“Help Them Gab” (Wiser Next Week: On Liking)

About the Wiser Next Week Series: These entries will involve posting my book, Wiser Next Week, chapter by chapter, freely available to the public. Additionally, I’ll be recounting a story about something I’ve learned based on the chapter’s topic since the months that have past when the book was published in December 2018.

Being Interviewed? Interview Them Instead

God I hate doing interviews, especially during my last semester in college and I was desperate to find something to validate my self worth, and partly because of the feeling of sunk cost fallacy where I’ve already put so much time into my degree, I need to see it through.

I’m not an exceptional orator, so when eyes are on me and I’m expected to speak for any substantial duration of time, I struggle. Naturally, I found a partial work around, I would do my research about the company and the person interviewing me beforehand and write down a list of questions.

I killed 2 birds with one stone, I impressed the interviewer with my preparation and I took some of the pressure off of me to speak for an extended period of time.

A brilliant double whammy.

It Ain’t You It’s Them

It worked because if a human truth:

People are fixated on themselves and their own interests. They don’t care what you say or think, this will never be admitted, but it’s true. All people want is an active listener that will allow them to expand and indulge their ego.

People care about themselves more based on the fact that we have our survival mechanism of taking care of ourselves first before looking around to help others.

Part of getting people to like you is to be empathetic and understand what they want to say before you speak

How To Flip The Table On Them

An example, when I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand last year I applied for an ungodly number of jobs. Surprisingly some of them actually got back to me. One such position was in the capital Bangkok.

The fellow wanted me to show up in person before considering me. Okay. I made the journey down to the big city to interview.

Once I got there to try to obtain the English teaching position, he started off the interview by telling me more about the responsibilities of the role. I didn’t want to talk, so I egged him on. I asked questions and took notes.

Now this man has been at his work in this school for 20 years, so he must have some passion for what he did at the very least.

So really for the duration of the interview I probably contributed 10% of the dialogue (much to my pleasure.)

And by and by he offered me the position on the spot and began going over the details of obtaining a visa to stay in Thailand for an extended period of time (that was a headache and topic for a different conversation.)

The school that I interviewed was desperate to acquire a new teacher, so they were willing to drop standards and bring a bumbling kid like me in. But I’d like to think that part of the reason they hired me was because I showed interest in the things the interviewer was interested in, even when I had to feign intrigue at times.

And I accepted that job offer

It was Attamit School in Bangkok.

The school I ended up working a year in, and grew so much along the process.