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An interview is a sales pitch for a product. The product just happens to be you. Set aside whatever negative feelings you have about this previous job or the pe

An interview is a sales pitch for a product. The product just happens to be you. Set aside whatever negative feelings you have about this previous job or the people you worked with there. The interviewers care if you will do their job well and with consistency and professionalism. Your personal feelings are irrelevant as long as you can keep them to yourself, or maybe tell your dog. ANY negativity during a job interview is going to work against you. It is expected that you find a way to spin every situation and every project in some kind of positive light. Even when interviewers ask for weaknesses or about conflict, the “right” answer is to be able to talk about that negative thing in a way that lets your true brilliance shine through. Skilled candidates know how to inject just the right amount of humanity and relatability in an otherwise perfect employee. If you are having trouble separating your feelings from your ability to keep to your talking points, then a good therapist may be able to help you learn better emotional regulation skills. In the future, keep working to proactively manage your career. Keep yourself in roles where you are learning and thriving. When you feel burnout creeping in, deploy strategies to counter it or at least get yourself into a new situation.

soared 1y ago
Agreed 100%. People can effectively never decipher between genuine happiness (or positivity/etx) and faking it. I adopt a YouTuber/twitch streamer kind of mentality - the dumbest little things put a smile on my face and I am in general very happy. Recruiters and interviewers then like spending time with me, even though I’m 100% faking it.
Smithalicious 1y ago
I'm glad I'm encouraged to "inject just the right amount of humanity", but I think I'd prefer to inject just the right amount of lead into my cranium.
- iamthepieman 1y ago
  Or find a way that works for you, gets you jobs and keeps you from breaking your moral framework. I compare it to driving in traffic. A lot of times I'm not in a hurry and can just stay in one lane and crawl along. Other times, I am in a hurry and I can weave in and out, getting flustered and angry and nearly crashing and still end up 4 cars ahead of where I'd have been without all that.
  - oarsinsync 1y ago
    Exactly this. You can either work really hard and likely get minimal benefit and cause yourself a lot of pain, or you can work considerably less hard, and largely end up in the same place. Rarely, you can do all that extra work and get meaningful improvement that justified all the effort. It does happen. Sometimes it presents itself in the form of a severance package.
- greenie_beans 1y ago
  let us know how you fare with this interview strategy
whateveracct 1y ago
lying during interviews about things with no actual objective truth is a really key skill lying on the job too like this is an important political skill too. referencing past projects rhetorically and abusing the fact that your "professional opinion" is fluid is a powerful way to motivate people. You are allowed to over- or under-sell how good or bad an engineering decision/project/tool/process worked.
- hotdogscout 1y ago
  Why is this needed. Nobody acts like this in college, where do people pick up on the eldritch horrors of Corporate behaviour policing?
  - Phlebsy 1y ago
    This was very much taught in some of the business school electives I took. Some of the projects are quite literally to give a realistic pitch for products or businesses that you never intend to actually build. It might be only be taken as subtextual in the most charitable view, but being able to bullshit like that is definitely taught.
  - whateveracct 1y ago
    learning how to play to win on the job
  - jvanderbot 1y ago
    This is part of maturing into the real world. Politics (for lack of a better word) is part of any group of people who spend a lot of time together. We try and try to distill politics out of the workplace as engineers, which, ironically, is precisely why interviews are so positive-biased that they feel slightly fake for some. We don't like those dirty unquantifiable "feelings". Popping up all the time.
  - snapcaster 1y ago
    This isn't from business schools, this is just basic understanding of politics and how status and other things work amongst groups of humans. Ignoring this key aspect of humanity isn't virtuous
mancerayder 1y ago
>In the future, keep working to proactively manage your career. Keep yourself in roles where you are learning and thriving. When you feel burnout creeping in, deploy strategies to counter it or at least get yourself into a new situation. If you marketed a system or strategy to get people moving into that train of thought, create self-motivation, and actionable advice, you'd be a millionaire. When you're in the what's what of the stress-detach-burnout cycle, sometimes it's hard to think creatively, which I think is the injection sometimes needed in this situation.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
epolanski 1y ago
> An interview is a sales pitch for a product. While I see your point, I as a candidate am absolutely transparent and honest about anything work-related, be it in the present or past. To me the relationship employer-employee is very important, I spend more time working for a client/company during the week than I do with family and friends. Thus this time has to be spent in a mutually satisfying and healthy way. Pitching and selling myself as anything different than I am does nothing but put me in uncomfortable positions.
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  This is true, but the degree of freedom that remains is what part of yourself do you wish to show at work. I don't know anyone that shows their whole self in every situation, so some reservation/ choice is made implicitly. The discussion here is about an explicit choice, which must be maintained, at least for the most part.
  - actsasbuffoon 1y ago
    And even then, there are appropriate and inappropriate times to bring up certain pieces of information. For example, I’m not embarrassed about the fact that my mom died when I was young. But it would be deeply weird to open a job interview by saying, “Hi, I’m [name] and my mom died when I was young.” I’m not hiding that information from employers. But maybe we should know one another a little better before I bring it up.
rubicon33 1y ago
> When you feel burnout creeping in, deploy strategies to counter it Like?

soared 1y ago

Agreed 100%. People can effectively never decipher between genuine happiness (or positivity/etx) and faking it. I adopt a YouTuber/twitch streamer kind of mentality - the dumbest little things put a smile on my face and I am in general very happy. Recruiters and interviewers then like spending time with me, even though I’m 100% faking it.

Smithalicious 1y ago

I'm glad I'm encouraged to "inject just the right amount of humanity", but I think I'd prefer to inject just the right amount of lead into my cranium.

iamthepieman 1y ago
Or find a way that works for you, gets you jobs and keeps you from breaking your moral framework. I compare it to driving in traffic. A lot of times I'm not in a hurry and can just stay in one lane and crawl along. Other times, I am in a hurry and I can weave in and out, getting flustered and angry and nearly crashing and still end up 4 cars ahead of where I'd have been without all that.
- oarsinsync 1y ago
  Exactly this. You can either work really hard and likely get minimal benefit and cause yourself a lot of pain, or you can work considerably less hard, and largely end up in the same place. Rarely, you can do all that extra work and get meaningful improvement that justified all the effort. It does happen. Sometimes it presents itself in the form of a severance package.
greenie_beans 1y ago
let us know how you fare with this interview strategy

whateveracct 1y ago

lying during interviews about things with no actual objective truth is a really key skill lying on the job too like this is an important political skill too. referencing past projects rhetorically and abusing the fact that your "professional opinion" is fluid is a powerful way to motivate people. You are allowed to over- or under-sell how good or bad an engineering decision/project/tool/process worked.

hotdogscout 1y ago
Why is this needed. Nobody acts like this in college, where do people pick up on the eldritch horrors of Corporate behaviour policing?
- Phlebsy 1y ago
  This was very much taught in some of the business school electives I took. Some of the projects are quite literally to give a realistic pitch for products or businesses that you never intend to actually build. It might be only be taken as subtextual in the most charitable view, but being able to bullshit like that is definitely taught.
- whateveracct 1y ago
  learning how to play to win on the job
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  This is part of maturing into the real world. Politics (for lack of a better word) is part of any group of people who spend a lot of time together. We try and try to distill politics out of the workplace as engineers, which, ironically, is precisely why interviews are so positive-biased that they feel slightly fake for some. We don't like those dirty unquantifiable "feelings". Popping up all the time.
- snapcaster 1y ago
  This isn't from business schools, this is just basic understanding of politics and how status and other things work amongst groups of humans. Ignoring this key aspect of humanity isn't virtuous

mancerayder 1y ago

>In the future, keep working to proactively manage your career. Keep yourself in roles where you are learning and thriving. When you feel burnout creeping in, deploy strategies to counter it or at least get yourself into a new situation. If you marketed a system or strategy to get people moving into that train of thought, create self-motivation, and actionable advice, you'd be a millionaire. When you're in the what's what of the stress-detach-burnout cycle, sometimes it's hard to think creatively, which I think is the injection sometimes needed in this situation.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

epolanski 1y ago

> An interview is a sales pitch for a product. While I see your point, I as a candidate am absolutely transparent and honest about anything work-related, be it in the present or past. To me the relationship employer-employee is very important, I spend more time working for a client/company during the week than I do with family and friends. Thus this time has to be spent in a mutually satisfying and healthy way. Pitching and selling myself as anything different than I am does nothing but put me in uncomfortable positions.

jvanderbot 1y ago
This is true, but the degree of freedom that remains is what part of yourself do you wish to show at work. I don't know anyone that shows their whole self in every situation, so some reservation/ choice is made implicitly. The discussion here is about an explicit choice, which must be maintained, at least for the most part.
- actsasbuffoon 1y ago
  And even then, there are appropriate and inappropriate times to bring up certain pieces of information. For example, I’m not embarrassed about the fact that my mom died when I was young. But it would be deeply weird to open a job interview by saying, “Hi, I’m [name] and my mom died when I was young.” I’m not hiding that information from employers. But maybe we should know one another a little better before I bring it up.

rubicon33 1y ago

> When you feel burnout creeping in, deploy strategies to counter it Like?