The Dumbest Interview Advice That Always Works

This is honestly pretty silly, but so far, 100% successful

There’s nothing I hate more than anyone who will tell you they have it all figured out. The career coach (read: glorified LinkedIn influencer) who says “If you follow this one trick, you are guaranteed to get a job/get a promotion/get a $500k salary.”

With that said, I’m sorry but, this trick has always helped every client I’ve recommended it to. So much so that every time someone comes to me and tells me it actually helped them, I can’t help but laugh and shake my head because it just sounds so silly.

“Here’s your problem…”

Immediately upon starting the coaching session, I knew what the issue was. She had a college degree in CS from a solid program. A year and a half at a startup I’d never heard of, then 4 years at a FAANG — never promoted. But none of that matters because I was struggling to pay attention to her.

My client, let’s call her Alice, was boring. I know how this sounds — rude. And it’s not that I was bored, but I knew that interviewers would be. She had a monotone voice, spoke slowly, and was very low energy, like a walkman with dying batteries.

Aside: So there are these things called WalkMen, they’re like iPods but play tapes. Oh, what’s an iPod? So it’s basically... shit, I’m old.

I have what I consider to be a pretty solid grasp of what interviewers are looking for, and even if I don’t personally agree, I know that I need to deliver this feedback to my clients. Specializing in working with members of underrepresented groups, this means that I am often giving feedback that makes me gag. The reality is that Alice is a great software engineer, but wasn’t able to demonstrate that because interviewers weren’t paying attention long enough to catch on.

So, now that I’ve diagnosed the issue, what can we do? I can ask her to practice shouting at me, I can give her some youtube videos to watch, I can even prescribe her a redeye before each interview. But those weren’t sustainable, and hadn’t worked.

So, I told her to stand up.

“Try this: I’m going to ask you the same mock interview questions I just asked, but this time, I want you to stand up”

“I don’t have a standing desk.”

“You’re sitting in front of a book shelf. Grab a handful of books and use them to elevate your laptop. And stand back a bit. I want to be able to see you from the chest up, with enough space to see your arms when you move around.”

I was expecting her to look at me with that face you make when you’re not sure if someone’s messing with you, or having a stroke.

But at this point, she was ready to try anything.

And it fucking worked.

At the time I wasn’t sure if it was because she was getting her blood flowing more, if it was because she was mentally in presenter mode, or doing a power pose. There’s plenty of science on posture impacting our self-perception. When you stand, your body shifts into “presenter mode” instead of “conversation mode.” You’re performing. Your arms are free to gesticulate. Blood flows better. You take up more space, even if they can’t see below your chest. And somehow, this all translates through the camera.

When she started doing this in interviews, it wasn’t long before we transitioned from focusing on job seeking to discussing how to be successful in her new role.

I remembered back to when I was teaching at a bootcamp. I would spend 7 hours teaching these soup-to-nuts workshops, and the only way I could keep people engaged was when I was standing. I would make use of the space, gesticulate, and change my body language based on what I was talking about.

Science Is In Repeatability

I put this in my random bag of tricks. Not long after, I had someone with a different issue — severe ADHD, would talk way too fast and way too long. I told her to stand up in her interviews.

This worked as well, but for a different reason. Standing made her more aware of her breath, which naturally made her slow down.

So I kept recommending it.

To this day I have had literally dozens of people tell me that this advice worked for them.

In the group coaching sessions I do for Leopard, I mention this- and get DMs the next week telling me how it worked. In the first group session for my latest Job Seeker’s Cohort, I had members of the last cohort join to share some tips for success in the program. As we were wrapping it up, one of the members came on mic.

“One last thing. If Robby tells you to stand up, trust him. It works.”