Interviews, dishonesty and what even counts as the real truth anyway?
I have a fundamental problem with interviews. They seem to rely on my ability to say what I do well rather than do what I do well. It feels as if interviews favour the external processors, the most confident people among us who can react to anything, and the ones good at structuring our thoughts on the spot.
Interviews, to me, feel a lot like how I imagine dying to feel. Not to overdramatise things, but when else are you put on trial in the same way, asked to give an account of your last few years and how you have been an active participant in your life, rather than a passive one.
At interviews, you have to defend yourself, to sound sure of decisions you were never sure of to begin with, make sense of a trajectory that doesn’t always make sense, and to get behind yourself in a way that you rarely do. You have to prepare and anticipate the questions that might be asked of you and then pretend to react spontaneously to it. What a dance.
My friend Rebs reviewed my CV ahead of my application.
You’re just not selling yourself enough, she said. Your experience is great but it just doesn’t come across.
She then sent me a list of active verbs that are good to litter into your application. Words like chaired, spearheaded and cultivated. The type of words that sound brilliant but feel a million miles away from what you actually did. So much so that it feels dishonest.
But I decided to play the dishonesty game and incorporated the magic words into my CV and admittedly it did look and sound a lot better and… it wasn’t not the truth. It just was the least understated version of it…and it got me an interview.
It didn’t just get me an interview. It seemed that using the magic words built a confidence in me that I hadn’t adopted before. They hung like magic tassels on me, it felt as if I was encountering the sparkly version of me that I somehow already knew.
So I have no humongous conclusions or revelations to share at the end of this very short post, except to say that there are multiple versions of the truth, and the one you’re living in might not get you where you want to be. Your most critical self isn’t the only truthful voice.
UPDATE: I got the job
