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This is the Get a Six-Figure Job You Love podcast. This is Episode 105, How to Create a Safe Job Interview Space for Yourself and the Interviewers. Let’s do it. Hey, there. Welcome to the Get a Six-Figure Job You Love podcast. I’m your host, Natalie Fisher. I’m a certified career mindset coach who also happens to want to skip all the BS and get to what it really takes to create real results for you and your career. On this podcast, you will create real mindset shifts that will lead to big results and big changes in your career and your income. No fluff here. If you want to get a six-figure job you love and create real concrete results in your industry and make a real impact, you’re in the right place. Are you ready? Let’s go. Okay. So the biggest problem, people feel nervous in interviews. There’s a reason it’s very clear why we feel nervous in interviews. It’s like why we feel nervous on first states, or why we feel nervous in general. It all comes from wanting approval, which is very normal and nothing wrong with you.
I’m going to dive deep in this episode as to the degree that we want approval and how when we’re not clear on that and how that’s coming out, it’s really detrimental to your interviewing. So what a lot of people I see doing is, and they don’t know they’re doing it is they are making the interviewers or the recruiter or the person they’re talking to, they’re making them responsible for making you feel confident, and this is how we do life, a lot of us. We’re trying to people, please, we’re trying to adjust and be what other people want us to be, because that’s how we grew up. We’re like, “Oh, we got to do this and make our parents happy. We got to do this so that people will like us.” There’s nothing wrong because this is how we’re mostly conditioned, but we want to look at that and see how it doesn’t serve us in these situations. This is going to be really clear to you by the end of this episode.
The minute that you make someone else responsible for how you feel, you’re waiting for somebody else to approve of you so that you can feel confident is the moment that you have sabotaged yourself in that situation, especially in an interview situation where they really want you to be confident. For example, when your mood, your spirits, your demeanor is dependent upon what they think about you, whether or not they approve of you, whether they nod their head and give you the reaction you want when you answer a question, for example, whether they pick up what you’re putting down, when you’re reliant upon whether or not they hire you or not give you a good reaction or not so that you can have permission, so that you can give yourself permission to feel good, valuable, and worthy, what you’re doing is making them responsible for your feelings. They never decided, they never committed to that. They never said that they were going to make you feel good, and it’s not their job too. This is how an unsafe place is created for you and for them, but this is mostly about you.
When you go to an interview and your nervous system feels like it’s being judged as far as whether or not you’re good enough or not. When your nervous system is feeling like that, it’s feeling unsafe. It doesn’t feel free or safe to open up, share genius, be genuinely useful and real, even when that’s totally something you’re capable of doing, because we know that you’ll do that in a situation where you’re not feeling judged or attacked perhaps, or on the defense, depending on if you have things you’re afraid they’re going to ask about because you don’t know how to really talk about them confidently, and you’re afraid they’re going to be a problem. We know that you can open up and be genuine and real and come up with genius ideas and make funny jokes and be awesome, because when we put you in another situation where you don’t feel that way, where maybe you’re with a friend or something, or with someone who totally accepts you, you act differently. But in an interview you don’t act like that because you’re making them responsible. You’re putting the bar in their hands.
You’re like, “Okay. Well, they have this bar and I don’t know where it is, but I need to hit it. They have these standards, these expectations, and I don’t know what they are, but I need to base my performance on what I think they are once I start talking.” this is how you sabotage yourself without knowing you are, because essentially, you’re putting them in charge of how you feel. You give them the keys to how you feel when you believe things like this. If you’ve ever had thoughts like, “I’ll finally feel
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capable and valued and worth it once I get the job. Once I get the job, I’ll be able to feel these things. I know I’m good at what I do, but when I get that 100K salary, or when I hit that milestone, then I’ll know for sure that I was meant for this, that I can do this,” or, “I need to get this job, so I need this to work out and I need them to give me the offer.”
When you think or believe any of these things or anything along these lines, what’s happening inside your head is you’re thinking, “I doubt what I have to offer. I don’t know if it’s good enough, and I don’t know if I can be the person who gets this job. Every time I’ve interviewed before, I’ve gotten rejected in the past, so I don’t really know, so I need confirmation from them.” Another thing that a lot of people think is, “Unless I can get this, unless I can get this 100K amazing position,” or whatever it is, your goal is, it doesn’t have to be 100K. Right now, it could be further along, but, “Unless I can get this salary, unless I can get this job, I won’t feel like I’m successful yet. I won’t feel like I’ve made it on my own yet. I won’t feel valuable. I won’t feel worthy.” When you believe these thoughts, what you’re doing is putting out there to them, to the people who you’re interacting with are, “It’s up to you, interviewer, to make me feel valuable, confident, and worthy. It’s up to you.
I’m waiting to see what your reaction is, because I need to know if you approve of it, because my feelings, they really ride on that reaction.” You’re basically putting out to them, “I don’t know what to think of myself yet until I can see how you respond to me, so please respond quickly so I can adjust my behavior accordingly.” I’ve had clients who actually have told me this. They’re like, “Well, I look at their face and I see what’s going on. And then I try to adjust to what they want.” You’re putting out there things like, “I’ve given you the power to decide how I’m going to feel based on what you say and how you react. Please make a good decision and respond favorably to me so that I can now feel valuable and worthy and good enough. I’ll sit here frustrated until someone does this for me. I won’t be able to feel valuable until I have received your favorable response, other people’s favorable responses, and I have received an offer. Until that happens, I don’t feel comfortable valuing myself.” You’re saying, “I’ve worked so hard. I’ve sent in so many applications.
I’ve done so many interviews that I’m owed this. It’s time. I need this. I’m entitled to this.” You’re incrementally putting your own self concept and your hopes and your desires and what you want for your career on whether or not other people are approving of you. In your energy, this is all the things that you’re saying if you’re believing these things. You’re saying, “Please do the right thing. Give me the ability to believe in myself and make me this offer, because then everything will be good.” So do you know what it’s like to show up like this, and have you ever felt anything like this? If you are, there’s no judgment here. It’s just, I’ve done it too. I’ve been all of these things and I’ve done all of these things. But if you can imagine being on the other side of that, you’ve put them in this position of power. You’ve given them everything, been basically like, “Well, it’s up to you, so I don’t really have much power in this decision and whatever you say and however you feel, that’s it.”
That’s why you’re so invested in their responses and in their reactions and in what they decide. Really, this is creating an unsafe space for you and for them, because it’s conditional. You’re going in there conditional upon whether or not they respond well to you, is whether or not you’re going to feel good, and this is why people get so torn up about rejections. This is when somebody says to me, “Oh, I got rejected again. It was like a punch in the gut. It was like a stab through the heart,” whatever graphic metaphors they will use. This is what you’re doing. You’re saying, “Well, I basically put all my power into their hands.” I thought to myself, “If they don’t hire me, then I’m not worthy, or whatever it is, I’m not good enough. I wasn’t well spoken enough,” or however you want to put it, but you basically gave them all the power, and that was a choice. You didn’t have to do that.
Do you know what it’s like to show up like that? I’m sure you do. If you’re a human, you probably do. I know that I do. I know for many years and especially in relationships, that’s what I did. That’s how I was.
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I was like, “Oh, I’ll do what you want. Okay. Yeah, I’ll do whatever you want. Please like me. Please approve of me. Please give me love.” This just fed that even more, and it diminished my confidence, because what I did was never good enough for one particular person. Do you know how this creates, like ask yourself do you understand this? Does this make sense to you? Do you know how this creates an unsafe space for you? Imagine somebody walking into a space where they feel like they could be judged, put down, rejected, and they think that that judgment or that rejection, or that thought that the other person had means so much about them. They think that it’s the end of the world, or the biggest thing that could have happened to them, and they feel really, really bad about it.
Of course, you’re going to feel unsafe if you go into a space, into an interview thinking those things. You’re going to feel unsafe, anybody is. Then for the interviewer, they have their own thoughts and feelings, but they don’t feel safe to have a real equal. They don’t feel like you are there equal at that point. They step into that position of judging you because you are walking in with that demeanor of, “I know you’re judging me, but I’m here trying to prove myself, so please give me a chance.” Instead of walking in like an equal who has value to offer, who has things to share, who just wants to find out if this is a good match for you or not, because you know that no matter what, you’re going to be able to get what you want, whether or not it’s with this organization or not. It’s a very, very different paradigm. So do you know what it’s like to show up the exact opposite of this? First, you need to understand how to create a safe space for yourself. So what would a safe space for you look like?
What would it be like to walk into an interview and put yourself completely at ease, like put your nervous system completely at ease and create a safe space for yourself internally? What would that look like? It would be a place where you can be yourself without being held hostage to what other people are going to say, react or feel or think or do. This is how you know that you’re still doing it is if you think things like, “Unless they make me an offer, I won’t feel valuable, or I won’t feel fill in the blank,” or you think to yourself, “Please make me an offer so that I can feel valuable or capable,” and this is not the space you want to create in the interview conversation. It’s not the space you want to create in a relationship either. It’s actually not a place where people who value themselves truly will go. They won’t go here.
You’ll know as well if you haven’t been willing to put yourself out there multiple times, or even if you have, but you’ve been feeling terrible about it, you’ll know by your behavior as well, because people who don’t value themselves, they’re more terrified of this rejection. They’re more terrified of people not approving of them. Even if they keep going and they keep doing it with this paradigm of, “Someone’s got to approve of me,” it can sometimes turn into entitlement. If you’ve been on a ton of interviews and you’ve been rejected a lot, then you might think, “I’ve been working so hard, someone owes me,” and I’ve seen it turn into frustration and like, “The world owes me.” I’ve seen it turn into a lot of frustration and a lot of anger like, “What am I doing wrong?” Then that breeds a different paradigm, which of course people don’t like either, so here’s what you do instead. You have to decide to own what you want to believe about yourself.
You decide that, and you have to own how you want to feel about yourself, and you have to make those decisions for yourself, and there’s nobody that says you can’t. There’s no chalkboard in the sky, there’s no thing written that says, “You have to do X, Y, Z, or this person has to approve of you or hire you before you can feel valuable.” No, you can just decide that now, and it’s so important that you do. “Until you do, you’re always going to be looking to other people. The crazy thing is, is some people are going to find you amazing and valuable and some people are not, and so what does that mean? Are you going to listen to the people who don’t, or are you just going to decide that you are and then go find the people who do, because when you do this, you go first and you’re instructing other people how to think about you either way.
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When you decide you want to believe that you are confident, capable, valuable, and inside my program we go through an exercise that really cements that in and shows you that, it’s like a mirror to your value. Basically, I’m mirroring all the value that you haven’t been looking at. Once you are able to cement that in now, you’re able to show up in a different way. You’re able to show up like the person who’s like, “I am valuable. I am confident, and I know that. I’m just here to see if we match up to see if you have something that I want and that I have something that you want.” You want to feel very confident, and you want to feel certain about yourself, certain about your abilities. If you’re not feeling that right now, it’s not because you’re not capable or valuable, you are. You’ve gotten to where you are so far because of that, you are. It’s just a matter of shifting the way that you’ve been habitually thinking about yourself and the way that you’ve habitually been interviewing.
When you own what you want to believe about yourself and you own how you want to feel about yourself and you do this repeatedly, then you will instruct other people from there how to think about you and how to see you. So then you’re inviting yourself and the interviewer into a safe space where you’re not expecting or needing anything from them or from yourself. You’re not putting insanely high expectations on yourself to impress them, you’re just coming from a place of, “I know I’m valuable. I know I have value to offer. These are the things I’ve done. Do you want to work with me or not?” Whereas, when you’re looking at it like that, it’s more thinking of it like, “We are just two people or two parties figuring out if the value that I have matches up to what you want to do and whether we can really do great things together or not. This is so foundational and so important, and most people aren’t aware they are doing it because we grew up like this and nobody taught us differently.
What keeps people in this feedback loop of being rejected again and again, and again, is if you keep going on interviews and getting no offers, there’s a reason why. In this podcast, I talked about the reason is because you are putting how you feel in the hands of other people. If you’re doing this, it’s going to be reason one, people are energetically feeling your state, your uncertainty about yourself. So I have this clear guide that I’m going to offer you. You can get that for free in the show notes if you haven’t already. The guide is going to clearly point out eight specific reasons why you might not be getting the job. This one was all about expanding on that energetic certainty that you have in yourself or not, and how putting your feelings into other people’s hands is really actually repelling people. If you think about it, I always like to bring this in, the opposite of it.
If you’re at the hiring table and somebody comes to you and they have this energy of, “Oh, please hire me. Please approve of me,” and you can see them like a little dog like, “Oh, I’ll do what you want. Yeah. Is that what you want? Is that what you want? Okay. Yeah, I’ll do this.” They energetically sense that you’re not somebody who’s confident, that you need their approval. So in the guide, I’ve outlined eight reasons, and that’s reason number one. You can download the guide in the show notes, and we hope that you really do that, because once you identify what’s going on with you, it’s going to be so much easier for you to move forward. It’s like removing a blocker. So I really hope you enjoy this episode. As I said inside my program, we work on this, we apply this work and I promise you, the answer is in there. So whatever it is that’s blocking you just need probably one little mental one degree shift to clear the way, and you’ll be able to go forward. I hope to see you in there because we’re doing some really exciting things.
If you thought this podcast was good, if you thought the content that you receive if you’re on my email list and on LinkedIn is good, if you resonate with that stuff, if you had any breakthroughs so far, you can’t even imagine the results you’re going to have when you join the program. Once you join, you’re joined for life. Okay? So you have support for life, and that is something I’m developing out where, we already have people in there getting promotions, moving up into leadership and doing their next moves because they landed their premium offer pretty quickly. Those who are working on the premium offer
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are going to be working on their leadership or their next milestone next, so you’re going to want to be in there for everything that’s happening.
The great part about it is you only pay once and you get everything after that. So the curriculum is ready to go. You can join us immediately. You can get started. You can start getting support. Calls are Tuesdays at 2:00 PM. PST. I will see you there. All right. Have a great week. Bye. If I were to sum it up, I would say the most common thing people come to me with is, “I’m going on interview after interview after interview, and I’m not getting the offer, what am I doing wrong?” I’ve put together a freebie where you can get this download completely free. It has the eight reasons that this is happening, and I break down each reason very specifically and how to fix it. So to grab that download, the link is in the show notes. You can click on that link. You just have to enter your information. It’s called The Eight Reasons You’re Not Getting Hired, and I will help you figure that out. I will see you in the freebie. Okay. Talk to you soon.