Job Interviews: You don’t have to be Perfect

During interview season, many of us frugal people magically become spendaholics. Nevertheless, we maintain we are still rational because the end goal of a higher-paying job can justify virtually any purchase. In college, my friend spent $10 for high-quality resume paper. I myself managed to shell out $25 for a leather folder since it had an emblem of Stanford. And it appears the scale increases as you gain experience. Career adviser Penelope Trunk admits to spending more than $1,000 to hire a resume writer, and suggests you do the same. Is all of this spending necessary?

I could write years of articles on what purchases I find useful, but that would really miss the point. These purchases are individual and depend on preferences. My leather folder helped give me confidence, just as my friend’s resume paper was part of his strategy. Penelope Trunk believes strongly in her method. I am here to make a different point. My point is that we often make these purchases in the pursuit of a misguided goal: that we need to be perfect for a job interview.

Striving for perfection, I will suggest, is not only a misguided effort, but it is also an incorrect strategy. I will explain why by discussing one of the most common interview questions.

What’s your greatest weakness?

A perfect applicant does not have any weakness. Therefore, if you follow conventional wisdom and want to appear perfect, you must avoid answering this question.

I was first told this advice in a 9th grade business course, a class where were taught the correct answer is to respond with a trait that’s really a hidden strength. Answers like “I’m so hard working that I often work right through lunch” were awarded full credit. I have since seen similar advice at the Stanford career center, in an interview guide at Vault and in a CNN Money article.

But there is a hidden cost to providing such answers. It takes time to prepare them, and since they are so concocted, they might make you look fake and robotic. And in the end of the day, it’s not necessary to lie or skirt around the issue.

My answer and its philosophical justification

I am honest when I answer about my greatest weakness. I reply that my greatest weakness is being too academic. When pressed for time, I often want to discover the solution myself when I should instead be asking someone with experience for help. It’s a weakness that I work on.

I always wondered why my answer resonated with interviewers, who specifically take an extra effort to compliment my response. I always felt nervous that I was going against virtually every career advice I was ever taught. Why should answering with a real weakness help?

Here is one reason why. Perhaps the greatest career advice I have received came from my uncle. The advice was not about skills or resume tricks but about personal relationships. He told me it is of utmost importance to show that you are fun and genuine. If you think about it, an interview is really about learning an applicant’s personality and answering the question, “Do I want to work with this person?” And across most offices there is one constant: people hire applicants that will become productive and fun co-workers.

In that light, my honest answer helped me demonstrate that I was a genuine person. I was not a projection of my carefully constructed paper resume. I admitted a flaw and that made me more human.

Imperfection makes us whole and human

I recently came across an article that discussed perfection in philosophical terms. The passage comes from Rabbi Harold S. Kushner who believes striving for perfection is one of the biggest mistakes we make.

I liked the entire article, but by far the most interesting example concerns a very personal and serious event. Kushner was giving a sermon on Yom Kippur a year after his son (14 years old) had died. He wanted to explain how he kept his faith strong in the face of such tragedy. He recounts the monumental sermon, which discusses perfection and life’s journey:

I took my text from a little book called The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein, which I can describe only as a fairy tale for adults. It tells the story of a circle that was missing a piece. A large triangular wedge had been cut out of it. The circle wanted to be whole with nothing missing, so it went around looking for its missing piece. But because it was incomplete and therefore could roll only very slowly, it admired the flowers along the way. It chatted with worms. It enjoyed the sunshine. It found lots of different pieces, but none of them fit. So it left them all by the side of the road and kept on searching.

Then one day the circle found a piece that fit perfectly. It was so happy. Now it could be whole, with nothing missing. It incorporated the missing piece into itself and began to roll. Now that it was a perfect circle, it could roll very fast, too fast to notice the flowers or talk to the worms. When it realized how different the world seemed when it rolled so quickly, it stopped, left its found piece by the side of the road and rolled slowly away.

The lesson of the story, I suggested, was that in some strange sense we are more whole when we are missing something. The man who has everything is in some ways a poor man. He will never know what it feels like to yearn, to hope, to nourish his soul with the dream of something better. He will never know the experience of having someone who loves him give him something he has always wanted and never had.

There is a wholeness about the person who has come to terms with his limitations, who has been brave enough to let go of his unrealistic dreams and not feel like a failure for doing do.

Source: Kushner, Harold S. “You Don’t have to be Perfect.” Reader’s Digest May 1997: 167-68. [formatted by easybib.com]

The bottom line

I struggle with perfection and adequacy many times in my life. Am I eating the right diet? Am I exercising enough? Am I doing all that I can to make my interview perfect?

When I find my efforts going overboard, I now step back and think about Kushner’s advice. It is our duty to do the right things, but it is not our goal to be perfect. Let go of your missing piece and be whole.