🚀 Interviews – Stepping outside your comfort zone – Owning the “I”
🚀 Interviews – Stepping outside your comfort zone – Owning the “I”
Interview Preparation is consistently the busiest part of my business, and what is consistent across every client is the feeling of being “uncomfortable selling themselves” in an interview.
It’s completely normal to feel uncomfortable in an interview, it is just a conversation in a very structured way, but it can be difficult and pressurised if there is a lot riding on the outcome!
If you’re someone who struggles to talk about yourself in interviews — you’re not alone. You’re used to saying “we,” giving credit to the team, staying humble. And that’s great in the workplace. But in an interview, it’s different. You’re not representing a team. You’re representing you.
My advice is to try and do the following:
✅ Say “I” – not “we.” Own what you did.
âś… Try to share a story, make it real, include the challenges you faced and how you overcame them. This will really help the interviewers to see the value you can bring.
✅ Reflect and Pause – Some times when we are very practiced, we speed through an example, and it sounds very rehearsed and hard for the interviewers to take in what you are saying. Slow down, pause, add some reflection – “This part of the process was challenging, it was complex because of ……I was very focused on ….”
✅ Use your tone of voice – It helps to practice your tone of voice, remember the interviewers are likely to be interviewing all day, help them out! Bring them with you in your storytelling, don’t have a monotone answer, bring some life to it by adding energy and warmth to your tone.
✅ Step outside your comfort zone – It’s only for the interview, you can definitely do this for the duration of the interview. It’s not easy I know, but it’s so worth it if it gets you the job you want.
✅ Practice your answers out loud -Any story sounds so different in your head, it’s only when you get to speak it out loud that you get an awareness of all the important parts, you tone, the length of your answer etc.
Hope that helps, reach out if I can help
✉️ [email protected]
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