Interviews - Knowing Me, Knowing You

The concept of an interview can be likened to a ‘smart casual to formal’ chit-chat of understanding the interviewee. Notice I mentioned ‘smart’ because the process of the interview requires certain effort and careful thoughts about what reasonably pertinent questions to ask, and to the interviewee, what diplomatic answers to give. It is like a masqueraded Tango of ostentatious display defining ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ through such interaction, and perhaps pretending to accept or understand them that it seems almost…vulgar.

Man in its most primitive form requires only needs for its survival. The coming of age gives significance to interaction to allow understanding of needs and other desires. We talk to humour ourselves, we speak to raise awareness, we inter-view to scrutinize. The creator of the word was right to say that the process of interviews is not dependent on a single individual views or scrutiny. It is the rallying of a group of Oscar pseudo-winners to create an atmosphere of wanting to know, to understand, to provide and to reply in the most vague yet diplomatically acceptable ways ever. Kind of like a two minute noodle – you enter the interview stiff and crunchy, in the process perhaps it was too ‘hot’ to handle so you breakdown yet leave a waxy trail of pretence of knowing what they want. By the end of the interview, you moderately judged if you have successfully given a reasonably acceptable answer through the many flavours of feedback that they pour in.

The thought of being scrutinized in every aspect of my speech and delivery never fails to send shivers down my vertebrates. My experience of most interviews can be illustrated by some of Cassius Coolidge’s more recognized works.