What Most Traditional Interviews Actually Assess

Performance Skills

How comfortable are you performing under observation by strangers, with high stakes, no practice, and no less than 9,875 unwritten rules and expectations? 

Hospitality Skills 

How comfortable are you at making small talk and building instant rapport with strangers who hold power over you? 

Masking Proficiency 

How convincingly can you stay totally composed in this artificial setting that we know is incredibly stressful, biased and uncomfortable for you? 

Humble Self-Promotion 

What’s your ability to talk confidently about yourself without seeming arrogant, and in a way that is congruent with societal norms (adjusted on the fly to any assumed gender and cultural norms perceived by the interviewers)?

Rehearsed Insincerity 

How effortlessly can you deliver a polished (but not scripted!) monologue about your life, your career and your greatest weakness?

Instantaneous Auditory Processing, Memory Recall, & Regurgitation 

How quickly can you make sense of convoluted verbal questions in real time AND recall specific past examples on demand AND produce instant answers to abstract hypotheticals?