📝 The Post-Interview Scorecard

Confession time: I started talking to myself in the third person after job interviews. It was just as weird as it sounds, but turns out, I was tapping into a proven method for getting better results.

"Bridget," I would say, "do you feel like you showed your unique value?" And then I'd give myself an honest answer to see if I needed to follow up with some additional info for the hiring manager.

In the moment, it took off the pressure of wondering whether I'd get a call back. I'd done all I could do, and now the decision was in the hands of the hiring committee.

I've since learned that social psychology researchers have found people are usually much better at solving other people's problems than their own. But when study participants made one easy switch, that all changed.

"We simply asked our participants to use their own name and other non-first-person pronouns such as 'you' when thinking about themselves," Ethan Kross told University of Michigan News. "Instead of saying, 'Why am I feeling this way?' you adopt a distanced perspective by asking yourself, 'Why are you feeling this way?'"

The result? People were "capable of reasoning as wisely about their own interpersonal problems as about the problems of others," Kross said.

It's called self-distancing, and it's this week's micro-experiment:

The next time you hit a career-related wall, don't ask yourself: "Why am I stuck on this?" Instead, try asking: "Why is (your name) stuck on this? What could you do differently?"

It may feel silly, but you might be surprised by how a fresh perspective can help. Why give away all your brilliance to your friends? Instead, see what opens up when you shift your perspective.

Happy navigating,
Bridget