Balance Humility and Confidence in an Interview

Preparing to answer every interview question with a confident and semi-automatic “yes, I can hit it out of the park” attitude is one of the worst mistakes any candidate can make. How can you balance humility and confidence within your career story?

Every competitive interview process requires you to share a conviction that you are the person for the job. You do not have to resort to chest-thumping and superlatives to get your message across. Excessive pride in your achievements will cause an interviewer to seek holes in your arguments rather than gently coax them to your side.

A humble approach is far more effective based on facts, honesty, and vulnerability.

Humility breeds quiet confidence in a person. They are aware of their limitations, flexible in their approach, comfortable in their skin and eager to learn. They know their role within a team, are effective facilitators and thoughtful communicators. Humble people always do what is best for both themselves and those around them.

Seeking to balance humility and confidence

Trying to balance humility and confidence in an interview means:

Telling a factual career story without over-enthusiastic embellishment. It is no simple matter to share a considered and balanced account of your career with someone that you desperately want to impress. Keeping any career stories factual and brief will help you avoid the hard sell temptation. Having said this, extreme modesty can also hint at complacency. Do still seek to put forward a compelling case.

Acknowledging the role of the team alongside your personal contribution. While every interview should contain a healthy dose of self-promotion, picking your moments to highlight the part of those around you will hint at your collaborative instincts. Sprinkling “we” and “our” into the conversation will automatically soften the “me” narrative. Additionally, showing gratitude for others will establish you as a genuine team player.

Attitude of humility

Listening to the interviewer and pausing before you answer. Any great interview is a dialogue rather than a monologue, and you should be humble enough to let the interviewer lead as much as possible. Resist the temptation to share too many details of your projects. Long candidate monologues are awkward as you never quite know when an interviewer wants you to stop as they won’t want to interrupt.

Retaining a balanced attitude after successes and failures. Humble people tend to downplay their role in successes and take losses less to heart. The resultant mental equilibrium is vital in a stressful office environment – therefore those who value quiet humility are often people towards whom others gravitate. They aren’t political animals seeking to score points. They simply want to do their best for themselves and their colleagues.

At the heart of humility lies an acceptance of imperfections. Sharing the message that you are a “work in progress” is incredibly powerful in an interview. Because it shows that you are self-aware enough to know what you need to develop. 

Finding the right blend of humility and confidence in your interview will help you to connect with your future boss on an entirely different level.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).