As I slowly progress through the stages of interviewing for jobs I am struck more and more about the similarities between job hunting and dating. I'm probably not the first to break ground on this but I still am finding it quite fascinating:
Date #1 / Interview #1: In both situations this is the, for lack of a better euphemism, getting your foot in the door stage. Nobody is really being themselves here; we're just feeling each other out. There's a lot of awkward banter; a lot of overreaching for middle ground; and a lot of agreeing with each other way too much.
Date #2 / Interview #2: Things are starting to get a bit more serious. We starting talking about real stuff now - our pasts, our visions of the future and how we plan to get there, strengths and weaknesses, how many piano tuners there are in Chicago. You evaluate the conversations in a deeper context and suffer a lot of highs and lows in an incredibly short period of time. This is where both hope and despair both start creeping in - "Do I like them more than they like me?", "Did I just say something they might misconstrue as offensive?", "Did they just catch me glancing at their cleavage?" and "How do I answer this compensation question?"
Date #3 / Interview #3: Now we are emotionally involved; this one is gonna end in either happiness or heartbreak. There's no more faking here as the discussions are much deeper, your answers scrutinized to much greater detail. You look in their eyes to see how everything you are saying is registering and feel it in the pit of your stomach. The problem is, they are playing along too so you can never really know. And they might be seeing somebody else tomorrow who is just as smart, just as personable, but he went to HBS and has a consulting background.
Ghost in the Walls
6 years ago
