Believe it or not (please do), the adage, “timing is everything” can not only be applied to interviewing and performance reviews but also very practically (and easily) used to your advantage.

What are we talking about?

In the study of organizational behavior (basically psychology for the workplace) the “Primacy Effect” and the “recency effect” tell us that …

People tend to remember and favor events that were either the first or the last to happen.

Here’s a wordier definition for you nerds out there:

Primacy effect: is a cognitive bias that results from disproportionate weight on initial stimuli or observations.

Recency effect: is a cognitive bias that results from disproportionate weight on recent stimuli or observations.

Taking this one step further- one can infer that people, things and events in the middle are often forgotten. Basically, don’t be the gooch. Egh.

Like many business concepts, the concept is simple and even obvious but often neglected or not acted upon. How can we work this to our advantage?

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Whether you are just out of school or have already been working for a few years, you’ll always want to be confident in your interviewing skills. The reason I say this is mainly because interviewing is nothing less than a gateway to scoring that great job you’re trying to …score land.

Basically, you are judged as a person, against peers, on both your ability and your potential to perform at a task (under pressure) in a matter of maybe 30 minutes to an hour. This is the most cost effective way for an employer to filter through many candidates and pick someone they can feel confident about. Nail that shit.

1. Know your audience! - The best way to really F* up an interview is to start talking about something that the interviewer doesn’t care about. You are saying

I’m about to start talking about something you don’t care about for a few minutes, so feel free to start nodding your head and pretend to listen!

Knowing your audience means 3 things. Know who you are interviewing with, know their business, know yourself and know the position you are going for.

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