A job interview is one of those rare moments in life when two people share the very same hope. Both want to make the right decision. And yet, many interviews are still conducted as though only one of them has something to prove.
The evening before, handwritten notes had covered his desk. Some had already been crumpled up and thrown into the wastebasket. Others still lay beside his laptop. Answers had been crossed out, rewritten, reconsidered, and discarded once again. Next to the keyboard rested a sheet of squared paper with nothing but scattered words written across it. Arrows. Circles. Fragments of new thoughts.
Eventually, he closed the laptop.
There was nothing more he could do.
The following morning, the door to the meeting room closed quietly behind him.
The hiring manager greeted him warmly. They exchanged a few polite words about his journey, she offered him something to drink, and waited until they were both seated.
Between them lay a single sheet of paper on which an entire working life had been condensed into just a few lines.
She didn’t look at it.
She looked at him.
“Are you happy?”
For a brief moment, neither of them spoke.
Not because he hadn’t understood the question.
He had expected many things. Questions about his résumé. His professional experience. His strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps even his hobbies.
But not this.
He looked at her as though mentally going through everything he had prepared.
This question had never been part of it.
“I honestly didn’t expect that question.”
The hiring manager nodded.
“I thought as much.”
He smiled faintly, more out of uncertainty than politeness.
“May I answer honestly?”
She held his gaze for a moment.
“Why are you asking me that?”
She waited.
Not for a quick answer.
Simply for his answer.
He leaned back slightly.
“Because I don’t know whether honesty is really welcome in a job interview.”
“Why do you think that?”
A faint smile crossed his face.
“Because we’re taught to present ourselves in the best possible light.”
She said nothing.
“You rehearse your answers. You learn how to describe weaknesses so they no longer sound like weaknesses. You carefully decide which experiences are better left unmentioned.”
For a moment, his eyes drifted to the résumé.
“After a while, you stop asking yourself who you really are.”
He looked up again.
“You only ask yourself who you’re supposed to be in a conversation like this.”
The hiring manager remained silent.
“And who would you like to be?”
The question caught him off guard.
He didn’t answer immediately.
“I think…”
He stopped.
“No.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t want to be anyone today.”
He met her eyes.
“I simply want to be myself.”
For the first time, the hiring manager picked up his résumé.
She didn’t open it.
She simply rested her hand on it.
“I already know your qualifications.”
She let the words settle for a moment.
“Otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting here today.”
She withdrew her hand again.
“What interests me is something I won’t find in these pages.”
The applicant looked at her in silence.
“And what is that?”
He let the answer sink in.
“You know,” he said at last, “half an hour ago, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I would have assumed it was simply something people say during an interview.”
A faint smile appeared on her face.
“And now?”
“Now I believe you mean it.”
She nodded.
“I read your résumé last night.”
She gestured toward the sheet of paper.
“More than once.”
“I know your professional background. Your qualifications. Your experience.”
She paused briefly.
“That’s why you’re here today.”
He looked down at the résumé.
“Then why am I still here?”
“Because I want to find out whether we can make the right decision together.”
He remained silent.
“Not just me.”
She continued speaking in the same calm voice.
“If you leave here today with the feeling that this company isn’t the right place for you, then this conversation will still have been a success.”
He frowned slightly.
“I’ve never heard anyone say that in a job interview.”
“I’m not surprised.”
She smiled.
“Being hired isn’t an award.”
He looked at her attentively.
“Then what is it?”
“A decision that both of us may have to live with for many years.”
She let the thought linger.
“So I’m not only interested in whether you’re the right fit for us.”
She met his eyes.
“I’m just as interested in whether we’re the right fit for you.”
The applicant slowly leaned back.
“I think this is the first time in my life that I don’t feel like an applicant during a job interview.”
“What do you feel like?”
He smiled.
“Like a human being.”
The applicant fell silent for a moment.
“May I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“A few years ago, I would have presented a very different version of myself today.”
She didn’t interrupt.
“I would have tried to appear as confident as possible. I would have focused on my achievements and found the best possible explanation for everything else.”
He smiled briefly.
“I probably would even have hoped you wouldn’t ask the questions that really matter.”
“And today?”
“Today I know that approach might have earned me a job offer.”
He paused.
“But not necessarily the right place to work.”
She gave a slight nod.
“What changed?”
He thought for a moment.
“Life.”
She waited.
“There were years when everything seemed to fall apart at once. Professionally. Personally. I made decisions I would make differently today. I trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted.”
He didn’t smile.
“Back then, I saw those things as failures.”
“And today?”
“Today I see that they changed me.”
She didn’t ask another question.
He continued on his own.
“If you had hired me ten years ago, you would have hired a different person.”
“A better one?”
He shook his head.
“A less experienced one.”
For the first time, she smiled as well.
“That’s an interesting answer.”
“Because it’s true.”
Another brief silence settled between them.
“I think we spend far too much time trying to erase the mistakes from our lives.”
His gaze fell to the résumé.
“And yet, those mistakes are often the very places where we’ve learned the most.”
The hiring manager followed his gaze.
“Perhaps that’s why résumés tell us so little about people.”
He looked at her.
“Because they mostly tell the story of what went well.”
She nodded slowly.
“And conversations?”
He thought for a moment.
“Conversations reveal who a person has become.”
For the first time, the hiring manager reached for her pen. She didn’t write a single note. She simply placed it beside the résumé.
“I’d like to remember that sentence.”
The applicant looked at the pen.
“You’re not writing anything down.”
She smiled.
“You noticed.”
“I did.”
“I’ll make my notes later.”
“Why not now?”
“Because right now, I’m listening to you.“
He nodded slowly.
“That sounds obvious.”
“It isn’t.”
She rested her hands calmly on the table.
“The moment I begin taking notes, I’m no longer simply listening to you. I’m already beginning to place you into categories.”
He reflected on that for a moment.
“And you’d rather avoid that?”
“At least until I feel I’ve understood the person sitting across from me.”
A faint smile appeared on his face.
“That makes a great deal of difference.”
“It does.”
She looked at him calmly.
“Do you know what I’ve learned over the past few years?”
He shook his head.
“Résumés keep getting better.”
She gestured toward the sheet of paper lying between them.
“People don’t necessarily.”
He frowned slightly.
She smiled.
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that people have become worse. I simply believe they’ve become much better at living up to expectations.”
She paused for a moment.
“And much more careful about showing who they really are.”
The applicant nodded slowly.
“Perhaps because they’re afraid honesty might be used against them.”
“Perhaps.”
She let the thought linger.
“And that’s exactly why I wanted to begin today’s conversation with a question no one could prepare for.”
He smiled.
“You certainly succeeded.”
She smiled too.
“I know.”
Silence returned. This time, it felt different. It no longer needed to be filled. It simply belonged to the conversation. The hiring manager slowly moved the résumé aside.
“I think we know each other better now than we did an hour ago.”
The applicant nodded.
“I think so too.”
She looked at him.
“Now let’s talk about the position.”
He smiled.
This time, he no longer had to search for the right answer.
He simply had to tell his story.
Featured image created by ChatGPT – based on a prompt written by me
Kommentare sind willkommen, solange sie sachlich, respektvoll und themenbezogen bleiben. Beleidigungen, Spam und reine Provokationen werden nicht veröffentlicht.