The Worst Interview of My Life Made Me Great at Interviews

One of the most useful interviews of my career was an absolute disaster.

I was in college and interviewing for an internship with Société Générale, a major French bank in New York

City.

This felt like the big leagues.

I had already completed a three-month internship on Wall Street where I spent a good amount of my time organizing an IT closet.

Somehow, this experience also convinced me that I knew Manhattan pretty well.

I did not.

The interview instructions said to go to the McGraw Hill Building.

I found the McGraw Hill Building and arrived early.

The building looked a little shoddy for the m headquarters of a major international bank, but I didn't think much of it.

I also didn't want to check in too early and look like a weirdo, so I killed some time.

About 15 minutes before the interview, I finally walked up to the lobby attendant and told him I was there to

interview with Société Générale.

He looked confused.

"Are you sure you're at the right place?"

My heart dropped.

"This is the McGraw Hill Building, right?"

It was.

It was the old McGraw Hill Building.

The one I needed was about ten blocks away on Avenue of the Americas.

And we're off

I took off running.

Ten blocks through Manhattan in a suit.

I was sweating.

Then, because apparently the situation needed another degree of difficulty, it started raining.

Eventually I saw the building I should have expected from the beginning.

Big. Modern. Société Générale signage out front.

There were a few people outside smoking cigarettes.

Without breaking stride, I yelled something along the

lines of:

“IS THIS SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE? HOW DO I GET IN?"

They pointed me toward the entrance.

I made it through security, into the elevator and up to reception about 20 minutes late.

At this point I was wet, sweaty, out of breath and fairly certain I had already blown the interview.

The receptionist told me everyone was waiting for me in the conference room.

Great.

I tried to gather myself.

Whatever was behind that door, I was going to own what happened and fight my way back into this thing.

I opened it.

Four very polished-looking people were sitting around the conference table.

I introduced myself to each person individually. I took the empty chair across from them. I apologized for being late.

Then I gave what I remember as a pretty sincere statement about how much I wanted the opportunity and how I was ready to answer whatever questions they had to demonstrate my dedication to the role.

They stared at me.

Then they started introducing themselves.

They were mentioning their schools. Ivy League schools.

This seemed strange.

Why were the interviewers telling me where they went to school?

Finally, one woman decided somebody needed to end this.

"We're not interviewing you. We're here to interview for the internship too."

Oh.

I felt incredibly stupid.

And now I had another problem.

These weren't the accomplished bankers I had assumed they were.

These were my competition.

That somehow made it worse.

They looked so much older than me. More polished. More poised. They went to schools like the ones I had

just heard them name without thinking twice about it.

I felt like a kid who had wandered into the wrong room,

which, given how the day was going, wasn't entirely unreasonable.

I had spent the last few minutes trying to impress these people. Now I was supposed to sit beside them and compete with them for the same internship.

There wasn't much time to recover. Because there was still an actual interview to survive.

And then I got the French guy

Eventually the real interviewers came in.

They explained the program, Société Générale and how competitive the internship was.

There were three leaders who would split us into smaller groups. Two candidates would interview with each leader.

Two of the interviewers were American.

They seemed warm and encouraging.

The third was French.

He was much more serious.

And I could barely understand his accent.

At this point, you know exactly which interviewer I got.

The interview was a disaster.

I kept asking him to repeat questions. When I did understand them, my answers weren't good.

I was scrambling.

I started making things up on the spot because I was desperate to give him something.

The more I struggled, the more aware I became that I was struggling.

That's a terrible place to be in an interview.

You're no longer thinking about the question. You're thinking about yourself trying to answer the question.

At one point, he looked down and started shuffling through his notebook.

My head was pounding.

I thought I had been granted a few seconds of relief, so I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my

nose.

Apparently, during my little recovery session, he asked me another question.

I looked up.

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"

He looked at me.

"I think we're done here."

Finally, something he said that I understood perfectly.

I agreed.

I walked out of Société Générale and went straight to Burger King to begin the healing process.

I got almost everything wrong

It's funny now.

It wasn't funny then.

I went to the wrong building because I assumed I knew where I was going.

I arrived at the wrong place early but wasted my buffer because I was worried about looking too early.

I didn't verify the address.

I walked into a room and started performing before I understood who was sitting in it.

I was intimidated by the other candidates.

I wasn't prepared enough to recover when the interview stopped going according to plan.

When I didn't know an answer, I tried to manufacture one instead of slowing down and working through what I knew.

Eventually I became so uncomfortable that I was thinking more about how badly I was interviewing than

about the interview itself.

There are probably ten interview lessons in that afternoon alone.

But the biggest lesson came later.

I never wanted to feel that unprepared again.

You need to hurt a little

We spend a lot of time trying to make growth comfortable.

I'm not convinced it works that way.

Some lessons need to hurt enough that you remember them.

Embarrassment is particularly effective.

After that experience, interview preparation wasn't some career-advice checklist someone told me I should follow.

I understood exactly what it felt like to walk into a room without enough preparation.

So I got better.

I learned how to research companies and interviewers.

I learned to anticipate questions without memorizing

robotic answers.

I learned how to tell stories from my experience.

I learned how to admit when I didn't know something and still have an intelligent conversation about it.

Most importantly, I got comfortable being uncomfortable.

More interviews followed. Then jobs. Promotions. Leadership roles.

Eventually I ended up on the other side of the table interviewing candidates myself.

I also built Make Me Pro, helping people with resumes, professional profiles and interviews.

I've coached hundreds of people through the same process that once sent me running to Burger King.

And being an interviewer made me an even better interviewee.

You start to realize the people across the table aren't waiting for you to screw up.

Most of them desperately want you to be good. Hiring is hard. Finding someone you want to hire is a relief.

You also realize that the polished people who intimidate you are just people.

That would have been useful information for the kid who mistook four other nervous college students for a panel of senior bankers.

I wouldn't erase that interview

I didn't walk out of that building inspired.

I walked out embarrassed, exhausted and hungry.

The value came later.

There are things I'm good at today because at some point I was painfully bad at them.

The pain created an urgency that reading ten articles about interviewing never could.

That's something I've tried to remember as my career has progressed.

Being uncomfortable isn't evidence that you're somewhere you don't belong.

Sometimes you're simply doing something you haven't learned how to do yet.

And occasionally, becoming an expert starts with being soaking wet, 20 minutes late and completely

bombing in front of a French banker.

Then going to Burger King.