoid the unpleasant topics as much as possible. Will it make the elephant disappear? No. Those unexpressed fears and fire alarms will still be there, but you give up all influence of how the other side is dealing with them.
What is the alternative?
The Accusation Audit Strategy
Chris Voss, negotiation expert and the author of the book “Never Split the Difference” describes the Accusation Audit strategy as follows:
Short and sweet, it’s the clearing of the negative emotions that get in the way of deals, as the first move. You make a list of every unreasonable, unfair, crazy, ridiculous accusation your gut instincts are picking up that the other side might say about you. A good indicator is if you have a feeling you’d like to say to them “I don’t want you to think…”, it should be on your list.
There are a few simple rules about applying this strategy.
Don’t deny the negative. Don’t say “I don’t want you to think…” Denying the negative actually reinforces it.
Don’t use the word “I” in the introductory phrase - Don’t say “I’m feeling that…” - your “I” can get people uneasy and you would seem self-centric rather than empathetic.
Instead, call the negative out, starting with “It probably seems like…” or “It may look like…” or “It probably feels like…” and then label your counterpart’s fear or doubt:
It probably seems like I have been switching jobs too often
It may look like I do not have sufficient managerial experience
It probably feels like I am too young/old for the role
So summon your courage and summarise the fears and doubts before the other party says it. You clear the negatives first for the positives to take over. By naming the negatives loud and clear, you are disarming the attack. This approach probably feels as completely counterintuitive. And yet it works. Let’s see why.
Why the Accusation Audit Works
The effectiveness of the Accusation audit goes back to our brain structure.
Our brain consists of three parts:
The reptilian brain, the oldest of the three, controls our vital functions.
The limbic brain, which emerged in mammals, is responsible for emotions and value judgments.
The neocortex is the youngest of the three brain parts. It has evolved the last and is responsible for the development of human language, abstract thought, imagination, and consciousness.
Before our pitch gets to the logical part of the brain, it has to clear hurdles of the older part of the brain governing survival and emotions.
And neuroscience experiments confirm that simply labeling negative emotions helps to diminish them. Chris Voss refers to the experiments described in Alex Korb’s book “The Upward Spiral”:
They did an experiment where they monitored the brain activity in the part of the amygdala that conducts negative emotions. When they had the subject self-label (merely identify) the negative emotions, the negative emotions diminished. Every time
The faster we can interrupt or diminish the amygdala’s reaction to real or imaginary threats, the faster we clear the obstacles that stand in the way of a great interview. The Accusation Audit strategy helps with that.
Art: Mathieu Labrecq