An Authentic Interview is your best chance for a great job—don’t blow it!

My best interview ever was when I didn’t get the job!

Not only did I not get an offer, but midway through the interview, I politely invited the interviewers to call a halt to the process so we wouldn’t waste any more of each other’s time.

Right about now, you may be wondering whether I was out of my mind—and in a certain sense, I was—but that was a very good thing.

You see, I believe that for most people a job interview is a totally mind-centered event and as such, it takes into account little of what may be happening in their emotions, their bodies, and their spirits—in other words, the totality of the Authentic Self.

In a career that has stretched over nearly four decades, I have participated in hundreds of interviews. On occasion I’ve been the candidate, but mostly I’ve been the hiring manager or somewhere in the new hire interview and approval chain.

I’ve seen far too many candidates who were not going to let the fact that this was clearly the “wrong job” for them get in the way of their doing everything conceivable to get an offer.

“What’s the wrong job?” you might ask.

A job can be “wrong” for any number of reasons: because your skill set doesn’t match the job requirements, you don’t really like the work, your heart is elsewhere but you believe this is the only thing you are trained or qualified to do, the culture of the hiring organization is inconsistent with your personality, and so on.

Rather than using the job interview to determine if there is a “fit,” many interviewees have the wrong mindset; namely, to get an offer no matter what. They view receiving an offer after an interview or a series of interviews as something akin to a trophy or winner’s cup. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen a candidate transform right before my eyes in an effort to convince me that he or she is the “ideal candidate” for a job. Interestingly, that visible transformation into who he or she wasn’t told me a significant amount about who he or she was—and as often as not, it was inconsistent with the ideal candidate I was seeking for the position.

When someone succeeds in fooling an interviewer—and often him- or herself—into believing that “I’m the ideal candidate for this position” when that isn’t really the case, everyone suffers. What’s the point of setting yourself up to have a difficult time dealing with the demands of a job around which you have anything less than keen interest? Why would you want to go through the difficulties of adapting to a work culture that isn’t natural to your disposition and personality? On the other side of the fence, your employer suddenly finds itself with a new employee unsuited to the position or to the organizational culture—or worse, both. These are not the starting ingredients for success. Getting a job the “real” you doesn’t want is a short-term solution to any of several possible situations with long-term negative consequences.

The only way you will know if a job is right for you is to test it for fit during the interview with everything you can bring to bear. That means asking questions and listening with your mind, your feelings, and your intuition for the answers: How will it feel to work here every day? Will I enjoy doing this work day after day after day? What will it feel like to immerse myself in this organizational culture for several years? For the sake of your career, ask yourself, do I want this person sitting across from me as my manager knowing that I am putting a key piece of my professional future in his or her hands?

The best way—no, the only way—to get accurate answers to those questions is to bring your Authentic Self to the interview. There is nothing you can do to increase your chances of succeeding in your next job in terms of both career and personal happiness other than to just be yourself during the interview—nothing!

Look at it this way: If you are hired because of who you really are instead of who or what you are pretending to be, you have a significant performance advantage over nearly everyone else in your new workplace because many of those folks are expending energy trying to be the people they represented themselves to be during their interviews. You, on the other hand, will find that having magnificent results by simply being who you are is a lot easier than having satisfactory results trying to be someone you aren’t!

When asked by my interviewers why I was suggesting terminating the interview, I explained that based on the questions they had already asked me, I felt intuitively that this job was not a match for me. While I think that answer surprised them, they readily acquiesced (why wouldn’t they have?); we shook hands and went our separate ways.

That truncated interview was well over three decades ago, but the importance of that event and the potential lesson it holds for all job-seekers was not lost on me: Don’t let an opportunity to steer clear of the wrong job pass you by!

The answer to both questions in one word? Everything! Seriously!

If you are not paying attention to the elements that make up the life you are living, then who is? More than in any other area, failing to plan here is planning to fail.

What is your role in all this?

Surprisingly, depending on your age and life experience, this may be the first time you have asked yourself this question. If you’re standing, I’d suggest you sit down.

Perhaps this question is one you need to be thinking about every day—if not every minute of every day.

One way to look at Life Balance is as if it were a monetary exchange: the two most important elements of which are Time and Attention. These two elements represent the currency of Life Balance—the only currency of Life Balance. There is nothing else that contributes to or subtracts from your experience of the quality of your life—literally nothing. Take five minutes right now to simply absorb this reality. The time and attention you are paying to anything in your life—right now, at this very moment—is defining the exchange rate of Life Balance in your life.

The life you are living—and have been living up to this moment in time—is solely a function of what you have chosen to do with your time and your attention. And that is entirely your responsibility. Those minute-by-minute choices—too frequently made unconsciously without regard to their long-term effects—have a profound impact on the quality of the life you are living.

Tell me where you have been spending the currency of your time and attention over the course of the last week, the last month, the last year, and I can tell you all about the life you’ve been living. With a few more questions, together we could determine whether that has created the life you want or, as is the case with many people, whether it has created something else less optimal that is not in keeping with your desires.

Have you been spending your time and attention on creating loving relationships with family and friends? If so, then your life includes loving relationships with family and friends.
Have you been spending your time and attention currency on health and fitness? If so, then your life includes the vitality of a healthy and fit lifestyle.

On the other hand, if you’ve squandered your currency of time and attention on feeling miserable, being upset or angry, or attempting to control a generally uncontrollable environment, then the life you are living will not only look like that, but it will actually be that.
In my work as a Life Balance coach, I’m often surprised that this concept comes as a revelation to so many people. This is not exactly rocket science!

What happens over time is that complacency sets in embraced by personal comfort. You become used to your life being a certain way, and it seems a lot easier to just keep it all the same. It feels as if it’s easier to just keep it going in the direction it is already without rocking the boat.

And this effect is completely understandable, and it’s the first step to waking up feeling as though you are living someone else’s life. Then suddenly you understand that the cost of not asking yourself tough questions is more—significantly more—than the cost of making a change.

To tune this truth in more accurately: it isn’t inertia or motion that’s the real problem, but direction. As the 6th Century B.C. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

And as often is the case, in the statement of the problem lies the answer: most people have no idea where they are headed because they are not paying attention. People show up at the greatest train station in the world, called Life, and then they get on any train without looking to see where it’s going. Once on board, they don’t look out the window to see if the passing landscape seems to be taking them where they want to go. Surrounded by ever deepening snow and ice, they convince themselves they’re en route to the tropics! If they were to ask the conductor how much the trip was costing them, he would smile and say, “It costs you
everything.”

Engaging—really engaging—a Life Balance practice in your life is as simple as waking up and stepping off the train by simply becoming aware of how much you are paying. Carefully measure the currency of your time and attention. Ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing in alignment with my intention to ensure that I am paying for the life I want to be living—minute-by-minute, day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year?”

If not, get some assistance.

These are learned skills that may need to be developed, but—and this is important—they can be developed by you.

To exchange the life you have been living for the life you want, you’re going to have to make the most important investment in the world: an investment in yourself. And remember, the only currency you have for that investment is your Time and your Attention.