Improve your job interview skills - take an improv class
Do you dread job interviews? Do you feel that no matter how much you hype yourself up to do your best, or scramble to calm your nerves, when you walk through the prospective employer’s door and sit down in front of the interviewers, your mind races with insecurities, you stumble through your words and you go blank when you’re asked a question you did not anticipate?
Do you feel that if you interviewed just a bit better, you could improve your chances of landing a job, especially if this is the first time in years that you’ve been in the job-searching jungle?
If so, you might want to consider taking some improv theatre classes. Unlike other forms of theatre, every performance in improv is created in the moment by the performers—from the plot to the characters to the dialogue. The skills needed for improv just happen to also be many of the same ones needed for a successful job interview. Top on the list of these is self-confidence. “One of the things that happens when you’ve been told by an employer you’re no longer necessary is that it affects your self-esteem and you can be afraid to step out and take a risk,” says Amy McKenzie, an improv performer, teacher and co-owner of the Oakville Improv Theatre Company.
“I think it’s important to take that risk and say this is the time, this is the moment because it is never going to come again. That fear of stepping out is something we have to remove. It shows up in different ways: it can be self-criticism or worrying about how other people are going to perceive you or fear of making mistakes or saying the wrong thing.”
For beginners, improv classes start with a series of warm ups and games that gently and gradually loosen up stiff insecurities or tightly held self-criticisms and judgments while building up the muscles for listening and attentiveness, spontaneity and flexibility in reacting to what you are hearing and seeing in each moment. Improv teaches you to clear your mind and just go with the flow, because there is nothing else to go with.
“What we’re really doing in improv theatre is trying to be as spontaneous as two people are in a normal conversation but in a more formal setting in front of people. It’s not natural to be natural in such a setting, so we’re training people to be that natural, to be right in the moment, to listen and respond, just as naturally as when we’re having a conversation in a comfortable setting,” says McKenzie. “When you’re pretending to be someone else in improv, and you’re totally in the character, you are able to respond naturally to whatever is thrown at you.”
Improv is especially helpful if you struggle with public speaking or have difficulty with English as a second language as it gives you an opportunity to let go of your reservations.
Again, it’s about breaking free of internal barriers and hesitation and worries of being judged or judging yourself, the kinds of fears that make us anxious or nervous in stressful situations such as a job interview.
In an improv class, you will learn such basics as using deep breathing to relax and stretching to shake off tension.
“We tend to breathe shallowly when we’re nervous. It helps to remember there is not that much difference between excitement and terror. It’s the same stuff that happens, the same chemicals are rushing through your body,” says McKenzie. “You just have to convince yourself, you’re more excited than terrified.”
That shift from terror and self-consciousness to excitement and being totally and comfortably engaged in the moment is one that builds up gradually through each improv game and practice, until it starts to happen naturally, which can come in very handy for a job interview.
“Saying all the things people think they’re supposed to say in interviews isn’t the way to go. Instead, you want to listen and make that eye contact, be in the moment, listen before you speak, because a job interview or conversation is a tennis match, you listen, absorb it, and throw it back. Otherwise, it’s not natural and you’ve come in with an agenda and are throwing back all the stuff you’ve memorized. It doesn’t make you look like a flexible person,” says McKenzie.
In an ideal world, being in dire circumstances should not be held against you in an interview, but in reality, if your body language and attitude reveal this, many people doing the hiring see only your desperation. That makes them question whether or not you really want their job or are just willing to settle for whatever you can get. For this, what’s referred to in improv as status training is extremely helpful. “It shows you how can you raise your personal status and physicality and personality without lowering the other person’s status; how can you be confident without being abrasive,” says McKenzie.
For a good percentage of people, the greatest impediment to benefitting from all improv classes have to offer is the fear to take improv classes itself. But that fear is largely based on assumptions about what the classes will be like. Some fear they need to be naturally funny to do improv, which isn’t the case.
Not all improv is humourous and when humour does happen, it happens naturally and collaboratively—and mostly quite unexpectedly. Others fear being judged when they make a mistake, as if they’ll be transported back to those awkward moments in childhood when a teacher put them on the spot by asking them a question they couldn’t answer. But there really are no mistakes in improv and it works with collaboration and comradery rather than competition. Chances are that if you are one of those people who’d love to take an improv class but think you don’t have the courage to do it, you’d be pleasantly surprised to discover that you don’t need any courage at all to do it. On the other hand, if you do sign up for improv classes, it will likely help you discover you actually have all the courage you need to be your most confident self at any job interview.
Thanks to Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco who is a freelance writer in Oakville, Ontario and is an Associate of ThirdQuarter and Skills Connect Inc.