Interview Tips: Stop with One Great Thing
Perhaps the most surprising observation from my year of volunteering as an interview/career coach is that we can drastically improve our pitch or interview by focusing on what NOT to say. By the time you finish reading this article, you will learn that saying LESS about your successes is better than saying more. And you will understand why.
"Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener".
Leonardo Da Vinci had a point when he said this. I'm with Leonardo.
Talking too much in an interview is an overall sign of neediness. And neediness is the number one interview killer.
The less you talk, the less likely you are to say something foolish. Let me share a little personal anecdote. My husband has always been someone like a superhero for my mom. Of course, actions speak louder than words. Yet I suspect her admiration for him is also due to the fact that they rarely discuss because of the distance and language barrier.
Just as good writing requires ruthless self-editing, good pitches and interviews also need merciless cuts:
We need to self-edit to avoid classical things-not-to-say-in-a-job-interview. That's straightforward.
We need to self-edit to stay relevant to the audience. It requires some effort, yet it is pretty intuitive too.
What is the hardest to cut out is our achievements, our successes, our interests. All of them cherish our egos. When we prepare our pitch, anything positive seems important. So we talk about everything, mixing big and small as if trying to pack too many clothes into a small suitcase.
Let me give you an example. My guest in one of the recent sessions was an accomplished public policy advisor with an excellent educational background and a track record of success. Her introduction sounded great. Until, after an outline of her big successes, she briefly mentioned an online course she has recently started. Prior to this little detail, her pitch sounded really impressive. And suddenly, it no longer did. The magic stopped. The message of big successes was suddenly diluted. What happened?
The Presenter’s Paradox
Researchers call it "The Presenter's Paradox", and it has to do with the fundamental disconnect between how we present anything and how the audience receives it. As a presenter and as the audience, we simply have different perspectives and different focuses of attention. This leads to differences in judgment. The researchers did their experiments with product bundles. Yet I believe their findings are just as relevant in the interview context.
The Audience (Your Interviewer) needs to form an overall impression of your pitch and focus on the whole rather than the parts. This overall impression is the average, not the sum of all the elements that you present.
The Presenter, you don't focus on your pitch as a whole, or at least not intuitively. Because your task is first to construct your pitch from individual components, your focus naturally shifts from the whole to each element individually. If a given element is better than neutral, you decide to include it. The pattern of the impression you form while preparing your pitch is cumulative, not average.
The Presenter’s Paradox
What do these findings mean to our pitches? That in your pitch we should focus on big successes. ONLY.
To quote "Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff,
Telling people one great thing about yourself will leave them with a better impression of you than telling them one great thing and one pretty good one. And it gets worse if you tell them one great thing, one pretty good thing, and two mediocre things. Stop with one great thing. Get your track record on the table, and do it fast, clean, and problem-free.
Key takeaway: whether you think about what to include into your elevator pitch, or which elements to pick to answer an interview question, stop with one great thing.