I read a lot about speakers practicing authenticity. (Huh?) All the suggestions seem reasonable, yet contrived to me: act interested in your audience, use your current location in your speech, remember to thank people at the end of your speech.
If you don't want to be a speaker, don't. If you do want to be a speaker, you may do those things, because they make sense. You don't do them to practice authenticity, you do them because if you love speaking, you do it. You are authentic because you care about your job.
It's the same thing with interviews and thank you notes. If you love your job, and you're interviewing candidates, you don't have to remember to thank people for coming in for the interview. You don't have to remember to thank people for their time at the end of the interview–you'll do that because you are an authentic human.
If you're like me, you need a little checklist/reminder at the beginning of the interview process to stop work-as-normal, and start interviewing. I don't need to remember to smile, I need to remember to put away the day's work and focus on the interview. As a hiring manager or team member, you might need some other remembrances.
And, if you're a candidate, and you liked the interviewer, the team, the organization, by all means, send a thank you note. If you have questions, ask them. If you have concerns, and they are minor, say you want another conversation.
But if you have major concerns or don't want this job, say so. Or, don't write a thank you note. Don't write a fake note, saying you want the job when you don't.
Authenticity is a necessary part of interviewing–from either side. So, don't practice authenticity–be authentic.
The notion of “learning how to be authentic” is really quite silly, eh? The advice I would give is not “remember to smile”; instead: “actually care about the other person, and your behavior will follow naturally.”
–Steve
However, mare introvert folks people might not show their thoughts and feelings, which can mislead their audience or interviewer into thinking that they don’t care. They may need to make more effort to project themself – which takes practice.
It’s like taking your driving test – it’s not enough to check the mirror – the examiner has to see you check the mirror.
to David A.
David,
We in IT deal with pretty smart people. Pretending is not going to work for more than 10 secs (if that). To me, i’d rather see genuine behaviour (whatever it is) than vain attempts to show a feeling that a person doesn’t have. I lose trust very quickly if i see this. Everyone does, i believe.
So, to me “practicing authenticity” sounds stupid because we should not “practice”, we should “be” what we are. This helps build trust, which is absolutely necessary for having a valuable discussion during interview.
My 2c.
Truly,
Eugene Nizker
I agree completely–if you can’t be authentic automatically, you’re not in the right situation to begin with. I think the other side to this coin is enthusiasm: so many people come across as less than excited about the position in question. Sometimes, this is overcompensating for nerves, but it may also be a sign that the job really isn’t for you. After all, if it’s something you really, really want, you should be automatically pumped up, not to mention authentic.
Eugene, I completely agree with you — but I think you’ve missed David’s point.
What David is talking about is not pretending — it’s about showing what’s genuinely there already but might be hidden. To talk a clearer example, here’s a parallel sort of situation with code reviews. I review my coworker’s code, and it’s generally excellent but has some bugs. My natural focus is to assume he knows it’s generally good, and write a report saying, “It’s got these three bugs.” What he hears may very well be that I think the code is bad because I didn’t say anything good about it — because I didn’t realize that needed to be said. If I use a reminder to say something good in my code reviews, that’s not a failure to be genuine. I said this code was generally excellent, and I believe that. So this is just a reminder to make sure I communicate that genuine opinion.
Similar things come up in display of emotions, too, though they’re can be less easy to describe. I’ve certainly had situations where I knew I wasn’t conveying an emotion that I genuinely had, and made efforts to be more visible about it — and what happened was better and more authentic communication, just as in the code-review example.
The advice I would give is not “remember to smile”; instead: “actually care about the other person, and your behavior will follow naturally.”