The First Five Minutes: Your Game Plan for a Great Job Interview
The hiring decision often happens within the first five minutes of a job interview.
We need a solid game plan to get the first five minutes right.
Goal 1: Safety First
Do you believe that your work should speak for itself? Do you believe that an interviewer will judge you by the sum of everything you will say, by your qualifications and resume? Please think twice.
In a Harvard University experiment, students rated the professors based on 2-seconds video clips, entirely on non-verbal cues. And those ratings were surprisingly consistent with the ratings from students who took a semester's worth of classes with those professors.
We decide if we like someone and if we can trust someone even before we have heard them speak. And then we find rational explanations for our initial judgment. Next time you meet someone new, observe your reactions. Chances are, you will be surprised how to snap your own judgment is.
Our first impressions of someone call for our survival instincts. It's our reptilian brain who asks: Friend or foe? Should I worry about this person?
Our first instinct is not how much we like the person but how little we fear anything about him or her.
Therefore, the first objective in an interview is Safety First. Not to provoke any unnecessary fears. Avoid negative impressions. Get past the reptilian brain.
As the first impressions happen BEFORE we even say a word, our game plan here will be around the non-verbal cues.
Be On-Time
Project confidence with body language:
Open, confident posture, head & chin up, shoulders down and back. Take space. Own it. I call it the Helium Balloon Trick.
Keep Hands visible:
Never skip a handshake
Never hide your hands in the pockets or under the table
Use more hand gestures throughout the interview - hands show intention.
Engage with eye contact
Even if you are shy and uncomfortable, don't look away, please.
To build rapport, hold eye contact 60-70% of the time. Less is not good for trust. More is creepy.
Goal 2: Get Attention + Get Remembered + Build Rapport
Attention is the necessary condition for communication. Attention is a heavy gate: if it closes, no communication takes place. Throughout the first five minutes and beyond we should be paranoid about the attention gate closing. Our first objective is to get attention and keep it.
The next level of ambition is to get remembered. Stand out from the crowd, while making the point. If the interview took just five minutes, would you be able to convey your key message? Our goal is to clearly make the point. Repeat it. Offer the interviewer a sound bite to remember who we are. To repeat it to others.
The ultimate level of ambition in the first five minutes is to build rapport. If there is a good fit, rapport will increase our chances to get hired. End even if we discover that the fit is not optimal, we have built rapport, because relationships and connections open doors to other opportunities in the future.
Our game plan is deceptively simple: be prepared and be distinct.
Our key idea: the MAYA principle - Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.
Our key secret weapon: a personal story.
Be Prepared
"If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now." - Woodrow Wilson
When we get ready for an interview, we should be clear about the point that we want to make. Being the best at what we do? Being a great fit for the company culture? Being a safe bet even if we lack certain experiences? Being born to do it? You name it. In one way or the other, the point we want to make will boil down to the following: I have something valuable that will help you solve your problem.
Anything - a 700-page novel, a two-hour movie, a 250-words blog post, absolutely anything, if it's of any good, can be boiled down to a simple, clear, and repeatable sound bite.
It is possible. I will always remember an exercise from theater impro classes where we started by building a 5-minutes story and then repeatedly squeezed it into shorter timeframes, all the way down to 5 seconds sketch. Unbelievably, the essence of the story was still there.
Hollywood people call it a logline or one-line. The renowned screenwriter Blake Snyder in "Save the Cat" argues that you should not start writing your screenplay if you do not have the logline. A good logline is like the cover of a book: you want to open it immediately to find out what's inside. And a good logline shows you a whole movie or at least a potential for it.
If you can squeeze your point in a catchy and repeatable sound bite, you have your secret weapon to be remembered.
If you do not have your logline, your point for the interview, you are not prepared. Please be prepared.
Be Distinct. Follow the MAYA Principle
We human beings are creatures that are consumed between two opposing forces:
attraction to the new and
resistance to the unfamiliar
Raymond Loewy, a French-born American industrial designer, had a principle: MAYA - Most Advanced Yet Acceptable:
"When resistance to the unfamiliar reaches the shock-zone and resistance to buying sets in, the design has reached its MAYA stage: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable."
MAYA works for the job interview too: we want to be distinct to get the highest possible level of attention and interest, without going into the shock-zone of being too weird and disruptive.
Tell Me About Yourself: Go Off Script
The first five minutes are a great opportunity to get attention, get remembered, and build rapport because it's often the only time in the interview where WE set the rules.
Yet, we too often stick to telling our career in a detailed, chronological way, full of names and numbers. We literally walk the interviewer through our resume. Not good. One, it's too cliché, and two, it’s an attention killer, it's cold cognition. We will move to the rest of the interview at a very low attention level. How can we raise the level of attention and interest?
The first way to go off script is to summarise our experience to show a career trajectory, linking our past and our future.
Career Trajectory Blueprints
Attract Attention.
Here, the simple fact of going off script will attract attention.
Describe what drives and defines you. Make the point. Create Intrigue.
You have SOMETHING VALUABLE that can help solve the interviewer's problem.
Describe your career trajectory.
The career trajectory that follows can be chronological - keep it in bold brushstrokes; it can be thematic or even show parallel lives. You will see what suits best to your career story.
Imagine the future.
It is important to continue with a vision for the future. The interview is not only about what has happened, it is about what happens next. The vision for the future does not need to be too detailed and specific. Keep the doors open. You can say something like: "Whatever is next / When I think about what's next, I know it's going to…"
Make the point.
Repeat your point. You have something valuable that can help solve the interviewer's problem. Good things are worth getting repeated. And getting repeated increases the chances of getting remembered.
The career trajectory approach is likely to make us stand out from the crowd. However, it could still be too cold to get remembered and build connection. We may raise the level of interest and attention even higher. The secret weapon is a personal story.
The Story Bonus
You have to prepare a personal story that illustrates your point.
A good story is:
Brief and sharp: relevant to our pitch, illustrates our point. Relevance builds connection.
Personal: you are the center of it.
Engaging: ideally, there should be intrigue, risk, danger, uncertainty, time pressure, tension. Should generate empathy and interest with the audience. Empathy and interest build rapport.
Visual: engage our senses & emotions. The more senses we engage with our story, the higher are our chances to get remembered.
You can announce that a story is coming by "Let me tell you a short story… Imagine…" or just switch to it by surprise. Switching to a story mode will guarantee a spike in attention and interest. I call it the story bonus.
When you are getting ready for an interview, look for a good relevant personal story - a childhood dream, a professional challenge, a person who influenced you, a life event that was a turning point - practice it on kindred spirits ready to listen, record it and watch it hundred times. Ask yourself: Is it brief? Is it relevant? Is it engaging? Is it visual and calling to other senses? Practice more until it is. And when it is, the story bonus is yours, and you proceed to the rest of the interview with the highest level of attention and connection.
If there is one thing you need to spend two weeks to prepare for your first five minutes, it's your personal story.
Please watch this great example by Neil Bearden. It has everything - a catchy logline, the intrigue, the point, it’s memorable and repeatable. It uses other person’s view - so it does not come as arrogant.
I like the work Neil Bearden does to show story power and help others become better storytellers.
Inspiration & recommended readings:
Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction, by Derek Thompson
Captivate: the Science of Succeeding with People, by Vanessa van Edwards
Save the Cat: the Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need, by Blake Snyder
Pitch Anything: Presenting, Persuading and Winning the Deal, by Oren Klaff