Practice, Practice, Practice!

When you see the words in the subject line above, what comes to mind? Perhaps some of these popular quotes capture your thoughts?

• “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect” (Vince Lombardi)
• “Practice like you’ve never won. Play like you’ve never lost.” (Michael Jordan)
• “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” (Aristotle)
• “An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.” (E.F. Schumacher)
• “If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better.” (Lindsay Buckingham)
• “Tomorrow’s victory is today’s practice.” (Chris Bradford)
• “Practice doesn’t make perfect if you’re doing it wrong.” (Frank Sonnenberg)

Or perhaps when you saw the subject line words like boring, dull, difficult, grind, grueling, discipline, or routine came to mind. Followed by, “What does practice have to do with a job transition?” 

So glad you asked! 🙂

How a Routine Practice Ritual Builds Confidence

A few weeks ago I noticed a Google Pixel ad featuring Stephen Curry and the consistency he’s experienced in the NBA. Same team for 17 years. Same coach for 11 years. Same jersey number his entire career. What struck me the most, however, was the emphasis on his pre-game warm up ritual. The ad shows him receiving a pass from the same security guard he always gets it from and making his first shot from the same place on the court from which he always shoots first.

My takeaway? He has a routine he follows which he believes leads to his success. Now, I’m sure he’d still be successful if he didn’t do those exact steps in his pre-game warm up ritual, but I’d bet that if he didn’t do those steps he’d have something else he consistently practices. The point I want to emphasize is that he has a ritual. A routine practice process that allows him to feel confident in his performance on the court.

What Is Your Pre-Interview Ritual?

What is your pre-interview ritual? What is it that you practice? If you’re like most people in job transition, you’re probably fumbling for an answer like I did when I was unemployed.  
Play back through the quotes above and think about their application to a new pre-interview routine.  What is it that you can perfectly practice, so that your words and actions in the interview are reflexively produced to give you the outcome you’d like? You may have a series of questions and answers you play through your mind, but I’d suggest that nothing will prepare you for the real interview more than practicing the interview.  

How to Practice Interviews Effectively

Please hear me out on this. I’m not suggesting you have to find someone to interview with that will try to replicate whatever it is that you’ll experience in the live interview. But I also don’t believe you have to find an HR professional or recruiter to put you through the paces with some live-fire questions. Here are some simple, straightforward steps to get started:

1.  I’d encourage you to find a friend or a Crossroads Guide (Click HERE) with whom to do a practice interview.  

2.  Then, prepare for that interview as you would the real meal deal! (Click HERE for one of our blogs on getting started with preparation). 

3.  Get a list of some sample interview questions (Click HERE for the first of our Crossroads series on how to answer common interview questions) and write out for yourself some bullet point answers to guide your response.

4.  Give your friend or Guide the questions and ask them to read you a question and listen to your answers. Ask them to take some notes on their reactions to your answers.  

5.  Ask them for their feedback. Their reactions aren’t necessarily just whether you answered the question in the way that they would have, but also their read on how confident you were with your answers, how you physically looked when you answered, and how long your answers were. Any reaction to your answers is fair game. After all, you never know who that hiring manager might be or how they might react, so to get a gauge on that is useful.

The Benefits of Mock Interviews

The benefits are significant:

1.  Engaging with someone else who is there to support you is encouraging in and of itself. Almost regardless of how the practice goes, having someone in the boat with you is a plus.

2.  Hearing yourself say something out loud to someone else is a big step forward. Thinking about what you might say is one thing. Saying it out loud is another. And then saying it to someone else who is assessing what you say is another thing altogether. 

3.  Receiving feedback on what you say, how you say it, and how you look as you say it is significant. It’s been my experience that recruiters and hiring managers rarely provide feedback to interviewers, so with practice you have an opportunity to gain what otherwise isn’t available to you.

4.  All feedback is useful, it just may not be accurate. Here’s what I mean. Any feedback you receive can be used by the receiver to recalibrate their behavior. The receiver still has a choice. You may disagree with your mock interviewers feedback and that’s ok – – it’s your choice what to do with it. But at least you have a data point to deal with while most people who never do a mock interview don’t.

5.  Developing a routine. While ideally we’d all be like Steph Curry’s example, that reality may not be in the cards. BUT,  if you’re like most people, saying something out loud to someone rarely comes out of your mouth in quite the way you would have wanted, so getting multiple opportunities to practice will help you with how you can best organize your thoughts to sell yourself to the interviewer in the best way possible.

A Biblical Perspective on Preparing Well

Last, a short reminder from the source of all Truth, the Scriptures. While the Bible doesn’t explicitly have anything to say about practice interviews :), it does have some sound principles to back it up.

• 1 Timothy 4:15 tells us, “Be diligent in these matters (godly living); give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.”
• Proverbs 14:23 states, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”

Please remember this as well. Another candidate for the job you’re pursuing is probably practicing. Keep the playing field even or forge ahead with practice, practice, practice!

Blessings!

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Dave Sparkman currently serves as the volunteer Crossroads Career board chair and local ministry leader. He is also the founder and managing director of Spark Your Culture, a corporate culture consulting firm. Prior to that he worked at UnitedHealth Group, a Fortune #5 public company, serving in the role of Chief Culture Officer. His unemployment experience came from the implosion of Arthur Andersen, where he served as the West Region Managing Partner, People.