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Hello, welcome back to the Get a Six Figure Job You Love podcast. This is episode 115. This is the second day of the four day live training that I did and we went into my whole interviewing method and there is a podcast on this previously. If you look back, it’s called Whole Interviewing. So I’m calling this one Whole Interviewing 2.0 because it’s been a while. It’s been a minute since I taught this concept. It sounds different, it comes across in a new way and we get feedback from the people who are on the live call as well, so it’s slightly tailored to what people needed.
So listen in on Whole Interviewing 2.0. It’s going to teach you how to interview in a way that feels lighter, where you can enjoy being yourself, and it’s going to be completely different than what most people are doing, which is over preparing, stressing, getting nervous about not knowing every single answer to every single question. It’s a new way to interview. So if you haven’t listened to the first one, you are welcome to go back and listen to Whole Interviewing, and this is Whole Interviewing 2.0. Enjoy.
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 in 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.
All right, welcome to day two, everybody. I just finished saying hello to everybody who has come on so far. This is day two of the how to create demand for yourself as the top candidate and today we’re diving into a concept called whole interviewing that I put together based on everything that I’ve worked with with my clients and getting down to the bottom of why they’re not succeeding in the interviews and getting that match to the role that they want really has a lot of moving pieces and a lot of things that have to come together for that to happen, but it’s completely doable and it’s easy once you figure out these things or once you learn these things. Also, I wanted to ask if anybody here is currently not interviewing but they are already in their ideal role or maybe they’ve already landed it.
Okay, great. Yeah, because interviewing is something that you have to do your whole career. It’s not one thing you do once and then you never have to do it again. You’ll have to do it maybe for a promotion, maybe for the next time you decide you want to switch industries or jobs. It’s something that you’re always going to have to do and the skills for it are applicable with anything else you want to do to move forward in your career. So without further ado, let’s get started. I’ll start by explaining normally where people are at. Again, I’ll get you to let me know in the chat if this is you and just so we can get a feel, if there’s new people here today, they can let us know if that’s you or not, just so I can tailor the content, make sure that everybody’s getting what they came for and we’re addressing everybody’s situation.
So building on yesterday, we talked about the three main things that people experience when they are feeling stuck in their career. If this is you, if you are not going on enough interviews, you feel like you are in fear of taking action, you feel like you want to get it perfect, maybe you’ve been on an interview, you failed it, you did not get the offer, and you want to make sure that the next time you go on one, you are fully 100% prepared and so you haven’t found yourself going on very many. Okay, so let me know if that is you, put a one in the comments. Second, put a two in the comments if this is you. You are going on a whole bunch of interviews, you’re getting interviews, so you’re somehow either networking or however it is you’re doing it. You’re applying for jobs, you’re getting in front of hiring managers for organizations that you want to work for, but it’s not going through to the offer.
Put a two if that is you. Maybe you’ve done this a whole bunch of times, but it just hasn’t come through for you. Okay, so we’ve got a few ones and a few twos. Okay, perfect. It could be a combination of two and three also. Okay, thanks you guys, this is great. Put a three in the comments if you are getting an offer or you have gotten an offer or two, but it’s just not what you wanted, it’s too low or it’s not really
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in the industry you wanted or it feels like it’s an offer that would mean you’d have to settle. So if that’s you, put a three. Two, three, okay. Then some ones, yeah. So again, this is kind of building on yesterday. If you weren’t here yesterday, I’ll kind of rehash a little bit of what we talked about so the new people can get the idea, but there’s no right or wrong here.
There’s none of these problems that are not completely solvable. There’s just a few steps for each one that you need to zero in on and pay attention to. If you’re like me, you just simply didn’t know what you didn’t know. But you’re very open to transformation, to change, to learning, and you’re open to being wrong about some of the things that you believe now. It’s very exciting when you get to be wrong about them because it means that you’re open for new information and it means that you are open to create a new result. If you’re feeling frustrated right now, I also want to say that that is a good thing because when you’re feeling frustrated and confused, it means you are available for new information. One of my mentors said the breakdown comes before the breakthrough.
I don’t think you have to completely break down to have a breakthrough. I think you can have breakthroughs consistently very often, but they do come from frustration and confusion. So if you are in that space right now, I want to invite you to think about it as a good thing because it means you’re about to grow. It means you’re going to have an open mind because you’re willing to entertain new information that you’re going to learn here today and move forward differently, which is going to create a different result. So why these things are happening? If you’re not going on enough interviews, the reason why that’s happening, and you can correct me if I’m wrong. Again, I like to use a caveat of you are unique, you’re having your own experience. I’m sharing what I know and what I’ve learned from working with hundreds of different people on this problem. But your brain is going to adjust differently to what I say, it’s going to take in the information differently.
So I want you to take what applies to you and be like, “Yes, that’s me. Yes, that resonates. Yes, that’s helpful.” Or, “No, that’s not me,” and just categorize it for yourself so that you can get the best possible use out of today’s training. Okay? Always ask yourself, “How does this apply to me? Does this apply to me?” I’m not going to tell you, “This is you,” unless you agree. Because if you agree, then we can get on the same page and then I can be like, “Okay, so this is how we would move forward with that problem.” So the first one, if you haven’t been on enough interviews, the reason for that is because you are somewhere in fear and self doubt and you’re paralyzed as to how to move forward, you’re afraid that if you move forward, you’re going to get rejected, you’re going to get disappointed.
Maybe if you have been rejected before, you’re like, “I don’t want to go again because this is going to be disappointing if I don’t get it. I’m not fully ready. I have to 100& prepare.” Quite often with these clients, they don’t feel prepared ever because they feel like they’ll never be well enough prepared so they end up postponing and avoiding and not wanting to go to the interviews, not wanting to put themselves out there for the jobs unless they have 100% of the boxes checked. Again, you can put another one of the comments if this is you, if this resonates, or if there’s something that I’ve missed, you want to add it, please feel free to add that in the comments.
This is you if you’re just afraid. Some people might call it perfectionism. It could show up as like, “I’m a perfectionist. I have to have everything perfect before I move forward,” and I call that fear. It’s not perfectionism, it’s fear. You’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to be judged, you’re afraid to be disappointed. I get it. It’s normal human nature. However, in order to get to where you’re going, not even just a job search, but in any situation, you will need to learn to overcome these things, pinpoint that fear and use it to your advantage instead of letting it hold you back, which is what it does for a lot of people when they don’t catch it. It’s called failing ahead of time. We don’t want to move forward cause we’re afraid of these things.
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So that’s the first thing, that’s the reason why it happens. You’re paralyzed by fear and then those are the symptoms. You avoid. You don’t want to go to interviews. You over prepare. You wait. You wait till you got things perfect. Maybe you think you need to go back and get more certifications. You listen to the feedback that people give you as far as you didn’t have enough experience here and you think, “Oh, I actually need to go get that experience.” Those things are wrong. I’ll explain to you later. Essentially that’s where you’re at and yesterday I called this the fearful perfectionist mode of being in your job hunt. If that’s you, that’s great that you can recognize yourself there and be honest about that and be like, “Yes, that is me. I want to solve this and I’m ready.” That is a really good milestone for you to achieve, to be like, “Okay, I get that.”
Two, if that’s not you and you resonate with what I said before on number two, you’re here because you are going to a bunch of interviews, but they’re not working for you, you’re not getting the offers that you want. This stems from a bunch of different things. You’re here because you’re trying to find the solution to the problem externally. You’re like, “Okay, well I need to externally fix something on the outside in order for me to be able to get an offer.” A lot of the times it shows up as, “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, I just really have no idea, I just don’t know,” and you just feel confused and hopeless, like there’s nothing you can do, it’s up to somebody else to hire you and you can’t control it.
I want to share with you why that’s not true. I’m going to share the step by step process of the whole interviewing method on this webinar today. So you’re going to want to take notes on this. I’m going to give you the step by step process, but first I want to just get really clear on where we are all at right now. If you’re going on a bunch of interviews and not getting offers, there’s a clear reason for that and I’m going to help you to identify that.
The next thing, if you are going on interviews and you are getting offers, but they are not the right ones or you’re feeling low balled or you’re feeling like they’re not in the right industry, they’re not right for you, then this means you are in low belief. You don’t believe you can get what you want and so you keep entertaining things that you don’t really want. You keep going down a path that you don’t really want to go down because if you knew you could get what you wanted, you would know what to say no to right up front. You would know how to screen that right up front. Sometimes that’s difficult because if you’re in the low belief, you’re like, “Oh, well what if nothing better comes along? What if I do need to see this through? What if this could be something?” Then you start justifying in your head to say, “Well, that commute isn’t really what I wanted, but it’ll be okay, I’ll be able to make it work.”
Or you start justifying, “Yeah, it’s not really the pay that I wanted, but I don’t really have that much experience anyway so it’s probably good enough for me because I don’t think I can get any better.” Those kind of thoughts are what you are probably experiencing. That means you are in low belief as to you can get what you want. I want to tell you, if there’s one other person in the world who has gotten to where you want to go, so say they’ve gotten this job that you want at a pay you want and they didn’t have more experience than you, probably lots of people had no experience and got these jobs, you can do it too. I’m not talking about doctors or lawyers, there’s always exceptions, but most of the jobs, it’s not based on experience.I’ll explain to you at the end as well why that’s the case.
So you’re in low belief and the good news is you can actually cultivate a belief and you can create a belief. It’s like a seed. You plant the belief seed and then you have to water it and nurture it and grow it instead of just forgetting about it and leaving it. It’s like a lot of people, they’ll want to believe something and then they’ll just be like, “Well, it didn’t happen right away, so I’m going to stop believing it.” Then, of course, they never give themselves the chance to actually see that through and actually get to the offer that they want. So with many of my clients, they have built that belief up so strongly that if they do end up going through a process where they get an offer but it wasn’t the offer that they wanted, they have no problem saying no to it.
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Their gut will tell them, “This is not the right offer for me,” because their belief is so strong that their great offer is coming and it’s around the corner and it’s not going to take long, and that’s what happens. They end up getting it because their belief created it. So if you’re in one of those three spaces, if you fit in one of those three spaces or maybe in a little bit of two of them, then this is what I’m going to help you with today. I’m going to help you walk through what’s next. So thanks for being so active here. There’s some comments. “That’s me, resonate with the low belief and low confidence. What ifs kills our goals.” Yes, but the wrong what ifs? “What if it doesn’t work out? What if I fail?” I have had some clients, they’re afraid of success, they’re like, “What if I get the job? Then what if I can’t do it?”
Those are negative what ifs. We can use what ifs for the positive and we can say, “What if it does work out? What if I do an amazing job? What if I get an even better offer than I thought? What if I can negotiate?” So yes, it’s all about the context that’s used, but good point. So what happens next? So you want to approach the process in a completely different way. So I want to give you a paradigm shift. What most people are doing is they’re approaching the process of trying to please the employer, trying to … People will ask me, “How can I be more marketable? How can I convince them that I can do this?” The way that they’re asking the question, the place that comes from, I can tell they’re not in a state of really honoring their own value and really being connected to their own value.
Because the question that you really need to be asking is, “Where can I offer my value for the best return? Where can I contribute this value that I have to offer for the best return?” There’s always going to be places that are not going to pay you very well and always places that are going to pay you very well for the same work. An example that I use quite often is if you are a very skilled award-winning executive chef and you work at a high school cafeteria, even if you work there for 11 years, there’s only so much you can make there. There’s only so much you can advance there. You can do as much as you can there, but they have a cap. They just aren’t going to pay you as much as you could be paid. That if you went to an upscale New York restaurant where people are coming in, they’re expecting the best, they’re expecting to pay a high price, they’re going to be expecting quality and expecting excellence.
They will appreciate what that chef has to offer. They will be happy to pay for it, and they will continue to want to pay for it, and that’s what they expect. High school cafeteria, it’s nice, it’s great, but it’s not needed like that is needed there and it’s never going to be paid the amount. But he’s the same chef, he’s offering the same value, he’s doing the same work, he has the same brain. So that’s where it’s up to us, it’s up to you as the job seeker, to discern where you want to be and where’s going to pay you the most. It’s like, where do I want to offer? I mean, if it’s not about the money for you, that’s fine too, but I’m just saying you get to choose. If you want to work for a nonprofit and they just simply can’t pay you as much, then that’s your choice. But you don’t have to. You can contribute the same level of work, you can contribute the same amount of value and work somewhere else and be paid a whole lot more for it.
The difference is nothing that you did, it’s just your strategy and your decision making as far as the opportunities you go after. Where you look for opportunities, who you talk to, where in the process you decide you’re not going to continue or you are going to continue. It’s like the decisions that you make along the way need to be a lot more strategic versus, “I’m just going to take whatever comes, I’m just going to talk to anybody and entertain any opportunity because I don’t really know what I can get and this is just how it goes and the market’s terrible and the economy sucks, and I just need to take what I can get.” Versus, “I’m very intentional about what I’m going to accept, who I’m going to talk to. I know my value and I’m very confident in it, and I know that I can offer it for this price and that’s what I’m going to do,” and you just keep your eye on the prize.
You see the difference between those two paradigms? So a lot of the times when we’re left to our own devices, we’ll just get sucked up in the paradigm of, “Oh, we just have to take whatever we can get. The market’s hard. The job search is hard. Who knows what else is going to come along. You got to take
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what you can get. You’re lucky to have a job. Oh, you’re lucky to get an offer.” We just hear that stuff from other people and we don’t have as many examples of people continuing on with their full belief for exactly what they want and getting it and getting even better than that. We don’t have so many examples of that, so that’s what I’m creating inside my program with my success stories on the podcast. That’s what I want to show you.
I want to bring those all to light and be like, “Hey, you know what? This is actually the way that you can choose to go. You don’t have to get swept up in those posts of people who are not managing their minds or who just don’t know any better. They just don’t know what they don’t know. Not their fault. But it’s just simply what we decide to pay attention to, what we focus on, what we put into our brain.” So what do people actually want? So once you make that distinction, you’re like, “Okay, I understand that some places are just not going to pay me that much, and I want to make that decision ahead of time.” Inside my program, there’s some key decisions that I have you make because I want you to be strategic, not just for now, but your next step and your next step.
I want you to plan out your career long term and that starts with the decisions that you’re going to be making right now as far as the next step that you take. It’s not just thinking about next month or the next six months. It’s like we need to be planning for the next four years, 10 years, even 30 years for your retirement and stuff. What financial position do you want to be in then? That’s all going to stem from the decisions that you make now about your own value and how connected you are to your own value. Because you decide how much you’re going to get paid. I mean, I know that doesn’t sound right. You’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t decide how much I’m going to get paid.” It’s like you decide who you offer your value to and how you offer it. You have control over that.
The one thing that I do is I help you see how your value actually monetarily adds up to a certain amount and then you can see why you can actually ask for that salary. When you understand it, when you feel it, when it’s no big deal to you, you’re like, “Oh, okay, yeah, I get it,” then you can go and interview in a new way and you start attracting higher quality opportunities. It’s just a lot of mental shifts that you have to be open to and exposed to that possibility that you maybe were never exposed to in the past.
So moving on, we have the process. It’s knowing, “Okay, I get to choose who I’m going to talk to, who I’m going to entertain opportunities from, where I’m going to be.” You get to also approach it as a human. This is a big part of the process is being human through it. This is where the whole interviewing experience comes in. When I talk about the whole interviewing experience, I talk about not just what’s on your resume, not just the things that you’ve said on your resume, but your whole self. Your whole self as the whole package, everything that you bring to the table.
You might think some experiences you’ve had are irrelevant or don’t matter for the job. Wrong. It all adds up into this one unique package that is going to be very ideal for one organization or another, and it’s going to fit perfectly with one organization or one hiring manager and they’re going to be like, “Yes, this is it.” Others, they’re going to be like, “No, we don’t think this is a fit.” You’re going to think, “I’m not a fit,” and that’s where you really need to understand is that’s okay. There’s absolutely no problem with that. If you are rejected, we just want to make sure that you are rejected for being your whole self and then that is a worthy rejection and it is to be celebrated. Because if you weren’t rejected …
I went into this one opportunity pretending that I like some to do some things I didn’t like, I said, “Oh yeah, I’m really good at accounting. I really like to do the ledgers, I love to do the reconciliations of the statements.” Anyways, I sold them on something I wasn’t and I ended up having to quit three months later. Didn’t help anybody, didn’t help me, didn’t help them, had to disappoint them, had to do the whole thing again, all because I wasn’t being upfront. So being human, being honest, being 100% yourself, being congruent, meaning what’s inside is what they see on the outside, not any mismatches,
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that is what is going to create the best experience for you and for them, even if it doesn’t result in an offer.
It does not have to result in an offer every time. An offer isn’t the only thing that makes an interview successful. So whole interviewing is where you feel confident in yourself and your own value to the point that if they don’t see it, maybe you’re a bit bummed out because you’re a human, sure, but you’re not blaming yourself and you’re not too disappointed because you still know you have value to offer. You’re still very grounded in that value and you’re using this as a tool to get creative to how to talk about your value more powerfully. How to talk about your results. People want results. They don’t want a ton of experience, they don’t want a ton of education, they don’t want a ton of certifications. They want certainty that you will produce results.
So that is what we need. We need to show you how to talk about your results in a way that lands and is clear to them. I find the biggest problem is is that people themselves, the candidates themselves, don’t know what the extent of their results are. They don’t know how they have contributed, they don’t fully know, because they suffer from what’s called the flippant effect. They’re flippant towards their own accomplishments because they don’t really know. They’re like, “Yeah, it wasn’t a big deal. That was just my job. Yeah, I didn’t really do anything.” When you’re in that space and it’s normally unconscious, you can’t really know what an impact you had so you can’t really talk about it in the way that it needs to be talked about. Your value and your ability to create results, just because you get rejected, doesn’t change.
Doesn’t change just because somebody didn’t see it. You can either say, “Okay, I’m going to adjust, I’m going to adjust it so that I can explain it differently this time.” But either way, you’re going to be okay. You’re like, “Yeah, okay, I didn’t get that job.” You’re not like, “It was something wrong with me, I did something wrong.” You’re just like, “Okay,” and then you can move forward clearly. I want you to be in the space of seeing yourself as inherently valuable no matter what, no matter what they say to you or what results you get from this interview. I like to use the examples of something that obviously has value. If we have a hundred dollars bill, for example, nobody can really argue that that has value. Or a really nice car, like a brand new Mercedes Benz or something, something that we would all collectively agree has value.
If this was something that you went and offered somebody, if this were you and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to go offer somebody a $100 bill,” or, “I’m going to go offer them this Mercedes Benz and I’m going to sell it to them for $10,” and the person on the receiving end of this offer said, “No, I don’t want that.” You’re not going to be thinking, “Oh, there’s something wrong with the $100 bill or there’s something wrong with the car.” If you know it’s brand new and it’s great and you know that the $100 is a legit $100 you’re not going to be like, “Oh, there’s something wrong with these things.” What might you think? Let me know in the comments what you might think if somebody rejected these items of value. If you were just going out offering these things and somebody was like, “No, I don’t want that. ”
Yeah, you would really genuinely think their loss, right? I’d be like, “Really, Why not? I’m confused. Did you not understand what I was offering you?” Or maybe, “Yeah, okay, your loss.” So this is where you need to be in order to interview a human moving forward. You need to know that your value and your wholeness is enough as it is, knowing that you with all your unique traits isn’t for everybody, and that’s fine. But knowing that when you show up as your full self, your best self is always the answer no matter what. What most people do instead, that isn’t working for them. So they try to people please. They try to say things like … they try to look at the interviewer and say what they want to hear to try to adjust their answers to what they think they want to hear.
So they’re thinking, “Oh, they kind of reacted to that. They like that. Okay, I’m going to say more of that.” Answering not quite honestly, maybe slightly embarrassed about some things, not really owning
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them because what you think somebody else might think. It is not your business what they might think or not. It is your job to own it. I have an example of a client who … I think she was in Cuba. She had moved from U.S. to Cuba with her husband, and she had worked there as an executive of a company and she was nervous to say that it was actually her family’s company. She didn’t want to tell the interviewer in the U.S. that because her thought was, “He’s going to judge me. He’s going to think it was the easy way out. He’s going to think I shouldn’t have had that job. He’s going to think I was privileged and it was nepotism.”
She had all these thoughts about what people might think. But she told him anyway, because he asked her, he’s like, “Oh, how did you get that job in a foreign country? That’s pretty impressive.” So she told him, she’s like, “Oh, well it was my husband’s family’s company.” But she was a little bit embarrassed about it, a little bit like … because she thought this is what he was going to think. He responded in a completely different way than she expected. He actually said, “Wow, that’s even more impressive, to be able to work with family and actually have them listen to you.” He’s like, “Way to go.” He was even more impressed. That’s a clear example of why you need to own your accomplishments no matter what thoughts you have about them, because your thoughts are not everybody else’s thoughts, they’re just yours.
Somebody else is going to have a completely different outlook and they’re more likely to have a really good, positive outlook on your accomplishments when you do. You don’t want to be paying close attention to them to see if they validate you or not. You don’t want to be looking for validation from other people. That’s what a lot of people do. They’re like, “Oh, well it’s only going well if they approve of me. It’s only going well if I can tell they’re nodding and smiling and they agree.” No, it’s going well if you are owning your true self, if you’re in true congruence with what you have to offer, if you are owning and connected to your own value, that’s how we know it’s going well.
It’s not memorizing or trying to speak perfectly. It’s not trying to remember all the answers. It’s not trying to script them out and then write them. I had a client who had whiteboards and whiteboards of answers that he wanted to remember to say all the things to people, and he’s like, “I have to look at my notes here and here and here and here,” and to the point where he had overwhelmed himself and he had prepared so many times. He was such an over preparer. He kept doing it and doing it and doing it and he didn’t get any offers. After working with me, the reason was because he was over preparing and I was like, you get to drop all that. You know your stuff because it needs to come from a deep sense of trust within you, not memorizing of a script.
It’s not believing that you should know all the answers 100% of the time and if there is something you don’t know, you don’t need to let it throw off your whole game for the interview. That’s another thing that happens a lot is people think that if they don’t know one answer, that’s it. They’re like, “Oh, this has gone downhill.” It’s totally fine. You don’t have to have 100% to pass the interview. Nobody has 100% of the answers all the time. Everybody could have always done better and they still get the job and it’s not a requirement that we think it is. This comes from school and old conditioning.
Another thing people do that doesn’t work is they keep going and going on these interviews with the same results because they keep pushing through with crappy thinking. Crappy thinking. Any thinking that makes you feel bad, I’m going to call it crappy thinking. Because if it makes you feel bad, it’s not going to make you show up in your best way, which means you’re going to be less likely to get the result you want, which can compound and it means every rejection you get compounds your confidence and it goes down instead of up. It just builds into a loop where you end up feeling like there’s nothing else you can do. We need to break that pattern and show you that it’s not about pushing through with the same crappy thinking. It’s actually about changing your thinking. That’s what we need to do.
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Tell me if you relate to this, if you relate to any of this pushing through with the same crappy thinking or if you feel like that’s what you’ve been doing, put a yes in the comments. I’m just going to read what some people have said here. “So true, an important part of career development and growth, the hard part is really getting over our own fears and negative self-talk.” Yes, really good point. The negative self-talk is what I’m talking about. If you’re trying to push through with negative self-talk, that’s going to continuously feel bad and until that negative self talk changes, you on the outside can’t change. We have to change our mindset and recognize our value.
Changing the mindset is the key. It’s like a lot of people, if you keep it going on interview and interview and interview and you haven’t changed your mindset, then you’re going to likely keep going on interviews with the same results. I didn’t know this either. I was the person who used to take a ton of action without changing my mindset because I didn’t know how to do it. Changing your mindset is a skill. Changing your mindset is something that you work on continuously. That mindset work is always happening, it never ends. It’s constant. Yes. It’s like going to the gym. If you stop going to the gym, then you’re not going to see the results. It’s something you have to put in. You can’t just do it once.
So definitely. Okay, yeah, a lot of you are saying that you do relate to this. So the pushing through with the negative self-talk, the pushing through … and that’s why we see all the people on LinkedIn who are posting these posts about how they need to keep going and keep trying and don’t give up and it’s like that’s nice ra-ra motivation, but it doesn’t really change the internal wiring of your brain, right? Oh, I love that you guys are connecting. “Great suggestions re over preparing. I sometimes have notes posted in front of me for fear of not being articulate enough. Your suggestions are liberating.”
So with that, and I get it and it’s like sometimes a few notes can be helpful here and there.
I’ve got some notes right now for my presentation. I’m just touching on some points here that I really want to cover with you and I don’t want to forget them, but I’m not reliant upon them. As you’ll notice, sometimes I’m going off on some tangents, I’m reading the comments here. I’m really in the intent of helping you figure out what’s going on with you, making sure you’re resonating. It’s more of a discussion, more of a free flowing thing versus I need to be really structured. I might do it structured if it’s a different format, but in an interview you want to have that back and forth. You want to actually be in real time listening to what’s going on. You want to get curious. If you’ve been doing the job …
Here’s the piece, the value piece. If you’re grounded in your value, if you know have the ability to figure out this job, say if you’re hired and you know have the ability to figure it out, you’re excited about figuring it out, you know you can help them deliver this result that they want to get, you know you can help them, you know aligned, reading a script to them of what you think you should say is not going to be the thing that you need to do. It’s not going to be what gives you the result. Because when you’re reading the script, you forget who you are, you forget the passion that you have for what you want to do. You forget the alignment and the connection that you have to this organization or to this hiring manager. You’re just too concentrated on a script, and that’s the problem.
Because really you need to have that deep trust in yourself and that is something that comes from wiring trust into yourself, instead of thinking that the information comes from outside, comes from somebody who told you to say this sentence or it comes from this recommendation for how you should answer the question. It doesn’t come from those things. It comes from a deep trust of yourself to know that you can do this work or that you can figure it out. Because you don’t have to have done it all before. That’s another myth.
Here’s some other things, just continuing with what people do. You might see yourself in these points that I’m mentioning right now, things that people do that aren’t working, they end up getting increasingly more frustrated and increasingly more discouraged because they keep pushing through with that negative self-talk. Start talking this. They’ll be like, “Well, here we go again. Just another
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interview. I’m not even excited anymore because I know I’m not going to get it because they’re just going to tell me that they went with someone else and they won’t give me the feedback as to why.” When you start talking like that, you know haven’t changed your mindset or if you even have thoughts like that at all. You keep trying to over prepare, prepare more, go for more interviews, thinking it’s a numbers game.
Think you have to get your resume redone again. Maybe you go to that, think, “Oh, the resume’s the problem.” Get people to evaluate you. Maybe you want to do some mock interviews with people and you’re like, “Oh, can you read over my stories?” I had a lot of people say that to me. They’re like, “Can you read my stories and tell me if you think they’re good enough?” Like I’m going to be the one who can say if they’re going to work or not. But I can only tell you that if you are the one feeling them. It’s like I can tell you what to say, but I can’t give you self confidence. I can’t make you self-confident. That has to come from you. I can actually give it to you by changing your mindset, but I’m going to give it to you, you have to actually implement it.
Or here’s some other things people do. Try to gather more information, more knowledge, study more answers. Be like, “Oh, I got to be prepared for every question they might ask me.” Maybe they want to go back to school, get another certification or get some more of something because they think they’re not enough. But if you’re in the interview, you are enough. Okay, why this doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because people can sense when you’re trying too hard. It could be a turnoff. They’re like, “Oh …” they’re kind of repelled. If you’re going on a date with somebody and you can tell they’re trying really, really hard to make you happy and say what you want to hear, you’re not going to like that. You’re going to be like, “Something’s off. I don’t really like this.” It’s like being in needy energy when you need them to validate you.
You’re like, “Oh, this is my answer. I hope you like it. I hope this is good enough. I hope I’m okay. I hope I’m saying what you want.” I mean, I’m exaggerating. It comes off probably more subtly, but the energy is there and you’ll know, you’ll recognize if what I’m saying is truthful for you. Again, nothing to be worried about, nothing to be ashamed of. We all have done it. We’ve all been there. It’s not a big deal. It’s just not going to serve you to get to where you want to go, to give off the impression you want to give off, to actually be able to be congruent with your own value. It’s not going to work for that. It doesn’t work to memorize the scripts because over preparing just doesn’t work. Because if it did work then it would work. Everybody who over prepares, like my client who had all these whiteboards of notes and stuff, he would’ve gotten an offer.
But it doesn’t. That’s not what does it, that’s not what creates a result. What’s actually going on is the conversation and you need to be present in that conversation, not trying to remember what you’re going to say all the time. You miss opportunities to ask questions to them. You miss opportunities to get to the heart of the issue that they have because you’re so focused on keeping that script and answering perfectly that you don’t actually get into that discussion that needs to happen for them to trust you to be like, “Okay, this is our person, they’re going to help us.” I get it. They don’t build that trust to hire you because you’re too focused on doing a script that you think they want. It doesn’t work because the real problem is a lot deeper. It lies in who you’re being, being meaning what you’re thinking about yourself and how you’re feeling and what you’re vibing out.
So that’s the energy that you’re putting out there in the interview, and this is half of it. As I talked about yesterday, you being in congruence, you being aligned, you being grounded in your value, that is 50% of the work. The other part is learning the skill of communicating it effectively. Both people pleasing and being in perfectionist fantasy that you’ll one day do an interview where there’s zero mistakes made or every single answer is there, you know 100%, that’s not going to happen and it doesn’t need to happen. It’s fine, but we seem to have that. If you have been in that failing ahead of time state where you’re like,
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“I don’t want to go in interviews, I’m scared, don’t want to be rejected, need to have it perfect, don’t want to blow it,” if you’re there, just know that you’ll never have an interview where that happens and you don’t need to and it’s okay.
If you did, it would be kind of weird because people will think it’s weird that you have everything 100% perfect. They might think you’re even a little robotic. They might find it difficult to connect with a perfect person because they’re humans. We are not going for 100% correct answers. We’re not going for 100% perfection. We’re not going for 100% everything. We’re going for human, we’re going for honest, we’re going for real, we’re going for “I’m good if you want to hire me or not, because I just want to figure out if we’re a fit. If we’re a fit, then that’s great. I would love it. If not, then that’s okay. If I believe we’re a fit and I don’t get the offer, then I’m going to be a little bummed out, but I’m also going to be like, “What didn’t I explain properly? What about my value didn’t come across?” I’m going to go deeper, get more creative, proceed again.
When you’re overly prepared and rehearsed, you’re concerned you won’t know something or you might mess up, you’re not able to engage and be present, you’re not really ready. You’re not able to bring your best self because you’re too concerned with being perfect and remembering all the things you memorized. When you’re worried about what they’re thinking about you. You don’t fully value your self. You don’t understand why you’re so valuable and you don’t understand why you’re a major asset. You can’t access the best part of you so they don’t really meet you. They meet whoever you thought you needed to be. I’ll just pause for a second. There’s some good comments in here.
“What happens when you get rejected because others have more experience in education?” Okay, yeah, let’s get to that one at the end. Good question. “Rarely does the interviewer allow for a two-way dialogue. Instead a few minutes, if any.” Okay. Yeah, we’ll get to these questions at the end. I’ll just stay on point. But those are great questions. Yeah, keep them coming. So let’s move. We’re we’re coming up to the process just now, but I’m just going to finish the things that don’t work and why they don’t work. You’ll know if this is you if you keep telling people about what’s happening. If you’re saying things like, “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” or if you’re like, “I need to go over my stories again, I need to study more. I need to prepare more, I need to just apply for more jobs. I think I need another certification. I just need to know what to say. I need more answers.”
Put a yes in the comments if any of that sounds familiar to you, if that’s what’s going on in your head. Okay, thanks for being so honest. It really will help you and me to create the best possible material. This is making sense. If we know … have it happen at times. Okay, so if you see that you’re doing it less than you used to, then you’ve done some work and that’s amazing. If you’re just discovering it today, you’re like, “Yeah, I’m doing that. That’s what’s happening,” that’s okay too. Awareness is the first step, Getting caught into that trap where you think you need more certifications. If you’re getting an interview without the certification, you don’t need the certification.
The real reason, it does come from within. It’s what you’re believing about you. Your value, your accomplishments yourself, your past experiences, what they mean, and you haven’t taken a deep look at them to be able to really cultivate the feelings of pride around them so that you can shine through in the interviews because it’s not within your awareness yet. You just haven’t put attention on that yet and you haven’t put continuous focus and attention on it. You’ve put attention on what you think other people need. The problem with that is everybody is going to resonate with something different. You could be changing everything all the time and never get to the point where you’re going to get an offer because you’re trying to fit into all these different boxes instead of cultivating your own self and then finding the best box that you’re going to fit in perfectly, if that makes sense. I got to come up with a new metaphor for that.
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But anyways, moving on to the process that works. What needs to happen is you need to have a clear understanding and knowing of your own value and that is a process you need to go through. In my program we go through that, we map that out very step by step in detail as far as you’re getting connected to your own value and to the point where you’re brimming with pride to talk about your value, not in an arrogant, but in a confident way. Here’s the step by step process. Step one is you need to bring awareness to the character traits that make you uniquely good at your job and what you do. If you’re switching industries, that’s fine. Your unique character traits that make you good at figuring things out, that make you good at what you were previously doing, that make you good at the results that you create and specifically why. Why you’re passionate about it and why you chose it.
The whys are really important. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Simon Sinek, but he talks about the people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. That’s the first step. Step two is you want to do an intake of your accomplishments and things you figured out on your own and how much that has saved or how much money that’s made for a company. That’s not very obvious to people. A lot of times people don’t know and I’ll point it out and they’ll be like, “Oh, okay,” they have a big aha moment and they’re like, “Okay, now I can go talk about this stuff. Now I see my value.” But you need to do an intake of your accomplishments, things you’ve figured out and how much money or time or whatever it is that is saved for the company. It always comes down to time or money. I can take any one of your accomplishments and I can tell you how it has come down to time or money, because time is money and how that can be presented in a form where it is very compelling to a hiring manager.
Step three, you need to create your human stories. You have to decide on what your human stories are going to be around what you do, how you do it differently, and infuse your personality and your own uniqueness into these stories. This is not like somebody telling you, you say this, this and this and this. This is really you asking yourself or me as your coach asking you, “So what were you most proud of about that and why did you love that?” I have a whole bunch of questions inside the whole interviewing module about how we get to these human stories where you actually get to enjoy being yourself and you get to enjoy even telling the stories about when you made mistakes and when you messed up. Those are actually my favorite stories and from working with a lot of hiring managers in HR, they love to ask those too. It tells you so much more about a person when they’re not doing great, tells you so much more about that person versus when they are.
So step four, approach an interview from the belief that you are valuable and that they would benefit from having you. You can only do this once you’ve done step one, two, and three. So these steps are essential and then step four is going to be, you have to approach it from that belief. You’re valuable, you’re the $100 bill or the Mercedes or whatever you find inherently valuable and you’re the one who’s going to present this amazing gift to people, to organizations, to hiring managers. No matter if they say no or not, you are still intact, always.
Step five, evaluate your interviews with a deep sense of curiosity, not from shame or from beating yourself up or from not being perfect or from not having known things you feel you should have known, but just evaluate them with deep curiosity. If you went on an interview and you thought you were a fit and you thought it was great and they went with someone else, just genuinely ask yourself if there was anything you would’ve wanted to do differently. Then repeat this with new information, new insights from an even more powerful space. The way that coaching helps you speed this up is that you get another perspective. You might do an evaluation and you might come up with some stuff. If you have a coach look at it with you, they can give you a new perspective and they can help you to move forward in a different, more clear way.
Especially if they’ve been working on the same problem for years, they can pinpoint it a lot easier than you because you have been working on this specific problem for so long. Why this works is instead of
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relying on all those other things, you’re relying on a deep sense of trust within yourself. You’re cultivating and deepening that trust within yourself and you know that no matter what, you are valuable regardless of the outcome. So you stop those extreme highs and lows when you get rejected or when you think something’s going to work out and it doesn’t. You stop those extreme highs and lows. You just kind of even out a little bit. Yes, it’s still a little wavy, but you’re not so thrown out of the game. You’re just like, “Okay, yeah, I’m still valuable,” though.
So now you’re not relying on that anymore. You’re not relying on perfect words memorization, you’re relying on your own self trust and being capable. It hasn’t worked up until now because you haven’t addressed the root of the problem. Because going on 100 interviews, if you still don’t believe you’re good enough, if you still don’t really know what you have to offer, if you’re still confused about your value, if you still really aren’t sure if you’ve prepared enough, if you’re still trying to read the same scripts, if you’re not really feeling proud of yourself, like you have something to offer, then it’s not going to work. It’s like if you were dating, you’re going on dates and stuff, or you’ll end up attracting lower offers.
If you’re going on dates and stuff and all you do is say … if you just were openly congruent about how you were feeling and you weren’t feeling very good about yourself, and you went on dates and you were just like, “Oh yeah, I’m just not feeling that good about myself. I don’t really know. I think I probably have some weight to lose and I don’t have a very good apartment and I’ve been living with my parents and I’m really sorry. I understand if you don’t want to date me …”
I actually want to date with a guy who was basically saying exactly what I’m saying. But if you go on dates like that, and again, I use extreme examples just to get the points across, but if you go on a whole bunch of dates like that, the high quality people who are kicking butt in life and got their shit together, they’re not going to be sticking around with you. They’ll go on one date and be like, “Okay, yeah, you’re a very nice person, but you’re not for me.” Or you might attract other people who are at that same space and be like … you’re just going to match up with what you’re at.
So that’s why it doesn’t work. That’s why you have to be congruent. When I say congruent, I mean what you feel and think on the inside matches what you say on the outside, 100%. There’s no mismatch. It doesn’t matter what words you say, it actually doesn’t matter as much as we think the words that we say. It doesn’t matter how much you care about what they think. It doesn’t matter that you are worried that they’re going to judge you. The things that you think matter it are not what matters. What matters are the thoughts you have about yourself, the congruence you have as far as what you’re projecting and what you’re feeling and thinking and the skill that you need or the skill that you have in order to communicate that in a way that lands as far as results, as far as impact, as far as what you can do [inaudible 00:50:12].
Experience they will have with this process. Experience that you’ll have and the hiring managers will have is this is how it’ll feel different. What happens when you interview like this using the whole interviewing process. You won’t feel as bad about an interview if you don’t get the job. You may feel a little bad, you’re human, that’s okay, but you won’t feel terrible. You won’t beat yourself up for not saying something right or perfect. You’ll just learn and move on. You won’t be caught off guard. If they ask you something you’re not sure of, you’ll think about it and you’ll actually be able to have an answer, even if it’s not perfect. You won’t panic for not knowing something and you won’t let it throw you off for the whole thing.
You won’t be second guessing yourself throughout the whole thing. You won’t be looking intently to get validation from other people’s reactions because you will have done that work to reassure yourself already. You won’t be concerned about them judging you negatively or them thinking you’re not good enough. You would’ve done that work already. You won’t have those feelings of insecurity, worrying
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about if they are going to like you or hopefully accept you as a human. You won’t stop. You won’t continue to try to outrun your human. This is what I call it, try to be perfect or try to have all the answers. It’s like try to outrun being human and it’s fine to be human. It’s actually what they want. They want to hire a human. You’ll be able to sink into trusting yourself, knowing who you are and knowing that you are enough as you are. You’re going to be there for that interview for a reason.
They got you to come in for a reason. They don’t interview people for fun or because you have nothing to offer. They know you do. You’re simply working towards that inevitable result no matter what. You know what’s happening, you’re believing it on default, and that particular interview maybe didn’t work. So got a few minutes here. I want to get the questions in. If we don’t get to everything today, though, come back tomorrow because we are going to continue off where we left off. Come back tomorrow if we don’t get to everything, because I do have to stop at two today to jump on the call with my program students. The skills that you need to develop in order to make this all work is self-acceptance and that negative self-talk needs to be managed. If it doesn’t completely go away, it needs to be managed because that’s the main mindset shift that needs to happen and it’s challenging to do.
The self confidence needs to be built intentionally, which is why I have the module called intentional self-confidence building. Increased failure tolerance, so you need to understand failure tolerance, understand what it means and that’s how you get to any result. The thought that I hold in my head is it’s like moving from failure to failure without lack of enthusiasm. I don’t know who said it, I didn’t say it, a famous person said it, but really resonates with me. Tenacity. It’s like I’m getting this no matter what. I believe it and it’s happening no matter what. Being able to go from that failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm if and when you need to. You won’t always need to. You’ll get to the point where you’re skilled and you won’t be failing as much.
The results created. You’ll show up more confidently to interviews. You’ll be feeling confident in yourself no matter what happens. You’ll know exactly what to do after a rejection comes and you’ll be proud of your accomplishments. You’ll talk about them proudly. Not arrogantly, but proudly and confidently. You’ll have a deep seated belief that even if you don’t know something, you can trust yourself that you’ll be able to figure it out when it comes. If you don’t know something, you won’t automatically jump into negative self talk about it. You’ll end up acing interviews, feeling confident no matter what. Whether or not they choose you or not, you’re still going to be feeling confident and certain in your value. You’re going to have a pleasant, more fun, relaxed interview experience and that’s priceless because when you’re feeling more fun and more relaxed, you are going to attract better quality opportunities. I promise you. You’ll feel good about showing up authentically as yourself. You’ll feel confident and you’ll accept yourself. Regardless of what they say, if they hire you or not, it won’t be a problem.
That’s the workshop. Okay, so we’ve got five minutes here. Let me move into these questions. Let me see where I left off. Okay. Suggesting a metaphor … I want to expand the chat. “Suggesting a metaphor for the box theory, finding your own gem and selling it to the collectors who love that gem.” Oh, I love it. Yeah. Amazing. Thanks for that. That’s great. Love the gem metaphor. Me, too. “I’ve been called from every job I have applied for and always been rejected after the interview.” Yeah, interesting. So do any of these points here today resonate with you as to why? “Best worst interview experience was when I did a Zoom interview and I was the only one on cam. I could not read anyone. Was really frustrated after the interview, but when reflected, I realized it was better because I did not have visual cues to direct the flow of my own answers or panic that I was doing bad so my self confidence did not falter because I thought someone was not impressed with me.”
So it was good that you didn’t have the visual cues, is what you were saying? Yes. Interesting. This is brilliant. Thank you. Yeah, I love that metaphor. I’m totally going to use it. Awesome. Okay, so it looks like I was able to cover all the questions. I thought there were more than there were, so that’s great. I
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have a few more things left to say, or if you have some more. “Thank you, Natalie, for an open and genuine chat to the bottom of these issues.” Absolutely, yes, and this is what we do every week so that we can get … every week inside my program, this is what we’re doing. I’m about to jump off and get to them right now.
“Can you answer my question above?” Oh, it looks like I missed one. “Rarely does the interviewer allow for a two way dialogue. Instead, a few minutes, if any, are allowed for the questions. Is it okay to initiate questions as the conversation proceeds?” Yes. So what I say to this is you can switch the dialogue. There’s a technique I have for doing this and also if they’re not open to switching the dialogue, if they’re very rigid about question, answer, question, answer, you just want to recognize that’s the company culture. They’re very strict and rigid and you want to ask yourself, “Do I want that? Do I like this? Do I like the feel of this?” But yes, there’s a technique for switching the interview dynamic for which I teach in depth inside my program.
“What happens when you get rejected because others have more experience in education?” So this is often something that they just get told. People will tell you and sometimes it’s true. Sometimes it’s like, yes, other people did have more experience than that. It’s really why. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t get hired at your level of experience in education. It just means that you haven’t … Actually, I mentioned this in some of my notes here, but I didn’t have time to go through all of it. It’s like when you want to land that perfect match, it’s not about the experience and education. I use the example of when I met my partner. We did not have anything in common. You would think that we would have to have things in common, but it’s like we really had completely different interests. It’s like him saying to me, “Oh, I don’t want to date you because you don’t like UFC and board games and heavy metal concerts like me, so I’m not going to date you.”
It’s like they’re saying to you, “You don’t have the exact match of experience.” It’s not always the case.” Someone else is going to talk to you, the right company, the right organization is going to meet you and they’re going to say, “Oh, we really align with her on the big issues, the big things. We want the same things. We are passionate about the same things. We love what she’s bringing to the table in a unique, different way.” Versus, “we are just so rigid about looking at the experience in education.” Because the experience in education is just a part of it. They’re saying that’s what they want and that’s usually just a cover or a front because they’re not really going to tell you the reason, the actual reason because they don’t want to get sued. They can’t really give real feedback so they normally just say that.
They’re like, “Oh, we went with someone who’s a better fit. We did this.” It’s not really the truth and you have to be open to like, “Okay, well, that company wanted me to have more experience and education. I’m looking for a company who doesn’t need someone with as much experience and education, but who’s looking for a passionate individual who’s going to figure things out for them and really wants to work in this field and has everything I have to offer.”
Thanks once again for helping. Okay, so if I didn’t get to your question, please come back tomorrow at the same time and I will address it then. Thanks all, you all. You rock. I will see you tomorrow. Okay, thank you. 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?” So 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. 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.