Early morning commuters in the New York subway are the quietest creatures. That or AirPods have excellent noise cancellation. I get to sleep for an hour in the subway before reaching Woodhull at 8 for the morning medical conference. New York had not turned into the freezer it is now. That did not stop me from clutching the Starbucks coffee with both my hands to enjoy the warmth of the cup. I refuse, only to sip the $7 coffee. Doubling it as a hand warmer is how I justify that price tag!
The chair at the corner of conference room 3, right behind a small table, gives you the right balance of "I arrived" and" consider me hidden." As I headed for the chair, Dr. M asked me, "How did your 1st day of interview season go yesterday?" I told her I would write about it someday—a shameless plug of my blog but also a testament to the fact that I was still unsure how the interviews went.
This is my attempt to think of an answer to the question, "How did my first day of the interview go?"
"Do people act their true selves when they are angry?" That question has intruded my thoughts more than I'd like to admit. Currently, I believe the answer is probably no. When someone is angry, that is their angry self. They have their happy self, neural self, sad self, and many, many other selves. Their true self is probably an integration of all these momentary selves within a time frame.
Other than presenting my pretentious mathematician persona, I hope that integrating one's various selves demonstrates how difficult it is to define someone's character.
I have interviewed medical doctors for residency positions for the past few months. I vividly remember being the interviewee in this same interview three and a half years back. Other than adding massively to my imposter syndrome, this gives me a unique perspective. While not wholly forgetting how nerve-wracking and sometimes even pointless the process felt some years back, I can think of what I expect to accomplish with this interview season. As an applicant, I suspected the interview was a process with many flaws.
My suspicion is turning into a belief but with some addendums. I know evaluating someone's character in a 20-minute interview or three of those is impossible. But I also don't know of any methods better at assessing a match other than talking to another human being.
But if people don't act their true selves when angry, they sure don't when they are nervous, too. And that is why it seemed fitting to start the interview with that acknowledgment. "I know this can be a nerve-wracking process. I assure you I will try to evaluate you based on the answers that you think are your final answers. You can ask me to repeat my questions or explain them. And it is perfectly fine to take time before answering a question."
Now, that might or might not calm anyone's nerves. It would remind me to factor in the fact that much of what I will hear and see during that interview can be this person's nervous self. They have many other selves.
If I were to share the Uber ride with the younger me to the interview, I'd probably tell him this: It is okay to be nervous. The best you can do is try to bring out as much of your neutral self as possible. Don't think of the interview in terms of questions and answers. For one, the interviewer does not have any correct answers either. There are no correct answers to most of the questions you will be asked today. And two, they are as clueless as you about what the program looks for in an applicant. The only question you should ask yourself is--would you be happy if you were your colleague? If you can genuinely say yes to that, that's it! You should be hired. If you flinched, work on what made you flinch.