Hi, and welcome to a new episode of the Awfully Quiet Podcast. I'm going to start this episode with a massive thank you, because this week marks an important milestone. it's more like a vanity metric, but we have reached. Over 1000 downloads with this podcast this week. I am 10 weeks into this endeavor and I am in awe of so many people listening, downloading over 1000 downloads across the span of 14 episodes is something that I didn't expect to begin with.

There are over 700 listeners by now, over 700 people who have listened to the awfully quiet podcast across the span of 30 countries. And so this has become a truly international podcast. This has attracted introverts and quieter people from all over the world. And this makes me really, really proud. It also tells me that we're onto something here.

This is a topic that resonates. It's really important for us to talk careers and to talk personal development and growth for those of us who feel a little bit quieter, who have a little bit more of an introverted nature. And I. I love that you're all here. I love that you're tuning in and listening to this because it feels like this means you're truly interested in what you're hearing here.

It provides you with the right energy, the right vibes to continue to develop and grow. And that's all I'm here to do. I'm, I'm super excited about this. I know that, you know, I have kept refreshing my, analytics for, you know, what the podcast does and I'm doing so on a daily basis just to understand.

Where are you all coming from? Where are you listening into? What are your favorite episodes? What resonates? What doesn't resonate? And it's been a hell of a last 10 weeks. there's a lot to learn for me. There's a lot for me still to learn, but I'm really, really excited to have you here and to have you join this journey and.

I think we're going to do great things together. Now for today's episode, a little bit of an impromptu one. but I'm hoping that that doesn't take away from the experience from the energy this morning. It is a Friday morning. I'm sitting here with my cup of coffee. I'm just about to start work and recording this episode for you on a topic that.

Frankly, I spoke a lot about in the past couple of weeks on subtle careers. If you follow me there, you will have seen the topic of job interviews pop up time and time again. And, you're going to see some news on this in the following weeks too. There's a good reason why I've been, I've been hitting that topic so hard recently and, and why I'm feeling really passionate about this.

And the main reason is that. I feel like people really dread job interviews. I can pin this down to a moment in time. just before Christmas, when I saw a comment on Instagram on somebody else's post, and this was all about entrepreneurship and running your own business, being your own boss. And, it was all about, you know, what are the benefits of that?

What do you really like about that? And one person commented under this post that they were. So, so excited that they didn't have to go to job interviews anymore because they worked for themselves. They are their own boss. So now they don't have to go and interview anymore. And now they are not anymore at anyone's mercy of getting a job and presenting themselves and going into interview situations.

And that got me thinking, and I was like, hmm, interesting. And I get that a lot of people dread job interviews. I bet. That this audience dreads job interviews. Hell, I've tried to job interviews for the most amount of time. I would still say that if I were to go into a job interview, it would still make me nervous.

And I've done a lot of job interviews. Now I'm going to take you back a few years because you may have listened to, one of the initial episodes where I joined a little bit about my career journey, but. My very first job in corporate was in human resources. And I was responsible for recruitment in a CPG company across the countries in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

And, mostly recruited for marketing and sales positions during that time. It was very intense. I almost want to say that. For the little over two years, I've done that job. I probably had interviews almost each and every day, whether it be phone interviews, whether it be like full blown assessment panels and assessment centers.

So there was a lot of recruitment in there. And that gave me a lot of insight into the behind the scenes, into working with hiring managers, what they're looking for, how they, how they search for candidates, what, what are the real criteria they're looking for? What are the things that are not on the job description?

What are the things that nobody really knows? What are. Some of the, yeah, behind the scenes that candidates most of the time don't really get to experience, but I did. And so that took a lot of the mystery out of job interview processes for me. And that made them feel a lot more tangible for me. And I knew that they didn't deserve the bad rep that they got.

Now, that doesn't mean that I don't get nervous when I go into job interviews. That doesn't mean that I muster them or that I. You know, that I were to get any job that I wanted far from it, but it just helped me to get a different view on what it is to go into a job interview and what, what it really is for.

Now, what this episode is about today is I want to give you some good reasons to look at job interviews in a different way. I want you to change your view on what it means to go into interviews. I want you to get excited about job interviews, and I'm going to give you three reasons. That I thought about in advance and I was just like, well, yeah, this is a good mix of things that I know based on my corporate experience of recruiting in HR, of being an HR business partner for a CPG company, recruiting, marketing, and sales jobs.

It's also a lot of personal development and growth of just having done a lot of these interview situations myself and having gone through them. And, There's also a little bit of perspective in there that I want you to have going into 2024 and going into, yeah, potentially your next interview. So let's get started.

Now, reason number one, why you should get excited about job interviews is. Job interviews are a life skill. It's not like at any point in time, you're not going to need this skill anymore. And that's exactly the thought that I had when I saw this comment on this Instagram post saying, Oh, I'm so glad I don't have to go into job interviews anymore.

I don't think there's any such thing. I think there's always going to be a need to sell yourself. I need to present yourself and need to go into situations where you want something from the other person, especially when you're an entrepreneur, especially when you work for yourself, especially when you run your own business.

You got to be able to pitch yourself. You got to be able to talk about your strengths. Why you, your ambition, your vision, you got to articulate yourself in that way. And so it's not that job interviewing is only for those poor little people who work in corporate and who have to. You know, continued back for, for promotions and for jobs and for development.

It's not like that. I think of job interviewing as a skill. It's a skill that you can learn. it's a skill that's going to take you through your whole life. The sooner you embrace that, the sooner you start to see it like that, the better, because, you know, granted those first couple of interviews you have in your life, you know, probably back in school and when you apply for, you know, that, that job after school, waitressing or whatever it is, they're cringy.

They're awkward. It's like, Well, yeah. What can I say? Those first couple of, corporate experiences of job interviewing. And it's the first time when they really start asking about your strengths, your weaknesses, why you tell me about yourself, tell me about a time, you know, all these questions that I know everyone dreads.

It is super cringy. It is super awkward because most of the time. We don't really feel like ourselves in those situations. It doesn't really feel like, oh, we can lean back with our coffee and have a good, have a good chat about whether this makes sense. You know, whether we are the right fit for each other.

it's not really like that because most of the time it feels like you want something from them. They've got it. They've got all the power and I'm going to come to that in a second, but truly, I feel like interviewing is a life skill. You will always need to have that skill. You will always need to sell yourself.

You will always need to pitch for something that's important and. Talk about who you are, what you want, where it is you're going, and how can other people help you achieve that at the end of the day, that is how we boil down what you're there to do in a job interview and what you're there to articulate and bring across as a message.

And, like I just said, the first couple of ones are really cringy and then I feel like throughout your career. You're starting to embrace those situations more because for once you've got more experience, you've survived a couple of them and you obviously get better at, at what this is about. You get better at going into these situations.

And I feel like there are a couple of things that you can really do to enhance your experience of going into job interviews. First and foremost, this episode, it's like, you know, why is this important? Why is this something that I want to work on? Why is this a skill that I want to hone? A lot of people will go into job interviews.

You know, only every so often, like every two, three, three years when, you know, it's the next promotion or when, you're looking for, for a pivot or to do something else, entirely and, you know, everything that we do only every two, three years, it's almost like. We don't build that muscle, whatever, we learned at any given moment for, for that one interview, we will have forgotten by the time we're going to the next one, if we're honest.

So, I feel like we need to build the skill into our day to day lives, and we need to start doing this more, more often, more consistently. And there are so many opportunities during your. you're doing in your work life in your day to day life that you can train and practice interview skills whenever you introduce yourself to someone else, whenever you meet someone for, you know, one of those coffee connects whenever you meet a senior stakeholder, and they ask about your career ambitions.

And when they ask about. What's the plan? those are great opportunities for you to practice that skill. it might even be in your personal life, you know, those situations that, you know, if you're anything like me, you're dreading, like meeting strangers somewhere randomly and talking about what you do and, yeah, what your visions are.

Embrace these situations, think about them, not as cringy, not as awkward. I know they are, but think about them as learning opportunities. Think about them as, Oh, this is an opportunity for me to build that muscle, to talk about who I am, what I want. Where I'm headed to sell my skills, to talk about some of the projects that I've recently done that worked really well, to talk about some of the challenges I have and to get into that practice.

It's a life skill, train that muscle now, train that muscle as often as you can. And I promise you the next time you're going into one of those situations, this will have already established itself as a pattern. That you have trained, you have honed, it'll come a lot more natural and that gives you the ability then to focus a lot more on feeling like yourself in that moment.

You know, if you don't have to always think about, you know, what's the content of what I'm going to bring across, what's the content of what I'm going to say, you can start focusing on. How do I feel? You know, can I, am I tense in my whole body or can I actually sit back? Can I actually drink some of that coffee that they offered me so nicely?

Can I adjust my body language to feel less tense and more open, relaxed? And can I show up as myself, as who I really am and bring across my personality? Now that was number one. Reason number two. For why you should be getting excited about job interviews is interviews are like self reflection bootcamp.

Like if we're honest, whenever we prepare for an interview is when we feel like we know most about ourselves at that moment, don't we? you know, part of interview prep for me always is like, I'm going to go through some of the questions that I know they're going to be asking. I'm going to have a look at what the capabilities are that they're looking for in the job description.

I'm going to have conversations with. The hiring manager and with some of the, stakeholders on the, on the interview, and I'm going to ask them about what are their expectations, what, what other skills that they really want to see on the day of the interview. And that's what I'll prepare for. I'm going to prepare.

You know, answers to these questions and I'm going to self reflect on where am I right now? What have I learned in the last two, three years? What are the things that gave me challenges? What are the things that made me really proud? What have I learned about myself in the process? And then from here on out, where am I headed?

What is that? Longer term vision that I'm pursuing and how does the role that I'm applying for create a perfect next step for me to enable that long term vision. All those things you'll think about and that'll almost make you feel like, wow, I know so many things about me. This is actually great. It's almost like, You know, a journaling exercise on steroids, isn't it? You learn a lot about yourself when you prepare for an interview. And even if you don't get the job, even if the outcome is, well, we've, you know, there was somebody else that we decided for. There is always something positive because there is always something you take away as a learning.

In each and every interview process that I went through, I learned something. Some of those learnings were really painful. Some of those learnings were less painful. They were all right, I guess. There's, there's always a level of There's always a level of cringe and embarrassment. I don't want to hide that.

I don't want to romanticize job interviews too much, but at the end of the day, you take something away. And that's why it's so important for you to go into these situations. I bet that a lot of you lean back from some of the opportunities because they're too afraid of not getting the job, of being rejected.

Of being told no, of being told their experience is not enough, being told, you know, we, we've hired somebody else who has more experience, who has, you know, better skills, who has a stronger track record, who comes from this great university. That was always my personal trigger. honestly, I don't ever, I don't think that that ever.

Hindered any of the job interviews or any of the jobs that I didn't get, but here we go. The important thing to take away is it's always good to go for it. If you have a job in mind, if there is an open position that you really want to go for, you better go for it. Because otherwise you will only regret not doing that. If you go for it and you don't get the job. You learn something you either learn that you didn't want that job in the first place because you'll know so much more about this job going out of this interview.

If you're honest before going into an interview, you merely know the job description. You have just seen, you know, a few words on paper that. Roughly describe what this role about the role is never about what it says on the job description. Never, let's say 20, 30 percent most of it, you'll find out during the job interview, like you'll properly meet.

The people that you're going to be working with, you'll probably learn about company culture. You learn about the ways of working, how the team works, who else is on the team? Who are the main stakeholders? What are you going to do day in day out? What are the key challenges? You're going to go face to face with the hiring manager.

And that's usually the person that you're going to spend considerable amount of time with over the next couple of years. If you end up getting the job. Now, you don't know anything about this person before going into an interview. You don't know how they work. You don't know if they're going to call you out of the blue 20 times a day.

You don't know if they're, you know, super, super, protective of their time. You don't know any of that. That's what you find out in the interview. That's what you're there to do. It's a two way street. You have heard this before, but it's truly a two way street. You can't really know if you want the job in the first place if you've not gone for the interview.

Like my, my honest opinion, you've got to go for the interview. That's where you find all of that out. And that's. Also what, what should take a lot of the pressure out. It's like you going into this interview because you want to understand whether this is an opportunity that's actually, aligned with who you are, what you're looking for, what you want to do next, that's why you're there.

And so you should definitely go for the interview. Even if you don't get the job, you will have collected data points about yourself, about this opportunity, about the next opportunity. And I promise you, even if you get rejected, even if. You're not gonna get this role. It'll catapult you into something else.

It will present the next open door. It will present the next step for you. Now, this honestly happened to me a few years back when I went into a job interview that I thought I aced. Honestly, I thought this was one of my best interviews today, like, I answered all the questions. I felt very confident about how I answered all the questions.

I prepped very well. That's a very introvert thing for me to do. I aced it. Honestly, my self presentation, I saw on their faces that this was a I saw that this was a good presentation. Like I'm arrogant like that, you know me by now. so far as I'm concerned, I aced that interview. I did not get the job though.

I

got a call a few weeks later after the interview and it was literally like, You've done really well in the interview. We really liked you. We just truly don't think that this is your job. We truly don't think that this is, the next best thing for you to do. And in that interview, there was someone from the broader marketing team and they were like, Hannah, you'd be a great marketer, you know, the way you present, the way you bring across your content, you'd be a great marketer and funny enough, I always wanted to be a marketer.

I never thought I was going to get a marketing job just because I didn't have the, the on paper experience. I came from, like I said, I came from HR and then I went into, the demand side of the business, which was literally a lot of sales, digital marketing and, category management. I wouldn't have gone for a marketing position because I thought, well, I don't really have that experience.

So I went for something that was more of a hybrid and that I was hoping down the road would lead me to marketing. But if I'm being honest from today's perspective, yeah, it was just a means for me to get into a marketing role. And so them giving me that feedback of saying, You're not going to get this job, but we see you in a marketing role and I'm happy to vouch for you.

I'm happy to give you some contacts. I'm happy to speak to some of my peers and colleagues and tell them that you've done a really good interview, that you could potentially be a great candidate for some of the roles that are opening up. I mean, come on. I couldn't have dreamed this up if I wanted to.

This was amazing. So it was a rejection. But it redirected me into something that I actually wanted. So always go for the opportunities. Do not be afraid to get rejected. Do not be afraid to not get the job. You gotta, you gotta get your fair share of rejections in your life. You've got to have your fair share of interviews that you're not going to get, that you're not going to nail, that you're not going to come out of and think you aced them.

So embrace that. This is what life is about. This is what your career is about. It's not a straight line. So you want to embrace those moments.

Now, reason number three for you to get excited about job interviews, or at least to think about them slightly differently and get them to be less scared going into job interviews. Now, I touched on this earlier, and I feel like a very common misconception that candidates have going into job interviews is that HR and the hiring manager hold all the power.

They are the ones who decide whether or not you're going to get the job. They are the ones asking the questions. They are the ones who hold all the strings. And to a certain extent, that is true. Obviously they have the job to give. They make the decisions at the end of the day. But what I do want you to know from my experience of recruiting for a lot of really, really attractive marketing and sales positions is that it's not like there's hundreds of great candidates out there.

It's not like hiring managers are always in the position where they get to pick the best one out of a sea of great choices. It's not always like that most of the time you're really searching hard for the right person. That's why higher up the ranks, you will always proactively look for great talent to join the organization.

It will not be, you know, just relying on people who apply for roles. It'll be like headhunting people. It'll be, you know, proactively searching for great talent. And looking for them to join the organization. That's how it works. And that's because it's not easy to find those people, you know? you, I think candidates tend to focus on, you know, the, the on paper skills, the job description.

The qualifications, the responsibilities, you know, the four to five years of experience that you got to have, you know, this, this is bullshit. I'm, I always got job with less experience than that. It's not the experience that you need. It's part of the picture. It is. It's not the full picture. Now, how do we get to a full picture?

Personality, team fit. You got to be a company fit. You can be the best person on paper. You can be the greatest candidate on paper and still not be a great team fit. And it will not work. It won't work. At the end of the day, your personality has to fit in. You're going to feel, you're going to have to feel good to a certain extent in the role that you do in the company that you're in, in the environment that you're in, in order to do a great job.

That's what you want to do. You find, want to find people who are the right team fit, who bring a decent amount of experience. And to show potential to develop and grow with organization. Those are the things that hiring managers are going to look for. Those are the things that HR is going to look for.

There are a couple of boxes that you, that you ought to tick. And then it's about personality and potential. Let me tell you that. So you hold a lot more power than you think in those interview situations. And that's the energy that I want you to go into these. Interview situations into job interviews, moving on forward, and I know that that's a difficult thing to do.

especially because it just doesn't feel natural to us going into a room full of people and being interrogated. But the end of the day, it's a conversation that you're there to have. You have something to offer. You are a great candidate. If you're invited to an interview, it means that you have already passed.

That first step you have already, already got that foot in the door. There's already something that interests them about you. And so it's just for you to go in and understand, you know, whether this is the right opportunity for you, whether you like these people that you're interacting with, whether you like the office vibe, how, what the people look like, who you see on the corridor.

What the person at reception looks like, et cetera, et cetera. how do you feel? And so

that's something that I feel is, is a really important element for you to understand and to know about job interviews is that there's not lots of candidates out there who are better, who are, who are a better fit, who have more experience, who have better CVS and all that. I don't want you to focus on that.

I want you to focus on the fact that you have some great value to bring, you have some great experience, whether or not it's a straight line, who cares. You've got something to offer. You've got skills. You've got experience. You've got potential. And if you listen to this podcast, I bet you have a great personality.

And that's the final thing that I want you to take away from this episode today is I want you to bring that personality. I want you to show up. As your true self, I want you to talk about your introversion in those settings. I want you to say out loud when they ask who you are, what you do on the weekends and so on.

I don't want you to play the extrovert. Hell, I've played the extrovert so many times and I've failed miserably. And now I say open and honestly, I'm really introverted. There is nothing more on the weekend that I like more than being out and about with my dog, buying a really expensive flat white somewhere, enjoying some time in the sun.

you know, being in nature, meeting one of my really good friends and going back home and watching some Netflix. And, that's the energy you've got to bring because that gives you flavor. That gives you something to work with. That gives you something to grasp the person that you're speaking with. You don't have to be extroverted to do a great job.

You don't have to be the most outgoing person. You don't have to be the most charismatic to be a great marketer, to be a great salesperson, to be a great. HR person, none of that, you can be great at all of that and want to spend time by yourself on the weekend. So that's what I want you to take away, embrace your introversion, try and show up as the person that you really are.

Try and bring some flavor, try and bring some of that imperfect, you know, stumbling across your sentences and just bringing, bringing your message across. And I feel like if you can do that, if you, if that's the mindset that you're going to go in, you're going to succeed. You're going to walk away winning no matter what.

Now, to wrap this up for today, I want you to get excited about job interviews. I want you to go into those situations. Arms wide open, embrace them. Reason number one for that is interviews are a skill. It's a life skill. You got to learn it. So the sooner you start, the more you incorporate little learnings of selling yourself, talking about your strengths, talking about your ambition on a day to day basis, the better you get.

Reason number two. Interviews are like self reflection bootcamp, so they're always a great opportunity for you to check in with yourself, to understand where it is, where you stand in your career, what makes you really, really happy, what doesn't make you as happy, how can you add more of what makes you happy, how can you do less of what doesn't fulfill you, of what takes, away your energy, what drains your energy on a daily basis.

And reason number three is. You hold a lot more power than you think you have so much to offer, and you got to show up knowing that you got to show up embracing that fact and show up the way you truly are. Now, this is going to be the first one of a couple of episodes that I'm going to dedicate to interviewing.

I want to give you a lot more tangible advice on how to prepare, what to say, how to say it. But today was really important for me to show you that. This is something to be excited about. I want you to go into that next interview, almost like, you know, in anticipation, like you can't wait to go in. You can't wait to show up as your true self and just flip the script a little bit.

Change the narrative of what job interviews are. They're a great skill to have and it's a skill that's going to keep on giving. Believe me when I tell you that. Now, thank you for tuning in today and I'll see you next time.