There’s one interview mistake that almost everyone makes:
They talk too much.
I love long, deep conversations just as much as the next guy. But an interview is not that. The first 15 minutes of an interview is actually a pitch.
It’s about capturing attention with something surprisingly impressive, delivered with a touch of humor where appropriate.
You will have an urge to say more. You must resist it.
Guidelines for talking about yourself in an interview:
Give them:
3 big career wins
Lasting impacts you made
A smooth, nonchalant delivery
The sense that you have a lot of fun with your work
Don’t give them:
A play by play of your whole career
“…and from there I got recruited over to…”
The number of years you spent at each job
A pre-emptive explanation of your resume gaps
The key to pitching yourself is to leave some relevant things out. During quick first impressions, people tend to remember the average of the things you tell them, not the sum.
This is important, because it means that telling them more things only negatively affects their first impression of you, by bringing the average down.
(To avoid sounding stiff / rehearsed / arrogant, just temper anything that sounds braggadocious with something slightly self-deprecating, and let it come across with a wink. When people ask me about my BMX career, I say “I went to the X Games 5 times and lost.”)
Everything relevant that you leave out can be explained later when they ask. That’s a much better time to delve into detail, because by now, they want details. Your first impression has broken through their outer shell, left them intrigued, and moved a little bit of the control over to your side of the table.
Don’t be afraid of delivering an incomplete opening message. Be afraid of boring your interviewer to death.
Because if you bore them to death, they’ll never hire you, no matter how extensively layered your background is.
