What to do if you can’t stop talking in a job interview

I had a client see me because she was concerned she would go off on a tangent in her job interview.

She said she talked so much she was afraid she would lose the interviewer or shoot herself in the foot with something she said. She’d done it before and blown her chances.

This is not uncommon in an interview.

Many people talk too much when they want to be believed.

And a job interview is a real scenario where your faith in yourself is being challenged.

My client said she talked too much because she thought that the interviewer was asking her for “more information” when they were looking at her blankly. So she felt she needed to keep going and going. She’d eventually forget the question she was answering. She also said that she was trying to cover all points, because often she didn’t quite understand what the interviewer was asking her.

My thoughts on this are, that if you are a chronic over-talker, to stop yourself talking and change your natural style will make you uncomfortable, so don’t try to be something you’re not. What you can do though, is help the interviewer help you manage it.

What exactly do I mean here?

Good communication is all about how the message has been received.

There are some interviewers who like bullet points and some who like detail.

If you’re a detail person, and your interviewer is a bullet pointer, you may have a problem. You’ll not know this from the outset, so ask: “Would you like me to give you detail or would you like a bullet-pointed summary?” If you know this, you can work with it, and you’re more likely to stick with bullet points, if that’s what the interviewer prefers.

You’re also less likely to go off on a tangent at that point you see the interviewer’s eyes glaze over and you suddenly want to be believed.

If you don’t understand the point of the question clarify it at the start.  Good questions to ask are “Sorry, I’m not quite sure I understand the question, do you mean…… or Are you asking me about or ‘a’ or ‘b’ ?” Once you get the point of the question, you can concentrate better on answering it.  Another way to think of this is to ask yourself what you naturally might do in a non-interview conversation.

A well focussed clarifying question back to the interviewer at this point demonstrates that you appreciate the value of their time and your interest in giving them what they need. So don’t be shy here.

If the interview question is complicated and in two or three parts it’s easy to lose track of what you’re talking about.

You can ask the interviewer if its ok to answer that questions in parts, or to ask them to repeat the second or third part of the question if you haven’t remembered it.

For some reason long multi-part questions seem to be really common in the public sector interviews. I have no idea why!

Watch the interviewer’s body language.

If you do see the “poker-face-eyes-glaze-over-look” that’s a good indication that you’ve lost your audience. Whatever you do, don’t keep going.  Keep it light and keep it real and round up your response straight away. There’s nothing wrong with saying something along the lines of – “Do you need me to clarify any part of my answer?”

Make your weakness your strength.

One of the things interviewers want to see is that you are self-aware.

I’m a detail minded person. I talk a lot and fast when I feel I need to be believed.  So one of the things that has worked well for me and my clients is saying “When I get excited about a topic I tend to give a lot of detail. Please stop me if you’ve heard enough.”

On that note I’d better take my own advice and end this blog!

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