73. How to be interview ready

Job interviews can be daunting! In this episode I take you through seven practical strategies to go into your next interview with vocal confidence.

Hi, I'm Sally Prosser. Welcome to That Voice Podcast. Great to have you here! I believe your voice matters and deserves to be heard. I started this podcast to share free practical tips to help you speak with more confidence, to grow your business, advance your career and avoid totally freaking out about public speaking. As a former TV journalist and company spokesperson, qualified speech and drama teacher, TikToker and general lover of life, I know firsthand about the power of showing up with confidence. Your voice is the soundtrack to your personal brand. Are you ready to turn it up?

Good morning or afternoon or evening? Or whenever you're listening to this podcast, we are up to Episode 73 of That Voice Podcast. If you're here for the first time, big welcome to you! If you've been a long time listener, can you believe, I'm still finding topics that we haven't covered? And this episode is all about how to be job interview-ready. It's a question I've been asked a lot recently on social media and it's also something I work on with a lot of my one-to-one clients. Now, before you switch off and think, "Oh no, don't need to do a job interview. That's just not on my radar." Then please don't go because so many of the strategies I'm about to share today are applicable to other situations: meetings, media interviews, podcast interviews, and a whole host of other speaking scenarios. So, listen in! I'm sure it will be useful. So I'm going to take you through seven tips that you can use before going into a job interview.

Now, the first one is to replace the word "interview" with "meeting". And that's because when you're going into an interview, especially if you've done a lot of job interviews, you can be feeling quite down. You know, it's hard for anybody to cope with lots of rejection. And if you've been looking for a job and you're getting lots of knock-backs, it can really get to you. I understand, it's hard. And so what that means though, is we go into these job interviews with a bit of desperation, right? And we think, "Oh, we're just the little candidate and they're the big, bad hirer." and "Oh please, please, please hire me!" I call it "Baby Bird Syndrome". We go in there with our mouth open, "Please, please just I'll take whatever you've got!" And of course that's not a good way to go into a situation. It's kind of like dating.

They can smell the desperation, I've been told. Whereas if we think about it as a meeting, it's more equal. You know, they need you just as much as you need them. And you walking into that interview room or stepping on that Zoom interview is the best thing that's happened to them that day. They need you as much as you need them and you're not going to be interviewed. You're just going for a meeting!

Now, the second thing to do is write down your key messages. What are your key messages? Your key messages are essentially the reasons you want the job. If you had three sentences to say, why you want that job? What skills do you have? What attributes you have, why you want to work at that particular place? What would you say?

You don't go into an interview to answer questions. That makes the whole experience very reactive. Isn't it better if we make it proactive? If you're clear on what you want to get across, you'll be able to prepare with a lot more confidence. And also when you get stuck on questions, you can refer back to those key messages. When you finish, rather than thinking "Oh gosh, I answered all those questions!", you can think, "Well, did I get my key messages across?" And you've got to be happy with that. Now there is a lot of preparation that can go into interviews. When I work with clients, one-on-one we go through all the potential questions and what you would say and how you would answer it. And it's different for different industries. And you know, there is a lot of preparation you can do. But at the very least have your key messages. Just three sentences of why you want the job. And usually these are around skills, attributes, and why you want to work at that particular place.

And that brings me to step three, which is practice talking out aloud. Practice, talking out loud. I always find it interesting when people prepare for interviews just by writing and reading in their head. Of course, writing down the answers can be helpful for sure, but you need to be practicing in the medium that you're going to be doing the interview in. If it's a written answer interview, sure go nuts, write away! But usually interviews are spoken. So when you're practicing and preparing for the interview, it's really important to be saying those answers out loud. Get the feel of what the words sound like as they're coming out. Practicing in the shower. Practice while you're getting ready practice while you're cooking. Walk around the house and actually say the words out loud. You don't want the first time you are verbalizing these answers to be in the interview room.

So yes, it might sound obvious, but practice at talking out loud. And of course, if you can practice with somebody. A coach like myself, or just someone from the family that you've wrangled to help you out, then that's really good as well, because you can practice that interaction in the conversation. While you're practicing, talking out loud that's when we get to step four. Practice using a falling inflection on complete statements.

A what, what?

Yeah, this is a little bit technical. We talk about this in My Six Week Voice Makeover. My Six Week Voice Makeover. Oh my gosh. It's happening again? Midyear. Make sure you're on the waitlist. If you would like to be part of the course, the link is on the show notes and also on my website, sallyprosser.com.au. Okay. So falling inflection on complete statements. Inflection is the rise or the fall. If we go up, at the end of the complete statement, it sounds like we're asking the interviewers or the panelists to verify what we're saying for us. It doesn't sound like we're very confident with it. Our reflection rises for a few different reasons. But one of those is when we're asking a question that can be answered by yes or no.

If we rise in a complete statement, it's like, we're asking the people, listening to us to give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down. It's like the inflection of validation. "Am I okay? Is that right? I've got 20 years experience? I think I'd be really good for that job?" Now in interviews, it's easy to fall into this inflection because we are wanting to say the right thing and we are wanting to get feedback from the people interviewing us to see if we're going okay. Especially when they're just sitting there totally deadpan writing down and we're getting no feedback and wondering, you know, are we going well, are we going bad? It can be very, very hard. So if you are doing interviewing, I would always encourage you to give feedback to the candidate. If they give a good answer, say it's a good answer.

I really think that whole deadpan interviewing style is very hard for the candidate. So this is why it can be easy to fall into that inflection because we're wanting to know if we go okay, but as you can hear, it doesn't sound very certain. It doesn't instill much confidence in what we're saying. And if you're going for a job interview, you want to show confidence, competence, credibility. You've got this! You know, I'm doing like the finger click snap in front of my face here. So how do we do a falling inflection? Well, practice. Rising? Falling. I have 10 years experience? I have 10 years experience. I think I'd really like working here? I think I'd really like working here. So just practice those statements and you can use the key messages that you've already prepared. Think. That's right. Drop the mic. It's like, "It's the end of the book. Last line. Thank you very much." And that's the inflection you want to use at the end of your statements? Of course, if you're speaking and you're not finished, that's when you go up, because there's more to come, but then when you are finished giving your answer, you go down. And again, we do this in My Six Week Voice Makeover.

All right. So number one, replace "interview" with "meeting". Number two, prepare your key messages. Number three, practice your answers out loud. Number four, use the falling inflection on complete statements. Number five, take a pause before answering. You don't need to dive straight in. Oh, I've been in this situation. You feel the pressure to fill the silence straight away, but then you start answering and while you're rambling oh, you're thinking, "Oh no, I shouldn't have answered it that way." And this can happen in job interviews where we go, "Oh gosh, that's not what I meant to say." Take that pause. And then go into your answer. And if you're really worried about leaving that long a silence, then you can also use phrases like thinking phrases. Like, "That's a really great question. I'm really glad you asked that." "Oh, there's lots of things that come to mind with this question." "Wow. There's lots of ways I can take this." So you can think of different phrases you can use while you're thinking, and then go into your answer. But believe me, a breath and a pause... can really show confidence.

That brings me to number six: Don't interrupt. As a candidate, you can feel like you want to be saying as much as possible. You're feeling a real sense of quantity over quality. But often the interviewers will just convince themselves that you're right for the job. So just let them talk. Let them talk and don't interrupt. Less is more.

And the last tip that I'd give, is to smile. And smiling will relax you, it will relax them and it will really portray a sense that you're not totally freaking out and desperate to get this job, but that you're feeling comfortable and that you're warm and approachable and feeling good. And it can also be heard in the voice. So a smile on the face puts a smile in the voice, and it will really increase your good vibes!

All right. So the tips that I have for you today:

One: replace the word interview with meeting. Number two, write down your key messages in advance. Number three, practice saying your answers out loud. Number four, use a falling inflection when you're finished your answer. Number five, take the pause before you answer. Number six, don't interrupt. And Number seven, don't forget to smile!

And if you would like more, where that came from, then please join My Six Week Voice Makeover. So make sure you leave your name on the waitlist. The link is in the show notes. It's also on my website. And of course, if you're a part of my membership, community members only you get the best discount to the course. So if you're thinking of learning more about your voice and feeling more confident, public speaking, then join the membership and do the course. That is the most economical way to do it. And of course, you get all the benefits of the membership and the course. All right. I will see you back here next week.

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