Leading up to and on the day of your interview, there’s one person and one person only who you should be worried about.

And that person is YOU.

The 2 keys to success in all endeavors (including interviews) are:

1. Preparation
2. Confidence.

And the starting point for both those qualities is the same:

Developing an in-depth understanding of who you are and what you want.

Pretty straight-forward, right?

That’s the thing that most people get tripped up on in interviews and high-pressure situations. They over-analyze, over-think, and focus on way too many things, when they should be focusing on the most important thing: who they are, and what they want.

Think of it this way: if your friend asked you for a dinner recommendation, you wouldn’t vouch for a restaurant you’d never been to before, would you? No – you’d give her the name of a spot you know and love. Where the menu is expansive, the ambiance is comforting, and the prices are decent. A place you’d feel confident would meet and exceed her expectations.

In order to be truly confident and prepared for your interview, you must do the same thing for yourself. You must understand who you are, what you want, and what makes you unique.

Because when you understand these things – you realize how freaking awesome you are, and that any workplace would be beyond LUCKY to have you on their team.

And I’m going to let you in on a little secret…. those people who are interviewing you?

They WANT you to succeed.

They WANT you to be the candidate they’re looking for – the person who’s going to be the perfect fit for the role they’re looking to fill, and who will make all their lives a lot easier by being a kickass team player.

You just have to do that little bit of extra work and convince them that you’re their knight-in-shining armor.

Now, for those of you who aren’t super comfortable talking about yourself in great detail (which, let’s be honest, is most people), interviews can be incredibly challenging. But the solution here is simple, and we’re going to do the work together right now.

Step 1:

There’s a 99% chance that your interview will start with this question:

“Tell me about yourself”

Here’s a template for the right way to answer it – in more or less the order listed below, answer these-mini questions.

This exercise will prepare you for this ultra-popular question, and also help you re-acquaint yourself with… yourself, along the journey of getting to know who you are and what you want.

-What’s your name?
-Where are you from?
-Where did you go to school?
-What do you currently do for work now? Or, what have you been up to, professionally, for the last 6 months?
-What’s a 30 second overview of your work history? What a common theme of your work history?
-How did you find out about this job/company, and why are you interested in it?

All in all, this answer should take about 1 to 1.5 minutes. That’s it. Think of it as your personal “interview elevator pitch.”

Step 2:

Another popular question that will likely come up during the course of your interview is:

“Why should we hire you?”

The secret to answering this question is again, authenticity.

What makes you truly unique?

Because you ARE unique. No one in the world is quite like you. Dr. Seuss expressed it best in his quintessential Dr. Seuss way:

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.”

And your differences are what makes you special.

I can say this first-hand from working in the performance industry, where standing out is a GOOD thing. Your must embrace the things that make you unique, whether it’s your hairstyle, your singing voice, your fashion sense, your “quirks” or ANYTHING else. These are the things that make you special. That make you memorable.

And I realize this can be hard to do. Especially when we go through the formative stages of our lives, like middle school, high school, college… maybe even entering a new place of work. In those stages, all we want to do is fit in. All we want to do it be like everyone else.

But being just like everyone else will never get you recognized for YOUR awesomeness.

Don’t waste your time trying to be just like someone else. Because that person already exists. Create your own legacy!

So take a moment and think – What are YOU good at? Better than everyone else at, actually! What do you like about yourself? What makes you unique?

Having these answers in your back pocket will arm you with brilliant answers to personal interview questions like this one, and will probably even jog some thinking in your own mind of how you can use these unique traits to your advantage, in and out of the workplace.

You may surprise yourself!

Step 3:

The third question might not be one that your interviewer will ask you, but it’s one that you should know the answer to:

What do you believe in? 

What does this question have to do with interviewing success?

It comes down to the effect that answering this question has on positive self-affirmation. 

Amy Cuddy, esteemed social psychologist and TED talk speaker, confirms the power of self-affirmation in her book Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges:

“Scores of several experiments have looked at self-affirmation inside and outside the lab, showing that it helps with raising grades and reducing bullying in schools, with quitting smoking and increasing healthful eating, with decreasing stress and improving the effectiveness of couples therapy outcomes, with sharpening negotiation skill and performance, among many other things. In fact, self-affirmation seems to work best when the pressure it on and the stakes are high.”

(Like, for instance, prior to a job interview!)

Cuddy continues:

“…before heading into a situation where we may be challenged, we can reduce our anxiety by reaffirming the parts of our authentic best selves we value most.”

These findings are grounded in studies completed by Cuddy and her team, where the participants “affirmed their personal core values — not values or abilities that were relevant to the task at hand.”

So, for example, if the study participant was preparing to give a speech, they didn’t need to affirm “I am good at speech-making.”

Rather, they just needed re-affirm something true about their authentic selves, such as. ‘I value being creative and making art.’

Take some time now to list out 5-10 things that you believe in, and are important to you. The focus here is quality, not quantity, so if you can only think of 3, that’s perfectly fine!

Here are some prompt questions to help get you started:

• What are your key values? What qualities do you aspire to have?
• What topics or ideals do you go to battle for?
• If you could spend all day doing or learning about one thing, what would it be?

Once you jot down some ideas, form them into a sentence that clearly articulates something you value. You can definitely have more than one sentence for different values, but aim to create one solid one that you can continuously go back to.

In Conclusion…

When you walk into an interview, you’re the star of the show. Exuding confidence, and doing your homework so you’re 100% prepared for any question is the key to success.

Want to set yourself up for interview success? Download our FREE 5-page Interview Readiness Worksheet – it’s our gift to you!