AN INTERVIEW IN A LESS THAN PERFECT SETTING
Visualise this .You work really hard at preparing for an interview. You are pretty sure that you would be ready to answer almost any question. You are even carrying a positive and confident approach. You arrive at the interview venue determined to get it right and THEN ……
SCENARIO
The interviewer is pleasant
and even welcoming. He or she meets and greets you at their workstation in the office.
You are surrounded by people busy at their computers, chatting, calling out to
one another, reports spewing from printers, phones ringing.
“Just another day at an office”,
you think. You assume, “Ok! We meet here and we are soon going to move to the
conference room or the meeting room or a cabin”.
Then the interviewer takes
out a copy of your resume and proceeds with the first question. Your
assumptions are shaken. “Can anyone do this? What’s happening? What kind of an
organisation is this? What happened to INTERVIEW RULE 101 – All interviews must
be conducted in a discreet and quiet setting.” Didn’t your interviewer ever
read that memo?
Option I: Feel offended, make an excuse and leave (I
don’t recommend this)
Option II: Enquire
if you both would be moving elsewhere for the interview.
Option III: Continue
but feel awful, insulted and let your attitude and your interview be ruined.
Ideally I would go with Option
II. Politely asking, if the interview is to be held elsewhere. However
sometimes that might not work out. So an alternative option could be …
Option IV: Focus
on the interview and overlook the immediate disrupting environment.
I agree! It is not an
ideal choice. But life rarely provides perfect and pristine settings. Do we all
have the concentration of the extremely disciplined Pandava prince Arjuna as he
trained under Guru Dhrona? No we don’t .Arjuna , in an archery exercise ,could ignore a large tree , its branches , his distracting and noisy
companions and just focus on the eye of a clay bird , his Guru asked him to
target.
Let this be our inspiration .This interview
could be just the starting step to an important journey for you. FOCUS! Tell
yourself that now is not the time to be bothered with distractions. Now is not
the time to let your fragile ego lose this interview. You have to get through
the next 20-40 minutes in the best possible way.
Also accept that
interviewing in an exposed and noisy environment might not be a deliberate act
on the part of the interviewer. Everyone has limitations or problems or could
have made a mistake .There might be no interview room available. Space is
genuinely a sparse resource in some offices. This is not a judgement on you.
The person may also be a poor scheduler or just plain lackadaisical. Not having
blocked an interview room in advance he or she might have opted not to cancel
on you. Either ways that is his/her concern. Not yours.
Giving a great interview
is your only objective, just then. So here are some tips to handle the
situation.
- Don’t let the situation demoralize you.
- Don’t take it personally .(this is difficult but try)
- Inject some degree of equanimity and positivity into your perspective and your outlook of the situation is sure to improve.
- Remind yourself that you are well prepared. That effort should not be wasted.
- A bad interview won’t affect the interviewer, only you and your prospects.
- Don’t think about whether the person in the next cubicle is listening in and judging you. It does not matter. Moreover they do have their own work to do.
- Don’t be too loud or too soft. Modulate your voice to a tone where you are pretty sure that the interviewer can hear you clearly.
- Ensure that you too listen to the questions properly, clarify when needed.
- Control that wandering mind of yours. No need to investigate and explore the noisy and distracting environment.
- Focus on participating in the interview discussion.
- Act .Don’t over-think and analyse .Before you know it, you've conquered the problem.
Go and Win..
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