Many scientific professionals lust to master the art of interviewing. Many books have been written about interviewing skills and many more consultants want to coach you on interviewing well. Allow me to present the truth in what interviews are not.

Interviews are not:
1. A stage on which you play phony parts
2. Out to get you
3. The fluff parade

Phony Parts
Is working too hard your greatest weakness? Is unbridled optimism your greatest strength? Right… you and every other interviewee may be tempted to pull a sugar-coated response because you believed this would be the “right” answers to basic interview questions.

These are the wrong answers because they are generally phony answers. However, any of these may truly apply to you, and you shouldn’t be penalized with not being able to answer the truth because others have ruined the answers for you. Just be able to supply at least 3 concrete examples from your past experience that prove what you stated was true.

For example, if I wanted to cite “working too hard” as a weakness (partially true) my examples would be averaging 12 hour-days and 6.5 workday-weeks, getting asked “do you work 24 hours a day?” on a semi-regular basis, and my husband having to ask daily what my evening plans were in case I would be working.

While I worked extremely hard as an employee, I work even harder as a business owner, because I enjoy what I am doing. I would also cite how “working too hard” would be a true weakness: I get burned out very easily and quickly, I’d need many days to recover from a burn-out, I may drop one of the too-many balls I was juggling, and I may risk becoming disillusioned with living to work rather than working to live.

Out to Get You
Contrary to what some of us may believe, interviewers are not out to get us and interviews aren’t always rigged to smoke out our mistakes (just the lies). When you get nervous, you make the interviewers nervous, because nervousness is highly contagious. Most of the time, interviewers are genuinely interested in how you think and what you have to say, unless:

1. The interviewer was forced to interview someone to replace her position

2. The interviewer thought you looked too much like the ex-girlfriend who dumped him for his best friend (or anyone else he disliked)

3. The job really wasn’t open but the interviewer was made to go through the motions so HR could check off the box that said “we tried!”

Unfortunately, some consultants have ruined the validity of the interviewing process by creating psychobabble questions like “Which would you prefer? Oatmeal walnut energy bar or toffee almond energy bar?” You answer would be analyzed against a key that compartmentalizes you into a shoe box unrelated to your ability to perform a job that did not involve distinguishing between energy bar flavors.

If you ever come across psychobabble questions, do not evade the question, but don’t give in too readily either. Ask the interviewer to explain for you the rationale for such a question; better yet - ask the interviewer (artfully!) for his answer before you give your answer.

Fluff Parade
Fluff parade is a trap especially tempting for management positions, for example:

“I am a coach, not a micromanager!”

“I just love working with all types of people!”

“I believe in elevating employees’ morale!”

The fluff parade is so called because there are executives in every company who spout these phrases. However, when their employees ask them, “How exactly would the company elevate our morale when you keep laying off people only to hire inexperienced contractors whom we would then have to train on top of doing our jobs?” the executives can offer no specific answers. Another example would be supervisors who spend money printing polo shirts with the company-logo and forcing everyone to wear the shirts (to foster “team spirit”) while cutting back employee bonuses.

Most PhD scientists who interview for non-research jobs give very typical, fluffy answers like:

“I love working with people.” or “I’m really good with people!”

“I love to communicate science / do science a different way.”

These answers may be true, but they are superficial and used so often that you end up looking like every other scientist who wants to transition out of the bench.

Cut through fluff with specifics. Give answers with tangible actions that someone can physically do and that may be reinforced with incentives.

Of course, cutting through fluff is hard if the interviewer likes fluffy answers. If this is the case, expect lots of busy work without much concrete results. You may also want to buy a Dilbert book for what your career future may look like at the organization.