The Interview You Rehearsed in Your Head Is Not the One You'll Give

Somewhere between the CV and the handshake, most people lose the thread of their own story.

I have interviewed thousands of candidates over twenty years, and the pattern is consistent. Someone walks in with a strong background and a career worth talking about. Then the interview starts and they reach for the wrong example. They over-explain the easy question and go vague on the one that mattered. A single question throws them and they never quite recover their footing for the rest of the conversation.

Almost always the problem is preparation, with nerves sitting right on top of it.

I know this because I have done it myself. I was once interviewed for a senior HR role at a luxury goods organisation, small and innovative, where what they needed to see was vision and creative thinking. I had hundreds of examples that would have fit perfectly. Instead I spent most of the interview talking about restructuring projects. Solid work, but entirely the wrong story for that room. I only realised it on the way home.

What surprises people is how little it takes to change this. Rehearsing with someone who will push back and tell you the truth shifts things more than another week of thinking about it alone. I mean rehearsing out loud, in front of another person, so the awkward pause happens in the practice room instead of the real one.

A good session surfaces the stories you have been underselling because you assumed they were not impressive enough. It exposes the questions that will catch you out, before they do. And it gives you honest feedback on how you come across, which most people never get in an interview.

That last part matters more than people expect. You cannot see your own habit of hedging, or the tell in your voice when you hit a question you have not prepared for, or the fact that your strongest story is buried under three weaker ones. Someone else can see it in the first ten minutes.

None of this is about scripting yourself into something artificial. Candidates who over-rehearse into a flat, corporate version of themselves do just as poorly as the ones who wing it. The better comparison is an athlete before a match, who has nothing new to learn and is working on the friction between what they know and what comes out under pressure.

One or two honest rehearsals can be the difference between getting through an interview and being seen in it. It is a small investment for what it returns, whether you are the one interviewing or the one funding it for someone else. I do this work myself, though it does not have to be me. Find someone who will be honest with you.

Have you seen this? On either side of the table.