I was most of the way through a great interview when it died an ugly death. After answering many questions well, the guy threw himself down in front of me in a Harakiri move like a Samurai from a Japanese karate film. He killed his chances in one 10-second period when, for some reason, he left his brain behind.

Later, as I thought about what had happened, I was reminded of how, in most interviews, both sides of the interviewing process really want it to work. As the interview progresses, I get more and more excited. It’s a bit like watching a judged sporting event—figure skating, say: It’s a good routine so far, and you feel excited and tense, just hoping the contestant can manage to stay upright until the end.

Until they don’t. This was one of those times.

I’ll tell you later how that interview played out. First, I’d like to provide some insight into how interviewers think about interviews.

An analytical/emotional balancing act
As an interviewer, I’m working with a checklist of items that need to be rated, and I am very conscious of the culture at my client’s organization. These two things are uppermost on my mind: the list of “must haves” and likely cultural and personal fit between the candidate and the company.

Sometimes interviewers, including me, let their gut feeling and emotion influence their decisions. You can’t help being swayed by factors that aren’t objective. This is what I call the “analytical/emotional balancing act” that interviewers go through as they ask questions and gauge responses.

It’s like buying a car: You want it to have all the necessary features, but it isn’t until you feel that thrill when you test-drive it that you seal the deal. Candidates need that emotional buy-in as well as the factual, analytical “fit.”

Answers that move you closer to your goal
Like many (probably most) interviewers, I go into each interview assuming that the person I’m sitting down with is a prospective fit. I don’t mean to suggest that in order to get hired all you have to do is avoid screwing up—usually I’ll be interviewing several candidates for the position. I consider every interviewee a real prospect until he or she proves unworthy. An interviewee’s goal, then, is—or ought to be—to subtly inspire that emotional buy-in even as they help the interviewer check off those boxes, one after the other.

The substance of your answers does matter, of course. Still, it’s not always whether or not you’ve done media development for CHO cells in a 2-liter bioreactor. It is often enthusiasm and positive energy that makes the difference. I’d call it likeability as well. People have to feel that they’d enjoy working with you.

As an aside, I’ve always felt that the best interviews are those where the candidate is being real and not spouting off some kind of scripted rah-rah response. Similarly, as you answer questions about yourself and your accomplishments, a sense of moderation is in order. Yes, you need to sell yourself in an interview—that’s critical. But, excessive self-promotion is unattractive. (And so is self-deprecation, by the way.)

The first step, then, is to provide answers that are objectively satisfactory. Here are a couple of examples of where an interview might go:

“Tell me about your experience managing the bioassay laboratory. What techniques are you accustomed to using?”
or,
“Please tell me about the pH requirements for e-coli in a bench-top fermenter,”

The best answers are those that allow us to check off boxes with confidence while sensing that you’re answering conservatively, careful not to oversell yourself. When you do this—provide answers that are analytically satisfactory without overselling—you’re taking the first step toward swaying us on the emotional side, too. You are convincing us and winning our confidence at the same time.

But there’s more you can do to appeal to our instincts, to make us feel good about you as a candidate. And that good feeling can make all the difference in whether we decide to make you an offer.

People love mini-stories about your exploits, as long as they don’t come off as self-indulgent digressions. It’s not a good idea to turn every 30-second response into a 2-3 minute story, and any story you tell must be directly relevant to the question you’re answering. But stories are a powerful way to get emotional buy-in.

Let’s say you’re answering that first question above about your lab and techniques. If you were asked, “What are two techniques you use in your daily work?” the only possible response is a brief reply. Because of the way that first question is posed—especially the “Tell me about your experience managing the bioassay laboratory” part—it’s clear that this is an opening for a story. So, start by describing that problem, move to what your approach was (the techniques she asked for), and then describe how what you did affected your project. It only takes a minute, perhaps two, to describe how those techniques helped you do your job. Those three elements engage the interviewer’s emotional side while allowing them to tick off boxes. Everyone wants to hire a problem solver.
Some questions are inherently less objective, even if the interviewer is still checking boxes. With questions like these, the emphasis shifts away from the analytical and toward the emotional side, giving you even more opportunity to tell stories. For example:

“Tell me about your work style and how you interact with your lab mates on a daily basis?”
or,
“Tell me about a time when you were working under pressure to get a project completed.”

It’s easier to prepare for technical-fit questions like the earlier questions because the answers are factual. All you really need to do is review the job description, compare it with your experience, and think about some questions that are likely to come up. It’s harder to prepare for softer questions like the two above because there are so many variations, and because they get at things you may not have thought about.

I recommend that, prior to the interview, you review the four categories of information that employers need to know about you:
1) How you approach your work
2) How you think through problems
3) How you arrive at decisions
4) How you deal with people

Examine your experience base for examples you can use—little stories—to elucidate each of these four points. Sometimes it helps to write it down. With two or three examples in each of these categories at your disposal, you’ll be more prepared than 90% of the competition.

Back to my samurai story
Back to the interview that opened this column: To set the stage, our client—the employer—was absolutely nutty with what they call “a sense of urgency.” In this company, it refers to the fact that everything you do, every promise you make and every project you take on, must be done now and with a spirit of utmost urgency. In this organization, that “sense of urgency” culture had risen to the level of religion. Knowing this, how would you grade my prospective director’s response?

Me: “John, it was great meeting you today. Now we need to advance this to an introduction to the company’s vice president of R&D. Luckily, she’s in town for the next few days, so let’s schedule an introductory meeting over lunch. How does your schedule look for Thursday, Friday, or early next week?”

John: “I’m going on a long weekend the day after tomorrow for my wife’s birthday, and then next week we have a number of meetings taking place with clients. Can I get back to you on this sometime next week, or perhaps the week after?”
What a letdown.