An Assault against AnxietyTim was the head of a lighting crew for a local television news sta-
tion in Salt Lake City, Utah. After 4 years of working on the crew
and finally becoming the chief lighting designer, he figured he
had paid his dues and was ready to move to Los Angeles to get a
job in the film industry.
With no binding family ties or other obligations, he packed
up his pickup truck and headed for Hollywood. It was 4 months
before he landed his first interview, a meeting with the director
of photography for a network movie-of-the-week. He was willing
to start at the bottom, but unfortunately, the interview failed to
yield the chance to do even that.
“It was like an interrogation,” he protested when he called me.
“I never expected to have to tell my life story just to get a job on a
movie! Their questions were impossible. I’m not a brain surgeon.”
“I don’t know what happened,” he reflected. “When they asked
those questions about my weaknesses and my failures, my mouth
went dry, and it was like my jaw couldn’t move. I just sat there and
totally froze! They must have thought I was a moron! I walked out
of there shaking inside, feeling like I was a total idiot. There’s no way
I’m ever going to go through anything like that again!”
You’re certainly not alone if you have some negative feelings
about interviewing. Most people consider interviews to be some-
where between mildly unpleasant and absolutely terrifying. This
book will give you specific strategies for conquering that anxiety
and quieting those negative voices.
The Most Common Interview Fears
The 11 most common fears that people have voiced to me about
interviewing are contained in the following checklist. Check the
box next to any of these fears you have right now. Be sure to use
a pencil! You’re going to go back over this list at the end of read-
ing this book, and I can safely predict that many of the fears you
have now will most certainly have been “erased” by then.
I fear they will ask me a question I don’t know the answer to.
Chapters 2 through 5, plus the sample interviews at the
end of the book, will leave you with no doubt about how
to strategically answer any of the four types of interview
questions.