Pounding the Pavement Series: Put your best foot forward

It’s Monday again, and time for another quick check-in in the midst of applying for jobs, sending out pain letters, and pounding the pavement to find our new job-homes. When it’s time for that interview that you’ve been angling for, how do you put your best foot forward? There are so many interview tips: Do your research, dress a little more formal than your prospective workplace, personal branding with business cards, resume paper et al., strong handshake, make eye contact, mirroring your interviewer, project confidence, smile, smile, smile…

All of these tips are great, but they don’t tell you the most important thing: Relax!

When we treat interviews like they will make or break our future (and they might, who knows?), we are unable to relax and be ourselves. The best interviews I’ve ever had are the relaxed ones.

The interviewer/interviewee establish rapport and are both totally present in the moment. The interviewer asks for clarification as needed, but they’ve done their homework just as well as the applicant. The interviewee asks questions that are insightful and make the interviewer think deeply or see something from a different point of view. At this stage, the interview becomes a genuine conversation, not a painful resume run-through or the standard “tell me your three best and worst qualities.” These are the interviews that make the interviewer and interviewee say: “Wow, I would love to work with this guy!” They are very rare and will only happen when you relax and go off the “interview” script. Until you take control of the conversation and dig deeper into this prospective job-home, until you relax and go with the flow. But if you haven't reached this point yet, just remember to smile, smile, smile...