Development job interviews: 3 tips for breaking through

There’s a lot of work that goes into being offered a job interview in the development sector, especially in a highly competitive market. But even when you feel like you're giving all the right answers, job offers often remain elusive. In many cases, this is because many job seekers make a fundamental mistake, treating interviews like tests and cramming for every possible question, according to executive coach Dan Freehling. Effective interviewing preparation is “much more akin to sports performance [and] theater performance than it is to the traditional cramming and studying for a test, and trying to please the teacher,” Freehling said during a recent Devex digital event on how to prepare for your next development job interview. Freehling was joined by social sector talent agent Spencer Campbell in offering Devex Career Account members alternative approaches that go well beyond traditional interview preparation advice. Great interviews are more like an audition, Campbell said, and the focus should be on “what … we do in order to show up for the interview in a way that sets us up for success — beyond getting our content perfectly locked in.” Here are a few key aspects of Freehling and Campbell’s approach, which draws from their work with hundreds of job seekers and applicable lessons from the worlds of decision science and the performing arts. Stop preparing like it’s a test Many job candidates will spend hours rehearsing answers for as many potential interview questions as they can think of. This approach embodies what Freehling and Campbell called a “test mindset,” which isn’t very effective for scenarios such as job interviews. “There’s only so much that you can really control. In fact, there’s tons of stuff that you don’t have any sort of control over,” Campbell said, referring to factors such as a potential preferred candidate, unfair bias related to your age and gender, and the overall caliber of the candidate pool you’re up against. Within the interview itself, “you don’t know the specific questions that they’re going to ask, but you certainly can control what you do to prepare for the interview,” Campbell added. “You can know who’s going to be talking to you. You can know what [the] organization cares about, [and] what the problem [is] that this role solves.” Research time spent to firmly understand these elements will likely be time better spent than what it takes to memorize lines for a large array of questions that might never get asked. Move beyond the STAR method While emphasizing preparation that focuses on mindset, Freehling said traditional interview preparation and storytelling frameworks, such as the STAR method, still have their place, especially for early-career professionals who are still learning how to communicate their narrative. But “for established, experienced professionals, the STAR [method] isn’t sufficient. It’s boring [and] very generic,” Freehling said. The goal is to get to the point where you don’t need such a structured approach in order to “understand the value you’re bringing to the table,” and being able, “to get that across concisely to people,” he added. This requires a deep and genuine acceptance of your unique abilities, so that your story is something you embody and can speak to with confidence and ease. It can be helpful to think more about “who you are” and in terms of identities rather than specific skills, Campbell said. Ask yourself: “What is the identity that you have that connects you to this role that you’re under consideration for, that, because of that identity, because of who you are, tells us that ‘Man, it’d be crazy not to hire you for this,’“ Campbell said. “That’s the core of a really great story for telling in our interview.” Choose presence over perfection Another reason to ditch the script is the fact that “[the] details of precisely what you say … [are] likely going to do less for you than you might think,” Campbell said. In fact, “what you say doesn’t really matter.” To help illustrate this point, Campbell shared the fact that interviewers often decide how they feel about a potential candidate within the first 10 to 30 seconds of a job interview. “There’s something else which is going on in these conversations which is so far beyond content,” he added. With this in mind, a strategy that Freehling and Campbell say has been successful for many of their clients is to replace the “test” mindset with an “audition” mindset. “All you can do in this moment is give them a little taste of what you succeeding in this role could look like,” Campbell explained. They recommended exercises that can help lessen performance anxiety and build confidence, including “visualizations, which really come out of high-pressure performance situations [and] are what we find can be the most valuable thing to do right before an interview,” Freehling said. One such exercise, which they call “the samurai,” is rooted in the Japanese Bushido code and the idea of “dying before you go into battle,” Freehling said, before walking our audience through how to apply this concept to preparing for an interview. Freehling suggested using a generative AI platform such as ChatGPT to upload the job posting you are being interviewed for and output a rejection letter. Then, take some time to reflect on how this makes you feel. Doing this before an interview can help you “show up a little more removed” and less driven by your fears of rejection. “Often, we bring … that anxiety, those pent-up feelings, all of this pressure that we put on this moment. We’re prone to bring that into the conversation, and it shows up in a way that sits on our answers,” Campbell said. “[By finding] a way to get a handle on [anxiety] ahead of time and processing it and understanding it. It can deflate it.” Ready to stand out from the crowd and get noticed by the recruiters who matter most? Update your Devex profile and start connecting with top global development recruiters now.