Interviews: Make a Great Last Impression

30 January 2017

Read any article or listen to any piece of advice on doing well in a job interview and you will hear the same thing.  It is vital you make a good first impression.  I too have banged on about it.  It is important, but to do well in job interviews you also need to make sure you make a fabulous last impression too.

Too often many of us get to the end of our job interviews ready to bolt.  We are exhausted from holding things together, from over smiling and drained from the mental effort we have put in.  We see the end of the interview in sight and race for it.  Please don’t.  What you do in the final 5 minutes of your interview can make all the difference to your chances of being selected, especially when there are other good candidates.

A key thing you want to do when making a good first impression is to set the environment within the interview for the interviewer(s) to:

• Respond confidently to you
• Listen curiously to what you say, and
• Overlay your answers with a positive bias 

This leads to the likelihood they give you a higher ranking and more points as the interview goes along.  So first impressions are key for the experience of the interview itself.

The key thing you do when you make a fabulous last impression is you positively manipulate their long term, ongoing memory of you - and when it comes to interviews what the panel remembers is of most importance.  With a good first impression they will remember a good feeling about you, with a fabulous last impression you will consolidate and ensure that they remember details.

At the end of a day of interviews panel members are exhausted.  Their concentration has been taxed, they have heard the same thing from many people, names are swimming in front of them and all they have left are their scratchy notes (made while they tried to listen to you) and their memories.  As interviewees we want those memories to be as positive and as detailed about us as we can make them.

Here is where the insights from researcher Daniel Kahneman come in to help us.  Kahneman has found that it is possible to manipulate the remembered experience someone has of a situation by changing the way a situation ends.  End an experience badly and the memory of the experience is diminished.  End an experience positively and the memory of the experience is enhanced.  Add to the experience other high spots and the enhancement of the remembered experience is even greater. 

Kanehman has called this the Peak/End rule.  For a lasting positive memory of an experience ensure there is at least one high spot – the Peak, and that the experience finishes well – the End.

This means you need to not squander the end of your job interview – make it count.  Make sure panel members positively remember you and the details about why you are their preferred candidate by intentionally finishing the interview well.

Here are a few ways to do this:

Have good questions for the end of the interview.  It is a slight downer at the end of the interview when panel members ask interviewees if they have questions to get the reply “No, you covered it all”.  The panel members have just spent 30-60 minutes asking you questions.  To even out their sense of reciprocity they will feel better if you ask them one or two well thought out, future focused questions.

At the end of the interview take the time to summarise and articulate to the panel why you are a good fit for the role.  Plan and practice what you will say, covering off on why the role is good for you, the skills and experience you will bring and how you hope to develop the role.  Deliver this even if they have asked you an interview question along these lines.

Be prepared with innovations and ideas that you would like to bring to the role, and as interview questions allow, share these ideas making sure to share them modestly.  Then include your ideas in the statement you make at the end of the interview.

Smile, shake hands, make eye contact and engage in a short amount of small talk at the end of the interview.  Communicate to them that you enjoyed the interview and thank them for their time.

Sometimes panel members will make comments at the end of the interview that point to the relief you ‘must’ feel now the interview is over.  Don’t play into this line.  Instead reinforce the idea that you enjoyed the interview leaving them with a positive impression.
Of course, the Peak/End rule does not only apply to job interviews.  Use it any time you are in a situation in which you want the remembered experience someone has of you to be a good one.

As always, wishing you a Flourishing Career.

Katherine