The TRUTH about Interviewing: How selling yourself...may be selling you short

From all of the interviews I’ve experienced in my life, specifically over the past two years in the Career Center, I have learned that interviewing is not as simple as “selling yourself.” You’re probably thinking about everything you’ve heard about interviews and saying, “but that’s what everyone says, even the Career Center the last time I was there, what do you mean it’s not about selling yourself?!” Don’t fret. You haven’t been misled. You just haven’t heard the whole truth yet, but keep reading and you can count yourself as one of the few who are in-the-know.

Walk into an interview after preparing your 30-second commercial, practicing your behavioral interview responses, researching the company, and having overcome the urge to speak too quickly and look everywhere but the interviewers eyes and you’ll certainly be ready to sell yourself…..short. Unfortunately for interviewers and candidates this is the norm rather than the exception. Let me be the first to help you break your bad habits and improve your approach.

As I said, interviewing isn’t just selling yourself, it’s selling your best self. Thinking beforehand about how you’re going to respond to the different types of questions is only preparing for interviewing on a surface level. To really capture the interviewer’s attention and ensure that you’re creating the right impression, you need to think more strategically in your preparations. This is why simply selling yourself is more often than not, selling yourself short. So what can you do to take it to the next level? You’ve come this far, just keep reading.

It all starts with your approach. As I mentioned, traditional preparation is extremely valuable because it gives you a foundation for your interview. The next step is to not just talk about where you’ve been and what you’ve done – the approach that most people take. As I said, this is surface level. To go from selling yourself, to selling your best self you must critically review those experiences and determine why those things are worth mentioning and how those can be used to show your BEST self. Take the employer’s perspective and think to yourself, “what’s in it for me?” How are you going to create value for their business? How can you describe your strengths, experiences, passions, and characteristics in relation to the position?

By describing your experiences in this context and within this perspective, you’ll begin to improve the relevance of the features you’re selling about yourself. This will be the critical element in your interview that can certainly improve not only what you’re saying, but also how you’re saying it. Being more effective in your descriptions of your past will undoubtedly improve the general outcomes of your interviews.

The difference between selling yourself and selling your best self is entirely up to your preparedness and analysis of your experiences. I realize it’s a very abstract concept. Regrettably, being able to quantify a moment at which you have “arrived” is not going to be extremely obvious. But, if you use this perspective and approach the interview like you would any individual question, letting the results speak for them self, your “arrival” may just be the first time you sit down for your first day on the job.

If you’ve only read the title and searched for a bullet point to help summarize the point of this article, this is for you:

Do your best to show your best and you’ll be best positioned to get the best.

From the Mind and Fingers of Jason Polsgrove

Graduate Assistant – Missouri State University Career Center

Human Resources Specialist – Classy Llama Studios