The Totally New 5 Mindsets to take into the interview that will SHIFT your energy on the spot
In this solo coaching video, Natalie Fisher shares five (actually six) mindset shifts designed to help interview candidates relax, project confidence, and create a win‑win dynamic with hiring managers. She argues that traditional interview prep— memorising answers and over‑rehearsing— is low‑value. Instead, she encourages candidates to (1) trust that their experience earned them the interview and avoid over‑preparing; (2) accept that they will not have perfect answers to every question and be ready to admit uncertainty while outlining how they would find the answer; (3) shift focus from self‑performance to genuine curiosity about the employer’s needs, treating the interview as a discovery conversation; (4) adopt a "consultant hat" by imagining they are already hired and discussing problem‑solving approaches; (5) use the VCVC (Value Creation – Value Communication) framework to articulate concrete impact they have delivered in past roles; and (6) bring a "now energy" by communicating their own timeline and active interview status, creating urgency without sounding wishy‑washy. Throughout, Natalie blends personal anecdotes, practical phrasing tips, and a supportive tone to help viewers walk into interviews with calm, purpose‑driven energy.
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Hello, hello! Welcome to today's episode. Um, today I'm going to be talking about 5 mindsets to take you into the interview that are going to shift your energy before you go in. So a lot of people come to me and they'll be like, what should I do before the interview? How should I prepare? Um, I don't have very much time. I need to prepare. I need to figure this out. And they get kind of panicked because they're like, I got an interview coming up. So if this is you, if you have an interview coming up, you're in the right place. Uh, this video is going to help you kind of relax a bit, calm down, and give you some really helpful things to walk into the interview with, okay, that I don't think you would have heard before because I do things a little bit differently. I'm not focusing on specifically what you're going to say. I'm not going to tell you to, to practice a bunch of sample answers. I'm going to give you some mindset shifts that I really want you to feel in your body, okay? Let's get into it. So the first one is, if you're there, you already know what you need to know or you wouldn't be there. Okay, so if you have, and this is depending on your level of experience, right? Factually speaking, if you have a few years of experience doing the job that you're interviewing for, and you do already know what you're doing, you've done it before. So I'm thinking of some examples of some of my clients. So, um, if you're a program manager and you've done program management before, even at one other company, or you are a customer success manager, you've done customer success before, right? You don't have to frantically prepare and go crazy and try to have whiteboard notes all over your wall, like, because you already know. And when you're trying to do that, you're overcompensating for your, like, mistrust in yourself and your own abilities. Okay, so that's what I want you to kind of take in, is like, I do already know how to do this job, or I wouldn't be here in the first place. I wouldn't be in this interview. I am I need to be. Okay, and that's if you do find yourself frantically thinking you need to prepare and write down a whole bunch of stuff and have scripts ready, that is an indicator that you are not trusting yourself to have a dynamic conversation. Okay, because there's no way you could figure— like, you, you could predict everything they were going to say. They're not going to give you the questions ahead of time. If they do, great, but that's very rare. Um, you're going to have to count on yourself and trust yourself to have a dynamic conversation that's useful to them. Okay, so that's the first part. I already know what I need to know or I wouldn't be here. Okay, second, you don't have to have 100% answers to everything. Okay, if you think that you do and then you don't, that's gonna be a key moment in the interview where you're going to be derailed. Okay. So when we change the mindset to, I don't have to have 100% answers to everything, it's the overall experience that will get me the job or not, that will make the decision, like that will guide them to a decision, is the overall experience. It's not going to be one question. Then, then it's not so much pressure for you, right? So I've had clients who, they're very smart, they're going to the interviews, and they get tripped up on a question, right? So what I recommend here is, first of all, realize that an interview is a very on-the-spot activity. It's not going to be like that in your job. So when you go into the job, you're not going to actually have to, um, come up with an answer or you're fired. On the spot, right? It's not going to be like that. You're going to have resources, you're going to have people to talk to, you're going to have training, you're going to have things you can research, you can Google, you can read books, you can reach out to people, you can use LinkedIn Learning, whatever. You're going to have so many things you can actually do to find the answers that being in an interview and expected to have that answer right away is not always realistic. Okay, now sometimes if we're talking about like a very basic question that they ask you about computer science coding and you don't know the answer to that because you're less experienced, then that's just a learning moment for next time, right? But what I'm talking about are some of the questions that most candidates are not going to get, right? Because maybe they're meant to be trick questions, or maybe they're just kind of throwing it in there to see how you handle a question that you don't know the answer to, right? So what I recommend is you confidently just say, I don't know the answer to that. This is how I would go about finding it if I was in the job. Because like I said, you won't be able to, um, you won't be put in a position on the spot where you're like, you either know this answer or you're fired in the actual job. So it's kind of unrealistic to expect everybody to know all the answers 100% of the time. And I'm proof that I went to lots of interviews, I did not know the answers. And I think what actually got me the job was I was confident enough to say I don't know that, and I wasn't like trying to BS it. I wasn't trying to backtrack myself into something that I didn't really know how to answer. I would— I just would confidently say— I might pause, I might be like, hmm, and then I might be like, honestly, I I don't know the answer to that. And being able to confidently say that you don't know is a congruent, honest, authentic, whatever you want to call it, behavior, right? Which people really appreciate. Okay, so one, you already know what you need to know or you wouldn't be in the interview. 2, you don't have to have 100% answers to all questions. That's unrealistic. It's never going to be possible. Okay, 3. Number 3, um, Keep the focus off of yourself. So what I mean by this is a lot of people will go into the interview with that— I need to get this, I need to get this right, I need to get the answers right. Um, what if they don't like what I have to say about this? What if they don't like something about me? Like, very, like, very common thoughts. And if you're thinking this, you're not alone— is like focused on yourself, right? Or focused on what you can get. Like, oh, I would get the experience here, I would get this. And some of that's okay because we do want a win-win situation, but In order for you to give your best interview, what that looks like normally is you focusing on them, right? Getting curious about them. So instead of being performative, which is like, oh, I'm going to try to put on— to get things right, I'm going to try to put on like my best, uh, my best performance, for lack of a better term, you want to be curious instead. Okay, so think of it like this. If you're on the other side of the interview, you're the hiring manager, and someone comes in and they want to do like this really great song and dance for you, versus they come in and they're like, hmm, I'm really super interested in what you're doing here. And I'd love to know how I can help you, if I can help you, if I'm the right person to help you. Um, and that's what I'm here to discover, basically, right? It's 2 different vibes. Okay. And I find this is a huge shift with my clients. It's huge. Like, when you can go from, I need to get it right, I need to be perfect, I need to get all the answers, to be like, I'm curious what they're doing here, how I can help. Do I really align with their mission and values? Do I really like what they're doing? Do I want to be here 40 hours a week of my life? for the foreseeable future? Do I want to make this commitment? And would it make sense for me to be the person who, who they hire here, right? Like taking a neutral stance just from curiosity, right? Because not— you're not meant to get every job. You're not meant to be hired in every position, right? And that's the mistake we make. We're like, oh, we need to get the— we need to get the job. And the goal is not to get the job. The goal is to find a win-win. Because take it from me, you can go in there and put on a great song and dance and get hired, and you might be in the wrong You might end up in the wrong job. So that happened to me. I had to quit 3 months later. Slowed me down, slowed down my whole progress, my whole career. And I would have just been honest and upfront from the beginning, and I would have used this curiosity mindset instead. Okay. Okay. Next one is you're there to— you can, you can put on a consultant hat. So as my client Elizabeth said, she's like, I'm putting on my consultant hat. And what that means is If you imagine that you're already hired and you're just there to go in and figure out the game plan for how you would solve the problems for them, how would you do it? What would you need to ask? How— what attitude would you have? How would you go in there imagining that you're already hired, right? And you're— this is a meeting to figure out how you would move forward. Okay. And so this can bring you even deeper into that problem-solving mode and the curiosity mode, because your job is now to find out how you're going to ask um, how you're going to figure out what, what they really need and a game plan for how you could— for how you would provide it and what you would do next, right? And so that's where the best conversations are had, are when you can really get into the nitty-gritty of like, okay, so it looks like your department is doing this and it looks like you're looking for someone to do this. Is that correct, right? And they say yes. Then you say, okay, great. So this is how I would approach it. This is how I've approached some of these things in the past. These are some of the key metrics some of the key things that I see. Um, you might ask them like, where do you— I want to find out what your bottlenecks are. What would you say your bottlenecks are? Um, what do you think is preventing you from getting to that right now? Right? Like, you can actually create a dynamic of a conversation where you are now the consultant, where you're like, okay, I'm putting this together for you, I'm creating a plan for you, I can do this, right? And so some people might argue that this is free, um, free advice that you're giving them, but honestly free advice, and it's kind of like a free sample, right? It's like, I make these free videos, I make a free podcast, I give out a ton of free advice, and it's, it's the best thing for my business, right? It's like, yes, I do that, but it's because the right people want more. The right people want to come in and actually work with me. So I— my philosophy is giving value ahead of time is never a bad thing. I don't think we should be gatekeeping it because then we lose the opportunity to actually let them see what it is that we're capable of, right? And yes, some people might take that and run with it, but they're not— they don't have you doing it, which means that they're not going to get the same result as if you were there implementing it, right? And they probably wouldn't be able to do it as well as without you, right? So that's my philosophy on it. You're welcome to disagree. Okay, I've lost track of the number that we're on. I think I had more than 5, so you might get a bonus here. But, um, the next one is what I call the VCVC method. So it's VCVC stands for value creation and value communication. So you want to have some points that you're going to talk about where you have created value, and then you have— you're very intentionally communicating that value to them. Okay, so, and that will result in monetary value that you've produced for the previous company that you worked for, or like time or money saved, right? And so in my program, in my, um, in my signature program and in my method, I walk you through a process, like an actual formula, in order to create that. in order to have your own VCVC method mapped out so that you know how you can present that very intentionally when you go into interviews. So essentially it's just a formula that you use to say, how did I monetarily create value for the places that I've worked previously? And this can be done with soft skills, it can be done with anything. It's— it just— it comes down to a formula. So value created, value communicated. Okay. Um, and then yeah, that's all I had. Those are the ones. I, I think there's 5, there might have been 6 that I mentioned there. But anyways, what I want you to take away from this is, is it's not about, um, trying to predict what they're going to say and mapping out all the answers to the questions first. That is very low-level activity. It's very like writing a test for school activity, right? And this is not what that is. This interview is not a test like it is for school. This is a, a meeting of matching, like matching up. So it's like you're sorting, right? You're going to this interview and you're— it's like you're sorting out. Am I going to be a fit here? Do I think I'm going to be a fit here? And then do I want to present this information to them because I do have the skills and I can help? Am I a fit here? And then we're going to come to a mutual win-win or we're not. Okay. Oh, okay. There was one other one. So this one is what I call now energy, um, is— and I'm going to do a whole nother video on this actually, but I'll put this in here, um, the timeline. So a lot of people will go to the interview and they'll just be like, Um, so when, when do you think you'll be deciding? When do you think I'll hear back from you? You know, leaving it all up to them completely. Like, and what that's doing is it's kind of like showing an undertone of, yeah, whatever, you know, just let me know, you know, whenever you're ready, I'm ready kind of thing. So what I like to do is I— because, because I don't like this, I'm like, look, if you're a candidate, you're going to be actively interviewing, you're going to be actively getting offers. You're gonna have to actively make a decision soon. This is not like wishy-washy, call me whenever, right? So with that said, the now energy that I recommend my clients bring to the table is you say something at the end of the interview. You say, look, I really enjoyed this. Um, regardless of what you decide, it was great to meet you. I will let you know that I am actively interviewing. I will need to be making a decision by the end of next week. Um, and so I just wanna let you know that. So that you can adjust your timeline if needed. And let me know either way. Regardless, very happy to have met you. Very happy to have had this conversation. Something like that, on a case-by-case basis depending on your situation. This is something I work with clients on too. But we want to be in that now energy, okay? We do not want to be in that wishy-washy, like, yeah, let me know whenever. Okay, great. Like, um, because people do need— they need a little bit of a timeline. They need a little bit of a a deadline. Okay, so that means you can be responsible for creating that for yourself. Okay, it's like there's things like when there's a deadline to do something, I'm gonna do it. If there's not, if there's no rush, there's no consequence for not doing it, I'm probably not going to do it. It's just human behavior. It's just the brain, right? The brain will just do the easiest thing, right? So, um, if there's a deadline to purchase a program that I wanted to purchase already and they're offering a deadline with a deal or with a bonus or something, I'm going to probably do that if I was already going to do it and it's just a push I needed, um, versus if they're just like, yeah, you can sign up whenever, no problem, there's no, there's no reason for not signing up now, or whatever. You have to give them a reason to see that you are in demand, you are actively interviewing, you are serious about this, and that you don't have time to just wait around for whenever they either respond or don't respond, right? So lots more on that. Oh my God, I could take this— now I'm like, okay, now this could go on forever. But that's the end of this video, or this episode, and I will see you next week. Bye.
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