In this video, career mindset coach Natalie Fisher explains why the most common interview preparation advice—relying on YouTube‑sourced, canned answers—leads to rejection. She argues that generic responses lack personal authenticity and therefore fail to resonate with interviewers. Fisher introduces a three‑box framework for creating "congruent" answers that feel natural, are uniquely yours, and are comfortable to discuss without oversharing. She illustrates the framework with client examples, showing how a specific mentoring story or a nuanced explanation for leaving a previous job can be reframed to stay truthful yet strategic. Fisher also emphasizes the importance of self‑perception: believing in yourself and projecting confidence influences how interviewers perceive you. To help viewers generate their own unique stories, she offers a downloadable "10 Examples Behavioral Interview Guide" containing 25 self‑question prompts and phrase suggestions. The overall message is that authenticity, combined with mindful framing and the right mindset, is the decisive factor in securing job offers.
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I'm going to talk to you about the fatal flaw in interview preparation advice and one of the main reasons why people get rejected in their job interviews. I'm Natalie Fisher. I'm a career mindset coach. I focus on the mindset behind what you're saying and what's going on in that interview to help you get hired and thrive in that role. First thing most people do when they are going to go to an interview, is they will go to YouTube and type in, how do I answer tell me about yourself? Or give me the sample answer for this question. And this could be helpful and it can be useful. It's not completely pointless to do. It does help you get some ideas. But the problem with this advice is that you cannot get anything unique from a YouTube video that is giving you a sample canned answer. It's not possible because that answer has nothing to do with you. I'm going to teach you what boxes your answer needs to check in order to make sure it is a congruent answer for you and that it is very likely to land with an interviewer when you are telling it. Because your answer has to be different than everybody else's answer. And if we all started going to interviews and answering the question the same way as all the YouTube experts recommend we answer, tell me about yourself. Then the whole thing would just get very boring and very canned. And that is what's happening. People are seeing that. If someone asks, what are your weaknesses? People started recommending that we say things like, I work too hard, or I'm too loyal, or I tend to put myself into work too much. We all started saying these things and everybody knew that they were BS and started craving real answers from people. Like, give me something real. Tell me the truth. So this is what's happening with interviews is People are not being congruent. And by congruent, I mean they're not speaking their real truth. They're speaking what they think they should be saying based on what an expert recommended. And hey, I've got lots of videos out there that show how you can answer questions. So I know that they can be helpful. People have told me, but the thing that no coach or mentor can ever give you is your specific story. They can help you get it out by asking you questions about it, but your specific story is what's going to resonate with an interviewer, with that person who's ultimately going to want to say yes to you. Here's an example from one of my clients. They asked him, tell me about yourself. We worked on an answer together. This was the only answer that could be unique to him. Nobody else could say it and have it work. He's like, what you can't see on my resume is that I really enjoy mentoring people. And at my last position, I leaned into mentoring my team. I put a lot of time into that. I mentored my own 2 sons who are now 19 and 24, and that has been a huge part of my life and a very rewarding experience for me. And that is an answer that only he could say. It's a very specific thing that is true to him. And that's not something that a YouTube video would tell you to say because It doesn't apply to everybody. Here are the boxes that you need to check when you are coming up with your own answers. 1, does it feel right to you? And by feel right, when you talk about it, do you feel like you need to rehearse it a whole lot, or does it come out naturally? 2, are you the only person who could say it? If we gave that answer to 100 people, would it still fly? In a lot of cases, the answers that people are advised to give 100 people could say the same answer and it would still work for them because it's so generic. So you have to be able to say it and it can't apply to anybody else. Does it feel good in your body? Does it require over-rehearsing, or do you feel like you can just talk about it naturally, like it's part of who you are? 3, is it something that you feel is comfortable for you to talk about? Sometimes an answer can be true to you, but you're not quite comfortable talking about it yet. For example, if you've been laid off or something happened In your past, and maybe it was a great learning experience and you have learned from it, but you need to figure out how to talk about it in a way that feels really good for you. For example, I had a client who left a job and she was being asked in the interviews, why did you leave that job? And she asked me, I can't really tell them the real reason because that would make me look bad and I don't want to tell that much truth to someone I just met. Her real answer was, well, it was a toxic workplace. I didn't feel valued. It was time to move on and I just couldn't take it anymore. That was her real answer. And I said, that is your congruent answer right now. Now, does that mean you should say your congruent answer as is? No, probably not, because you just met these people. Like, if you were on a first date, you wouldn't tell the whole truth about your whole past right then and there. That person hasn't earned your truth yet. They don't know you well enough. Now, if you've been working with someone for 6 months or you've been dating someone for 6 months, then you can tell them more details and they're gonna be more empathetic towards you because they know you now, right? They know who you are. But when you first meet someone, they are judging you more harshly, and this is not a bad thing. You are judging people more harshly when you meet them too, so it's normal. We want to come up with a congruent answer that is pure truth and pure truth to her, but doesn't overshare or overexplain the situation. This is a skill and an art. It is not a problem that we have to do this for interviews. It is actually a skill. In relationships of all types that we need to learn. So for her, the recommendation that we came up with was that she could say something like this. Well, I left my last job because I had been there for quite a while and I had outgrown the position. And I realized that I wanted an environment where I could contribute a little bit more, where I could have more autonomy over my schedule. I realized I was at a point in my life where the things I needed, and when I walked into that original environment, I didn't realize that that's what I needed now. I needed the contrast of what I didn't want to know what I do want. And so now I'm very clear on what I want. That is pure truth, completely true, but it's not as honest and raw as she would originally have come to it because she just didn't have that skill of how to say it congruently in a way that was true to her. We want to answer honestly, congruently. We want to be able to check our own boxes. And our own boxes mean, does it feel comfortable to talk about? If it doesn't, you want to get to that point where it does. You want to work with a coach to help you to come up with answers that are very congruent for you, that don't require you to over-rehearse and practice them a thousand times, that don't require you to feel nervous before you speak about them, because you have become so certain in who you are and your decisions and your intention that when you speak about your answers, when you talk about a certain topic, You have no qualms about it, and you are not afraid of how they're going to perceive you because you know how you perceive yourself, and that is where it starts. When you perceive yourself as a good, honest person, somebody who's doing their best to progress their career in an honest and ethical way, and you truly believe that about yourself, you will not have any issues at all speaking your truth and finding the right words. Now, a lot of people think that people are going to perceive them a certain way. And when you believe someone's going to perceive you a certain way, the likelihood is that they will. You need to perceive yourself in the way you want other people to perceive you. So when you speak, if you want people to feel calm, self-assured, certain, and engaged, when you speak, you need to feel that way first. And that energy will transfer. That vibe will transfer. And the right people will be yeses. They will feel it in their body. They will not have to question it. They will automatically know, yes, this is the person for us. I love how honest she's being with us. I love how she's communicating. I love how he's speaking. I love how they are sharing honest details. I relate to them. This is what they're going to be thinking, but you need to be thinking it first about yourself. And you are the mirror. When you reflect that, you will get that back. Back. So the biggest mistake is people are trying to create generic answers based on samples that they have seen other people create. While they can be helpful, they can be useful in helping you come up with some examples for what you want to say, they are not going to be unique to you. Only those stories are the ones that you have. So you need to find them. I have a 10 examples guide with stories. So as I said, the stories are helpful, but what my examples guide does Is it actually gives you 25 questions that you can ask yourself to come up with your own stories. And that is the real gold. When you ask yourself these questions, these prompts that I give you in the examples guide, which you can get by just clicking the link below to download it, it's called the 10 Examples Behavioral Interview Guide. You will be able to start coming up with stories that nobody else in the world has. And remember to check those boxes. Does it feel comfortable for you? Does it feel congruent for you? Do you feel like you have to over-rehearse it? 1,000 times before you can say it. If you feel like you have to over-rehearse, you should be able to talk about it naturally. You should be able to have it brought up in a conversation and not flinch. If that's not the case yet, that's okay. You can work with a coach, and that is the mindset work that I do. So grab that link below to get the 10 examples guide. I've also highlighted the type of phrases that you want to use that will psychologically get people onto your side. Those phrases won't be exactly the same for you. We don't want everybody repeating the same phrases all the time. And that's basically what's happening in the interviewing world. And part of the problem, the more unique you are, the more congruent you are, the more 1 in 8 billion people that you can be, the more you're going to attract the quality opportunities that you really deserve and that you really fit with and that you deserve to be in. So grab that guide below and I will see you in the next video.
