GO GET THAT JOB!
It is natural and human to address your own job-seeking journey from your prospective, yet at the same time it is a mistake. Understanding your interviewer/s is key to your success in your upcoming job interview.
The key to understanding the rest of this article is to understand and internalize the following statement: the real question (that is most-likely never actually asked) that your interviewers have in the back of their head is “is this the person I want to spend a lot of time with?”.
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Let’s stop and think about it for a second. The average time spent at work is about 35 hours per week which results in an average of 84,365 hours in a person’s lifetime. This is the equivalent of 3,515 whole days (of 24 hours each) or 7,030 12-hour shifts, or 10,545 8-hour shifts spent with the same person. It is more if you work 40 hours per week…
Thus, it makes perfect sense that an interviewer would be asking themselves in the back of their head (in their sub-conscious) if you are that person. This question is never actually asked out loud, yet it is truly nesting in the background of every question that is actually being asked. This question “runs deeper” than if you are qualified for the job. While several people (perhaps even many people) may qualify for the job, are all of them the person that the interviewer wants to spend so much time with???
This point is often taken for granted to a great extent, since we of course want to work with people we like. Yet, for this reason tend to underestimate the true influence this question has, excluding a situation where the job applicant is a colleague or someone the interviewer already knows for any reason.
A job applicant interviewing for a position often assumes that the interviewers are mainly or only seeking to have them fail, or are waiting for the applicant to make a mistake. By assuming so, the job applicant could be projecting their own half-cup-empty approach to the situation rather than it being so.
Let’s analyze this assumption from a logical standpoint of the employer. The best an employer can ask is to have as many high-quality job applicants that match their needs as possible, “causing them” to really be nick-picky about every little detail of each and every job applicant. If you agree, then it does not make sense for them to want job applicants to fail. Could this not be the truth? – maybe, yet most-likely not…
For the same reason and logic, it is more likely than not, that questions asked are not “trick questions” at all, definitely not most or all of them. Not every question has a tricky double meaning behind it. If you suspect of such, use the legitimate right to ask for clarifications while taking action that comes across as mature, professional, and positive. Make sure to ask for clarifications in a respectful way, excluding any hint of assumption that you believe the question is a “trick question”.
Often, the job interview questions are determined by another or made more sense before actually asking them. For example, a question may have been phrased by one gender and according to their personal experiences, yet the person actually asking the question in the job interview is from the opposite gender. This may result in the question seeming awkward, misplaced, misunderstood, or even as a “trick question”. Ask for clarifications if you are not sure, confused, or concerned.
One way to show understanding of your interviewers, assure you understood them correctly, and focus yourself on the actual question being asked is to start your answer by repeating the main part of their question. This gives them an opportunity to correct themselves or you or to assure you that you understood correctly. For example, you may start your answer by saying “if I understood you correctly, you would like me to…”, or “Could you please clarify if you wish me to…”; Other phrasing options exist to achieve the same.
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Last, acknowledge the fact that suspecting your job interviewers of having an alternative agenda against you is most-likely not the case, causing you to invest a lot of energy dealing with a wrong underlying assumption that harms you since you will come across as a negative person, with a half-cup-empty attitude.
Last, but not at all least – good luck!
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