How Do I Make a Good First Impression in a Job Interview?

ELAINY MATA: Where do you see the boundary of being authentic for a job interview?

SHO DEWAN: I don’t believe in being authentic in an interview.

ELAINY MATA: What?

SHO DEWAN: As bold of a statement that is. I don’t believe you should be authentic because you know why?

ELAINY MATA: Why?

SHO DEWAN: The employer is not authentic.

ELAINY MATA: Welcome to New Here. Honest conversations and practical advice to help you play the game called work. I’m Elainy Mata. This week we’re talking about job interviewing, especially the first impression you make, which can last a long time. It might be your first job at a school. You might be getting your second or third job after experiencing a layoff, switching careers, or feeling unmotivated and wanting to start over fresh. Whatever it is, your first impression is hugely important and it takes you a long way to getting an offer or not. A big part of making that good first impression on a hiring manager or a future colleague is finding a connection with them right away. It’s a little bit of a tight rope walk and you can’t always be totally authentic. You heard Sho Dewan’s hot take on that at the top of the show. Sho is a former recruiter and we’ll have more of his advice later on. But first, all this talk about first impressions got me thinking about the nerves I always get when heading to a very particular kind of job interview, an acting audition. So I’m an actor and I’ve done hundreds of auditions. Basically, you get a few minutes to show the casting director that you’re the best person for that role. So I feel like actors are really good at making good first impressions because we have so much practice doing it in just a few seconds every time we audition. But it’s not just about practice. There’s a mindset and a method that actors have when we’re auditioning. To learn more about that, I called my friend Jack.

JACK ASCHENBACH: Hello.

ELAINY MATA: Hey.

JACK ASCHENBACH: Are you star six seven-ing me right now?

ELAINY MATA: Nah, we’re calling from the studio, not my phone.

JACK ASCHENBACH: All right. So it’s like that.

ELAINY MATA: Jack is an actor and the co-founder of a theater company here in Boston. He’s also one of my favorite scene partners. We talked about this briefly the other day. What’s interesting about actors and us auditioning for shows is that we don’t have that much time to make a good impression when we go in there. We just have to have our monologue ready, that’s within a minute or minute and a half. Or you have your 36 bar song, get ready to scream your lungs out. But it’s like this question of how do you make a good first impression when you have such little time? Have you thought about what helps you when you go into an audition?

JACK ASCHENBACH: So I like to just walk in and be like, “Hi, how’s everyone? How’s everyone’s day going?” And I’m shaking their hands. “I’m Jack.” I mainly just want to give off that… At this moment, I’m not trying to audition for you. I’m trying to work with you right now. I’m trying to understand what you want from the play and how I can help you tell your story. Not just perform this big thing and let you know that I can act. I’m trying to let them know that I can collaborate when we get there. I’m a good collaborator and I’m also not a terrible human being. And also I feel like the auditioners, the people on the panel, are not in a good mood the majority of the time because they just saw-

ELAINY MATA: 50 people before.

JACK ASCHENBACH: They just saw 50 people. I was in this audition room, I walked in and they needed beard flannel, and I was like, “Cool, great. Got it.” And I walk in and there was 30 other dudes who look just like me. And that’s when you realize, you’re like, “Oh, I am just one and I’m not special.”

ELAINY MATA: Yeah. So how did you show that you were different from the 20 other dudes in flannel?

JACK ASCHENBACH: Oh, I didn’t. I totally failed that audition. I got totally nervous because I was focusing too much on separating myself from all the other people rather than just being who I am and giving what I can give. And it’s easier said than done, right now I fully believe that. But right before you go into an audition, all that kind of goes out the window.

ELAINY MATA: The nerves do come in. How do you shake off the nerves before going into an audition so that it doesn’t affect your performance and affect the way that you show yourself?

JACK ASCHENBACH: What helps is knowing your piece really well and caring about what you have to say. And also just pretending that I am not auditioning in that moment, pretending that I am now working with the people who are on the panel. That really helps. And also practicing getting rejected. Luckily, I’ve had a lot of practice with that and letting yourself be really upset for a day. Hang out, watch a movie, play some video games, do what you got to do, and the next day hopefully you have another audition.

ELAINY MATA: So I think what’s cool about your approach with auditioning is you have this confidence about you already. You’re not worried about failing. You’re not worried about this person not liking you. You’re just going in as yourself and not really worried about the worst case scenario.

JACK ASCHENBACH: Oh, well, I mean, at night I worry about that. I sometimes think, I’m like, “Oh, maybe I should just stop doing this because it’s impossibly hard.” So I really try not to compare myself to anyone. I think that’s what hits my insecurity, is comparing people. And that’s what I need to focus on a lot, is don’t compare yourself to anyone else.

ELAINY MATA: And that’s hard when you’re in a room with other people that are going through the same thing that you are. That’s so hard.

JACK ASCHENBACH: Yeah, you’re trying to listen in to see what they’re doing, and then you hear a laugh, and then you’re like, “Ah.”

ELAINY MATA: Ah, man.

JACK ASCHENBACH: They laugh, they all laughed, now I’m next.

ELAINY MATA: Oh man.

JACK ASCHENBACH: It’s like, “No.” And that’s the thing, you’ve got to focus on your own stuff. And sometimes I feel really confident and that comes across, but sometimes you got to fake it until you make it.

ELAINY MATA: Yeah. I actually auditioned for the first time in three years the other day.

JACK ASCHENBACH: What’d you do?

ELAINY MATA: Clue, like the board came, think of the board.

JACK ASCHENBACH: That’s fun. Dude, that sounds so fun.

ELAINY MATA: It was mad fun, but I misinterpreted the character.

JACK ASCHENBACH: What do you mean?

ELAINY MATA: They told me ahead of time, like, “Oh, we want you to read for Ms. Scarlet.” And I was like, “Cool.” So I did research. I did my research on what the role is and what the show was about and everything. And I went in with that knowledge and being like, “Okay, I practiced.” I practiced the thing, I practiced my body language, how I was going to introduce myself and everything. But because I think my mind was so stuck on how I practiced that when they gave me a different type of direction, I froze and I didn’t take it well. So I ended up not getting it. That was sad, yeah. But I’m glad that I did it though I hadn’t auditioned in so long and I was like, “Ah, this is how it feels.” Jack, thank you so much for letting us talk to you about auditioning.

JACK ASCHENBACH: I feel the way I do after an audition right now, I feel nervous because that was fun, but I was like, “Oh, wow.”

ELAINY MATA: Didn’t come out well.

JACK ASCHENBACH: I hope I did a good job.

ELAINY MATA: Okay, bye. I’ll talk to you soon.

JACK ASCHENBACH: I’ll text you. I’ll text you.

ELAINY MATA: Thank you. Bye. That’s Actor Jack Aschenbach. He is the co-founder of Dead Word Theater Company in Boston. He made a bunch of points that I think apply to any job interview. Number one, make time to rehearse beforehand. It really will help boost your confidence, but also make sure to stay flexible so you can be prepared for any unexpected questions. I learned that one the hard way in my last audition. Number two, if you’re feeling nervous beforehand, pretend you’ve already got the job and you’re just here to discuss the role with your new colleagues. And number three in the interview, definitely highlight the skills and attributes you’ll bring to the team. But there’s something more subtle that you can also show the recruiter through your interactions with them. That you’re good at working with people, collaborating and listening. That’s a bonus whether you’re on stage or on a laptop. After the break, we’ll get a recruiter’s perspective on all of this. Sho Dewan, who now has his own career coaching firm, will share his secrets for making that first impression and connection with your interviewer. Whether you’re online or in person. Be right back. When you’re in an interview facing your recruiter or potential future boss, and you wish you could just know what they’re thinking, what they’re looking for, and what you could say to land an offer. That’s exactly why I wanted to talk to SHO DEWAN. He’s a former recruiter who founded his own career consulting firm. It’s called Workhap, as in Work Happy. He’s here to help us understand how recruiters approach a job interview. He’ll cover how to set yourself apart, starting with your first impression. And he has some good tips on how to handle yourself in a remote interview and in person. But first, I wanted to understand how Sho thinks about authenticity in a job interview. It’s definitely something that I toy with back and forth with how authentic can you be to somebody who you’re meeting for the first time, especially in an interview. I mean, obviously we can’t swear and we can’t talk about what we do on the weekends, but we still want to show our best self. So where do you see the boundary of being authentic for a job interview?

SHO DEWAN: I don’t believe in being authentic in an interview.

ELAINY MATA: What?

SHO DEWAN: As generic and bold of a statement that is, I don’t believe you should be authentic because you know why?

ELAINY MATA: Why?

SHO DEWAN: The employer is not authentic. So I’m not telling you to be fake. I’m not telling you to be fake, but like you said, you want to showcase your best self. I don’t think your best self is authentic. The way that I’m talking with my buddies, the way that if I’m getting a happy hour or I’m getting a coffee with someone, I’m myself and I’ll talk what I want to talk. And that’s authentic, that’s the real me. But when I go into an interview, I am professional me, I am more cheerful me, I’m more confident me. I kind of step into that new persona, interview show, new job show. That’s just the nature of interviews.

ELAINY MATA: There’s a show with his friends and there’s a show in a professional setting. It’s like a shift in persona that’s also called acting if you…

SHO DEWAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a truth.

ELAINY MATA: But I don’t know if you’ve noticed by my energy so far, but I’m an actor local here in the area.

SHO DEWAN: Love it.

ELAINY MATA: And we were talking about how actors have a pretty intense interview process and our form of an interview is auditions. If you’re lucky, you have at least two, three minutes tops to sing your song, 36 bars and your monologue. You only have a limited amount of time and you’ve said something before that the first two, three minutes is where you give that good first impression. And I’m thinking, “Shoot, in an audition process, you really only have the first five, 10 seconds.” And the first two to three minutes in an interview, those few minutes are crucial, you say, to make that good first impression and to establish rapport. So can you talk me through how you do that?

SHO DEWAN: Yeah. The truth is, it actually starts when they meet you in the lobby and they’re like, “Hey, nice to meet you. Yeah, walk with me here to get to my room and do you need a coffee? Are you good? How was your drive in?” The interview’s already started. So that’s for an in-person interview, even for a Zoom interview, you turn the camera on, they’re like, “Oh, hey, does everything work? Does your mic work? Are you okay? Do you need to take some notes?” That little prelude before the actual first question starts, that’s actually the first impression. So a lot of people make that mistake of just when they ask, “Yeah, how are you?” And they’re like, “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m okay.” And they walk alongside them in the lobby and say, “Oh, can I sit here? Okay.” And it’s just very short. And then they think when they ask you, “Tell me about yourself?” Then they can turn it on and all of a sudden they can impress them. But how you show up, even when they ask you, “Hey, how are you?” You want to showcase your personality. You want to be a little bit different than the rest people. So just going back to your example, Elainey, of you in your audition, and they’re asking like, Hey, how are you? Yeah, what are you going to be singing today? You could start off and say, “Oh, I’ll be singing this song that I know from somewhere.” Or you could be like, “Hey everybody. Yeah, it’s so nice to see everybody here, man, it’s a beautiful day. I had a nice drive in. I’m actually going to be singing one of my favorite songs of all time. I hope you love it too.” And then you do your thing. Again, I’m not an acting career coach. Maybe that analogy is a little bit different, but I think it still applies. The first couple of seconds of how you introduce yourself, it sets you up for the rest of the interview. If you can start off on a high note and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m doing great. I actually went to the gym at 6:00 AM. I’m actually training for a marathon?” And the hiring manager’s like, “Oh, what? Oh, I just did a marathon last weekend.” And then you say, “Oh, how’d you do? Were you impressed?” You’re having that banter for 2, 3, 5, 10 minutes. You’re not even talking about the work, you’re winning.

ELAINY MATA: So it’s like, don’t think of it as an interview. Think of it as a conversation. You’re just meeting somebody new. You just so happened to talk about your resume at the same time. It’s just a conversation.

SHO DEWAN: It’s just a conversation. You’re absolutely right.

ELAINY MATA: But that’s really hard to think about because you’re nervous, especially if you want the job or you need the job. Have you had a client who was nervous about establishing a rapport, finding that connection with the hiring manager to get the conversation going?

SHO DEWAN: Yeah, absolutely. This is usually new stuff for nine out of 10 people. We were never taught the way to get a job is to build rapport and make small talk and find some commonalities. We’re never taught that. So most people go to school because they think high grades and me knowing technical skills, me having a degree from a school, that’ll get me a job. I think that’s what we were most taught. So the building rapport things, it takes time. It’s trial and error. You’ll just get better with repetition. So the people who feel nervous about those things, which everyone does, the people who feel like, “Oh, I don’t know how to make small talk.” I know this is a boring answer, but you just have to keep going out there. Maybe you don’t start with the interviewer, make small talk. Next time you’re ordering a subway sandwich, try to build some rapport there. Ask them how their day is. Ask them what their favorite sandwich is. But it’s these little interactions when you do in your everyday life that will actually show up in your interviews where then you’re like, “Oh, I’m actually not as scared or nervous to ask these questions because I’ve done it before so many times.”

ELAINY MATA: What if your hiring manager isn’t biting? What if you’re trying to set this rapport up and they’re just not? It’s like, “Okay, well then what do I just kind of leave it to be dry and cut to the chase and that’s it.”

SHO DEWAN: Great question. Great question. And unfortunately the answer is kind of, yeah. You want to mimic their energy. If that’s who they are, it might also be a sign that this might not be a good fit for you.

ELAINY MATA: Fair.

SHO DEWAN: You want to work somewhere where you have good energy or you’re around people that maybe have a similar vibe, but if they’re really closed off, maybe you don’t want to work there. But if you really still want that job, you got to mimic that energy. Okay, so you tried and you can feel yourself. You could feel them kind of being a little bit more reserved. Hey, you want to mimic that.

ELAINY MATA: Do you have a story from early in your career about a time that you didn’t make a good first impression in an interview?

SHO DEWAN: There was an interview that lasted, I think three, four minutes. It was a role that I really, really wanted. I get on the call, she asked me, “Hey, how are you?” “Yeah, good.” Blah, blah, blah. I’m doing my thing. This is what I teach. “Tell me a little about yourself.” “Yeah, I’m currently in HR. I do this. I did this,” dah, dah, and I think maybe she asked one more question. “Yeah, so what do you think is the biggest win you’ve had in your career?” And, “Oh, I would probably say, I did these training programs and I did this.” She’s like, “Okay, all right, thank you.” And then she hung up, and of course I didn’t get the job. I knew when the interview ended, I was like, “I didn’t get the job.” There’s probably things I probably could have done better. I probably could have tailored my answers a little bit more for the role. Maybe I could have built a little bit more rapport. I don’t don’t know about that.

ELAINY MATA: Yeah. Then it’s not meant to be. It’s like, “All right, cool.”

SHO DEWAN: It’s not.

ELAINY MATA: Let me move on then.

SHO DEWAN: It’s very easy to you to think about, “Man, I could have said something differently. Oh, I could have done this.” And don’t get me wrong, I was doing that too. I was beating myself up. I was like, “Oh man, I could have done this. I did this.” But like you said, sometimes it’s just not meant to be. Sometimes you’re just not vibing with each other and hey, that’s okay. Something better is out there and you just got to stay a little patient.

ELAINY MATA: So I’m going to go back to something you mentioned about virtual interviews, like a Zoom interview. What’s the difference in terms of approach?

SHO DEWAN: The Zoom interviews is a little bit lower stakes. It’s in the comfort of your home usually. You get to decide how you look and where your background is and all those things. The biggest difference I would say between an in-person interview and a Zoom interview, is in a Zoom interview, you can technically, quote, unquote, “cheat”. By cheating, I mean you can have post-it notes actually in front of you about what you want to say. You can have your copy of your resume and actually be peeking at, “Oh yeah, this is a good experience that I can say.”

ELAINY MATA: You’ve done that?

SHO DEWAN: You can have the job description. Yeah. Yeah, that’s totally okay. There’s Zoom interviews I’ve had where I had the resume printed up. I would take a Sharpie and circle, “Hey, this is the story that I want to tell.” So it just reminds me, right? There’s also times when I would even just write onto my computer, smile more. So I’m like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I got to smile more. Look at the camera.” I think that’s where you kind of have an advantage of it being a Zoom interview or a phone interview. They can’t technically see your peripheral, right? So you have that advantage. You can see the things that they can’t. Again, it goes back to us memorizing the script. I don’t want you to have a complete laundry list of everything you want to say, but hey, maybe two, three bullet points right here on your screen. Have a resume pulled up. I think that’s perfectly fair game.

ELAINY MATA: Are you learning how things are changing through your clients when they come in and they tell you, “Hey, this is how my job interview was?” Because for me, I think… It’s been three years since I’ve interviewed for-

SHO DEWAN: Fair.

ELAINY MATA: … like corporate. The only difference that I’m seeing is AI. Some people are doing AI interviews, so that’s the biggest change that I’ve seen. What other changes or shifts have you been noticing in this space of interviewing?

SHO DEWAN: I would actually say similar to that. You know how people are now doing interviews where you record yourself. You’re not even meeting someone right now. You get on Zoom, for example, and they have a question pop up at you. Tell me about a time you handled a difficult situation and you hit record, and then you actually just record live on the spot and that gets sent to the recruiter and they see that. I’ve actually never had one of those recruiters personally, but it’s still the same thing, right? It’s a different medium. It’s a different way of doing it, but the fundamental is there is someone on the other side assessing, “Can you do the job? Do I think I like you, and are you different from the other hundreds of candidates that we have?” I don’t think recruitment as a core will ever change. That’s how people are going to get jobs.

ELAINY MATA: So I have one last question. What is getting you through right now?

SHO DEWAN: This is completely unrelated to career advice, interview advice.

ELAINY MATA: Yes.

SHO DEWAN: I love my therapist.

ELAINY MATA: Oh, me too.

SHO DEWAN: I see her every Wednesday morning. It’s one of my highlights of my week. I think everyone should have a mental health support or therapist or someone in their life, and it shouldn’t be someone that you are friends with. It should be someone external that you can just be your… This is where you want to be authentic. That is where you want to be really authentically you and just unleash and unravel everything. Not in interviews, but this.

ELAINY MATA: Yeah, therapy is that. I love my therapist too. Yo, for real. Thank you, Sho.

SHO DEWAN: Thanks for having me.

ELAINY MATA: Sho Dewan is the founder and CEO of Workhap. Learn more about his career coaching at workhap.com. I really love show’s advice to focus on making a connection with your interviewer right away, like in the first few minutes. It may feel like you’re just making small talk, but this is where showing a little extra energy and personality can make a good impression. I also want to share some advice I recently got from my colleague here at HBR. His name is Ben and he’s one of our recruiters. He told me about a method for answering questions in a job interview that is so simple and so clear. It’s called the STAR Method. It’s an acronym for situation, task, action, and result. You talk about the situation at hand, the task that you needed to do, the action that you took in order to solve that problem and the result of that situation. And finally, if you don’t get the job, that’s okay. Let yourself be upset for a day and then keep going. Rejection is a big part of job hunting, like acting. Next week is our final episode of the season, and we purposely saved it for last because it’s really cool. Six months ago, Jemma Sbeg took the big plunge. She left her full-time consulting job to focus on making her hit podcast, The Psychology of Your 20s. We’ll explore what she’s learned about whether the corporate environment or entrepreneurship is right for her. And all the real fears she had around things like money, loneliness and the uncertainty of her future. Check back next week for that conversation. Listeners, we want to hear from you. What work things are keeping you up at night? What would you like us to cover in future episodes? Please, please, please keep sending us your stories and questions about work. Our email is newhere@hbr.org. And if you liked what you heard, follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you’re there, leave us a review and tell us what you think of the show. Then send the episode to your group chat, Slack or wherever you talk work. Did you know that the Harvard Business Review has more podcasts to help you manage your business and your career? Find them at hbr.org/podcast or search HBR wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Hannah Bates, Anne Saini, Magdalene Johnson, and me, Elainy Mata. Our editor is Mary Dooe, and our engineer is Tina Tobey Mack. Supervising editors are Maureen Hoch and Paige Cohen. Ian Fox manages podcasts at HBR. And our theme song was composed by Graz de Oliviera. See you back here next week.