{"version":"1.0","provider_url":"https:\/\/warpwire.duke.edu","provider_name":"Warpwire","is_public":true,"duration":0,"has_caption":true,"links":{"caption":[{"label":"English","url":"https:\/\/warpwire.duke.edu\/api\/caption\/83UIAA\/325253\/vtt\/?nonce=1fcbcb73e0ab583b2e37476f593a34bb&expiration=1787371200&signature=2e584c576279499fde2b99cb3924c3c2219963180383df59c80341e179f4790a"}]},"views":0,"upload_date":"2024-09-04T15:55:22+00:00","description":"How scripted is too scripted? (STAR) Stop Talking and Relate (Team) \r\n\r\nHaving sat in on plenty of interviews and mock interviews, I have seen it time and time again: a candidate staring at another screen to read a script they have written for themselves. Even further, when the script is not available, I have seen candidates reciting their favorite monologue from insert film title to communicate the perfect answer to any given question. All of this begs that we ask, \u201cHow do we prepare for an interview without sounding too rehearsed?\u201d\r\n\r\nTranscript:\r\n- Hello, and welcome to the \"What's Career Got to Do With It?\" podcast, where we hope to provide a space for honest conversation and information that encourages the listener to take the next steps in their career journey. Wherever you're at in this process, we hope this episode will meet you with affirmation, guidance, and maybe some laughs along the way.\r\n\r\n- Today, we discuss an answer, or many, to the question, \"How scripted is too scripted?\" Good job.\r\n\r\n- Yes! Welcome.\r\n\r\n- Who gave us technology?\r\n\r\n- We don't have a script.\r\n\r\n- George Washington.\r\n\r\n- Clearly.\r\n\r\n- What? Oh.\r\n\r\n- Ooh.\r\n\r\n- Welcome to an afternoon recording of \"What's Career Got to Do With It?\" folks.\r\n\r\n- We've got the giggles.\r\n\r\n- Oh yeah, it's three o'clock. It is.\r\n\r\n- So talking about scripts, as I read from our script, yes, we do write stuff here, but that's, what you just heard was the sum of it. That's all. We have nothing else planned.\r\n\r\n- The introduction, that's it.\r\n\r\n- So we're just gonna talk about being scripted in life and in interviews, mainly about interviews though. So how often do we meet with students that come in and they are gazing at their screens while they do a practice interview with us and they read, read, read, and then they look at us and they're like, \"How was it?\" And you're like, no. It was okay. Yeah.\r\n\r\n- Often.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- I'd say pretty often too. I'd say you can, it's always the down and the up too. Like, you can tell they're reading from something as well, so I think that makes it a little more awkward as well.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- Yeah and sometimes I pause 'em 'cause sometimes it's just, it's too intense and I have to remind them, like, \"Hey, this is just a conversation. Like, you're just talking. Just breathe.\"\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- Please. And then, you know, just start over a little bit, 'cause they get so amped up.\r\n\r\n- Yeah. Or I'll get the people that have the questions they want you to ask them and they're like, \"Hey, here are the 10 questions that I've already written out answers to. Can you ask me these questions?\" And then they read from that sheet. That gets me every time.\r\n\r\n- Yeah. I once had a student that had some software program on their computer that directed their eyes back to the screen every single time. So they never broke eye contact with me.\r\n\r\n- Oh my.\r\n\r\n- Oh.\r\n\r\n- But I don't know what they were reading from I'm, so-\r\n\r\n- And it was a big interview?\r\n\r\n- Well, they, no, no, this was in a mock interview and they asked me if it looked weird. I didn't wanna use word weird. It was a little weird but-\r\n\r\n- Off putting, perhaps.\r\n\r\n- Yeah. Given this was for a military interview setting. And so-\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- There was probably a need to have a little bit more eye contact than normal. But at the end of the day, I think what we're getting at here is this should mirror life. This should mirror who you are as a person. And it takes a little bit to get there because this is not just an interview thing, it's a, when you go in and meet somebody, you're not gonna have a script with you. When you're doing an informational interview, you may have some questions, but you're not always gonna be able to read from that. I don't know. What's y'all's take on scripts? How to prepare 'em, when to use them, when to to prepare a little bit, when to prepare too much, or how to prepare too much, what does that look like? I don't know, I'm just kind of rambling.\r\n\r\n- I think scripting takes away from everything that we've discussed within this podcast over the past four seasons. And that's being your authentic self. I know we can tip into that world of AI where folks are using ChatGPT and all the other ones that are around now to kind of create cover letters and even, you know, tell me about myself. But what I found is in the last couple of conferences I've been to, employers are like, there is a huge disconnect between what you presented me on paper and how you are presenting yourself now when I'm interviewing you. So I think you can almost make it harder for yourself when you're using some of these AI tools. I mean, there are good reasons to use it as well too. But it strips away the authentic you, especially if you're not giving these AI programs the attention that it needs to have and the information that it needs to have to really talk about you, right. If you just say, write me a blurb about myself, you know, it'll probably say, my name is Kiki and I herd sheeps, right. Versus taking some time to say, you know, my name is Nicole, I am a senior at Duke. I am majoring in political science. I aspire to one day be on Capitol Hill, right. So I think it's one of those things where you have to be careful when you're using that assistance, but at the heart of it, it's more so being careful to lose who you are and how you want to be seen.\r\n\r\n- I think one of the things that I have conversations with my students about is, especially when they're in the interview and it's virtual, which a lot of those first rounds are now virtual, to keep the genuineness about your answers, but, you know, make the answers creative so that you can remember 'em. And it's not like I have to read from this. So one of the strategies I give to students is the flower blossom, if you will. So it's, maybe I'm asking, Kai, tell me about a time where you showed your leadership experience. And so you're able to write all these bullets down. Those eight bullets may go to four sentences. And those four sentences go to one word. So if it's apple, apple in your head is, oh, this is my leadership position. So you are able to create and set the pace versus trying to read something. And a lot of times that just helps it come out a little bit more natural.\r\n\r\n- Yeah, I love that method. I think for me, I'm against scripting, but I am all the way for preparation. I think the thing that I tell people most whenever I'm doing like a practice interview with somebody is it's okay to have your resume out to remember what you've told people about yourself. To remember some of those like key experiences. It's okay to have your cover letter on hand, remember like the narratives you created with that document. But it's important to not lean on them so much that you have to create that written out script. So I'm totally against scripting because I think, again, it goes back to like, it removes authenticity altogether. It removes the opportunity for you to actually be in the moment and listening to what they ask you, 'cause you get so caught up in preparing yourself for the tell me more about yourself question, the strengths question, the weakness question, that you miss the random question where they're like, \"Do you like cake or pie?\" Like, you didn't even hear that. You're immediately jumping to some other point you prepared. And I think that's why I'm totally against scripting, 'cause it you missed some of that stuff, important stuff.\r\n\r\n- Cake, next question, I'm just kidding. No, I think back to that student too who used the software program and they were actually really good at interviewing. And I think that's the point we want to make here is knowing who you are as a person really can impact your interview. So if you're a person that needs to write things down, write it down.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- But also know how that comes across when you're sharing that information. I used to spend a lot of time writing sermons and I played around with like writing out the, transcribing it and going through the entire sermon and have the whole thing written, and then I don't have to get up and say it. And I would get so frustrated because it would not be verbatim of what I've written. And then I started getting, putting less and less down on paper and I realized this is not something that works for everybody. I know plenty of people that do it well with everything written out that can do it and sound like themselves. And so when you are practicing, pay attention to that. Rehearse with someone that knows who you are. And if you are straying from your script a little bit, that's okay. But also know that your script may be tripping you up and pulling you away from who you are. And trust that. Like this student, all they needed to do was to remove that software system. They didn't need necessarily their script, they just needed to speak and be themselves. And they were really likable, they were fantastic. And they were gonna get a job because they could communicate really well and they didn't need all of the information down on paper. And sometimes that can create an impediment or sometimes it can be an assistance to you in the process itself.\r\n\r\n- I also think it's important to kind of remember if you spend so much time on these answers, right, if you pre-prep them, at the end of the day, there is no right or wrong answer per se, right. It's, you know, as Angela mentioned, it's a conversation between two people. So there's not like a perfect answer to say. Again, it goes back to being the authentic you and showing them, as Kai said, that you've done some research so that you're interested in what you've applied to, you're interested in knowing a little bit more about the persons who are interviewing you, how you can make an impact in the company, more so than having the perfect reply to the question that they're asking you.\r\n\r\n- And I also think it shows your flexibility and your adaptability because if you're just coming off this scripted thing and then they ask you, like you were saying, the cake or pie, you know, you might get stuck like a deer in headlights and then that shows that, you know, you might have a hard time with that. So I think it's beyond just the scripted piece. It shows other components to your character, work ethic, however, to be able to switch and be adaptable at a moment's notice.\r\n\r\n- Yeah. I think another question that does that to people I interview too is when they'll ask you, like, \"Okay, we've asked you all the questions we wanna ask you, so tell us about yourself.\" But it's different from the tell me more about yourself question. They're like, \"What's something you haven't told us yet that's on your resume, that's not on your resume that we just wouldn't know about you unless you told us?\" I think that's another one of those questions where people are like, they don't know what to say because they haven't done that sort of reflection on the other end of it too. Like, they think about preparing for the actual position, but they don't think about like, I'm gonna work with these people eight hours out the day. Like, what would I want them to know about me as an individual? And I think that's the other end of it too.\r\n\r\n- Yeah and when you get that question, it's okay for a question to be hard. It's okay for you-\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- To have to process the question. I think that's also a common misstep is when you start to stumble because you want to answer a question too quickly because you've been given something that was outside of your script. And being able to adapt to it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to respond immediately. It means that, oh, you can acknowledge, \"Hey, this is, oh that's a tough question. I really need to think through this and I really need to process this one. Or I haven't thought about that before.\" Those are okay responses to begin. And it kind of sets the stage to let them know that you're being intentional and that's also a great way to respond. It's not that it has to be a perfect response. You may lightly touch on what they were talking about when they asked the question about your strengths and weaknesses or tell me more about yourself. What's the one thing that you haven't mentioned yet? But at the end of the day, you took time to try to be intentional with that response. And that's super important.\r\n\r\n- And I think as well, it is okay to say, \"Can you repeat that?\" Yeah.\r\n\r\n- Please don't not comprehend parts of the question. Or you know, again, you might've just been thrown over so that you missed it. And then just think, I'm just gonna start saying words. You know, stop, gather yourself for a second and be like, you know, \"Would you mind repeating that for me? I just wanna make sure I fully comprehend your question.\" It is okay to ask them to repeat.\r\n\r\n- And then on top of that, I have some students who are also encouraged because of how they work well. Write the question down as they're asking you the question. Even if you have to ask them to repeat it, that gives you a few more seconds to kind of formulate your thoughts as well and still play it, in quote, cool while in that interview.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- So y'all wanna know what I hate?\r\n\r\n- Yeah, tell us.\r\n\r\n- STAR method.\r\n\r\n- We still like our job though, it's great, we like it.\r\n\r\n- We do.\r\n\r\n- It's on our website. You can see it.\r\n\r\n- The method in interviewing guide.\r\n\r\n- Well, not the method. Maybe I'm a contrarian, I don't know. But it's one of those things that I feel like it's overplayed. And I get why it exists. It is something\r\n\r\n- Oh.\r\n\r\n- To help to guide you into formulating a response that's clear and coherent. As someone who tends to ramble, it also has helped me. My brain is all over the place, so I do appreciate a STAR method when I'm organizing my thoughts. But at the end of the day, I think we rely too heavily upon it. It's like the whole script, really, the STAR method is embedded into that concept of having a script for whatever you do. So thinking about the STAR method as something that we have to organize our thoughts in that way, shape or form in the response that we are giving, then it becomes something that makes us sound robotic. It makes us sound like we have over-prepared and it doesn't sound relatable.\r\n\r\n- Yeah, I mean, I'd have to agree as well too. Like, I think a lot of the times the thing that we say is use this as a template, use this as guidance, use this to inspire you. I think, for me, that's kind of what the STAR method is too. Particularly for those students who are like, I need a process. Awesome, let me show you what this is. You know, tell you how to navigate it. But also, remember, again, we have to bring in those components of you being authentically you, showing, you know, those different things as well too. So use this as a guide since you really are passionate about having a guide and then, you know, even if I say take some time, think about some things that you would say, schedule a follow up, we can go about it that way. But I think, for me, that STAR method is something that I use as a guide to help students who feel like they need, again, those kind of processes in place for themselves.\r\n\r\n- So do you, Rudi, do you hate STAR as a learning tool or hate STAR, like, being used in interviews altogether? Like, which one do you dislike when you say you don't like STAR? Because I'm not against it as like a training thing. Like you were saying, Nicole, but like I wouldn't get rid of it altogether. You trying to get rid of STAR altogether?\r\n\r\n- No.\r\n\r\n- Okay, just wanna make sure 'cause I can't-\r\n\r\n- I won't burn it down. There's some things that I do wanna burn down.\r\n\r\n- Okay, okay. I can't get my torch for that one, okay. I just wanna make sure.\r\n\r\n- He did say it helped him because he was rambling.\r\n\r\n- Okay, that's true, that's true.\r\n\r\n- Don't, don't cut it out, okay.\r\n\r\n- Aight, aight, aight.\r\n\r\n- Lead a revolution STAR now.\r\n\r\n- Now if we wanna get rid of something, let's talk about case interviewing. Let's burn that down.\r\n\r\n- Oh, love it.\r\n\r\n- We still love our business financing consultant.\r\n\r\n- Oh, sorry about that.\r\n\r\n- Do we need to pause, Nic?\r\n\r\n- We should have censored this section.\r\n\r\n- Sorry about that, sorry, sorry.\r\n\r\n- Oops.\r\n\r\n- But I mean, honestly think, you know, as we're all sitting here, kind of like burn that, torch that, get rid of that, like, I mean, that goes back to how we, or anyway, how I view interviews. Like, stop making it such a behemoth and realize that it is truly an exchange of information between two people. And there's gonna be some stuff that they don't know, so they're gonna ask you. And there's gonna be some stuff that you don't know, so we highly encourage you to ask them, right. Versus you know, this is it, this is the make or break, this is a do or die. Also, what's meant for you will be for you. So find a way to find a lesson in something or just count it as some practice if for some reason it doesn't happen to go your way. But as much as I possibly can, I try to take away the heaviness that, you know, students feel an interview is. And I think that's kind of speaking across kind of what we're talking about because we have all these methods to tell you how you should do it. And I think that just improve, or not improves, adds onto the stress of interviewing.\r\n\r\n- Interviewing, yeah.\r\n\r\n- It's just a conversation. Just tell your story. And kind of alluding to what Nicole was saying when you're in this interview, you asking questions, but just as much as they're interviewing you, you are interviewing them.\r\n\r\n- Yes.\r\n\r\n- Because you may do your research, and go to the website, and learn about the company's values, projects, and they align with what you want. But also what Kai is saying, I gotta work with these people eight hours a day. So if you sit down in the interview, you can kind of catch the vibe, just as much as you are interviewing with them, it's vice versa.\r\n\r\n- Mm-hmm. So you wanna know what makes me mad?\r\n\r\n- Yes.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- When students don't think about what are questions I should ask of them.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- Right.\r\n\r\n- That was-\r\n\r\n- Yes.\r\n\r\n- The perfect .\r\n\r\n- Hit it again, come on, hit it again, hit it again.\r\n\r\n- There you go. All right, again, because you should have some questions.\r\n\r\n- Right.\r\n\r\n- You should want to know more. Even if it's not about the position and you have a handle on what it is that you'll be doing because they did such a great job in the job description, I wanna know what happens during your free time. Do we gather as an office on a certain day just to enjoy each other's company? There should be something you should ask. It shouldn't necessarily be, \"No, I don't have any questions.\" You should have some kind of questions. And additionally, if you can't think of any questions, there is a great resource that's available on the Career Hub. It's about 55 questions you can ask of a company and it breaks it down into different areas about the business, about the culture. So we have questions prepared for you that way. But please, please, please, please have at least two to three questions to ask at the end of the interview when they say, \"Well, that's all we have. What do you have for us?\" Don't leave it blank.\r\n\r\n- Be nosy-\r\n\r\n- Yes.\r\n\r\n- But not Kai nosy.\r\n\r\n- Unh-unh.\r\n\r\n- Ooh.\r\n\r\n- You know, you want me to spill some tea real quick? You know what I love asking employers in the moment?\r\n\r\n- What?\r\n\r\n- What?\r\n\r\n- I don't know if I can say this.\r\n\r\n- We can edit.\r\n\r\n- Well, okay, let me think about how to put it a professional way. Yes, definitely ask them questions. Because most times, employers will come, their stuff will feel scripted. Like, they'll feel like they're reading just straight from the sheet. Okay, tell me about a challenge. Thank you, okay. Which I get they have to do sometimes for, you know, HR stuff.\r\n\r\n- HR.\r\n\r\n- Right. But my thing is I love asking them, you know, so I'm really excited about the opening. Could you tell me a little bit more about, you know, what brought about this new position being posted? Like, did you go through organizational restructure? Did somebody recently leave the team? Like, you don't say it exactly like that, but you do your little bit of digging and nosiness to let them know like, \"Hey, I'm not\"-\r\n\r\n- I'm not just applying to apply.\r\n\r\n- Right. I'm not trying to get got.\r\n\r\n- You know.\r\n\r\n- But I'm definitely-\r\n\r\n- Right.\r\n\r\n- Scanning you out, figuring you out at the same time. I love doing that.\r\n\r\n- You're interviewing them. Yeah.\r\n\r\n- I love seeing 'em shake in they boots. I'm like , I gotcha. But that's one too.\r\n\r\n- And it's not always an I gotcha moment-\r\n\r\n- Mmm.\r\n\r\n- But again-\r\n\r\n- Okay.\r\n\r\n- Like, if somebody, if I was interviewing and somebody was to ask me that, I'd be like, wow, all right.\r\n\r\n- Right.\r\n\r\n- You know, thank you for that. You know, you wanna know. I mean, that could lead into what kind of professional development are we offering.\r\n\r\n- Right.\r\n\r\n- What are we doing to keep our employees happy? Like, you know, that is a very powerful, thoughtful question to ask.\r\n\r\n- Right.\r\n\r\n- I personally have asked in an interview setting, what keeps you coming here every day.\r\n\r\n- Yup.\r\n\r\n- And sometimes the faces you can it, whew, I read that entire Zoom call.\r\n\r\n- Yup.\r\n\r\n- 'Cause you could just see the drop and it's like, okay, so I get a sense of what's going on. And then you would see somebody kinda light up and try to answer it. So yeah, it just-\r\n\r\n- They really do be trying.\r\n\r\n- I mean, you know, you try to-\r\n\r\n- Corporate programming.\r\n\r\n- Right, you know, you try to remain positive.\r\n\r\n- Right\r\n\r\n- As you can, but not so delusional that when you get the person in, they be like, oh, y'all got me. I got to go, right.\r\n\r\n- Right.\r\n\r\n- Because then that turnover happens again. But yeah, that was a good question for them.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- And it showed me a lot.\r\n\r\n- I love being a bit nosy.\r\n\r\n- I think that speaks to something that's really important to remember too, which is that the interview's just about you. It's also about that employer. It's about what they're thinking. Yes, they have a script but they don't have your script.\r\n\r\n- Right.\r\n\r\n- And they don't know what's going on in your mind and you don't know what's going on in their mind. And so the best thing you can do is try to be relatable, try to read the room, try to be there with them and acknowledge that while they may, yes, be tallying marks on a piece of paper or taking notes. At the end of the day, they're just trying to figure out as much as you're trying to figure out. And that's why it's more of a conversation than it is a test. And I think we're so programmed into thinking that when we go into this situation, it's a test. We have to do well on this. We have to score an A. And really, that's not, you're on a different grading scale. It's not like that at all.\r\n\r\n- And I think it's important to, as much as Kai hates it, also, there's a difference, right, between a behavioral interview, a technical interview, a casing interview, right. So again, doing your research and making sure, because there's a difference between all the three of them.\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- So you might have to put in a little bit more and feel like you're being tested on a technical aspect because you are.\r\n\r\n- What it is, yeah.\r\n\r\n- Right, so that, you know, so I think there's place and space and where they apply. But also, I think we're kind of heavily talking about that behavioral aspect and really understanding what it is. It's the same way when we tell students don't regurgitate your resume. They have it in front of them. So think a little bit more broader. I don't wanna say deeper 'cause you don't have to tell them that deep. But think a little bit more broader when you're preparing for these interviews versus being literal.\r\n\r\n- Yeah. Oh, it's time to go?\r\n\r\n- I think so. Yeah. Did I do another drop the mic moment?\r\n\r\n- Yeah.\r\n\r\n- I mean, we done all we can do.\r\n\r\n- We've done all we can do.\r\n\r\n- Is there a button sound for that?\r\n\r\n- There it is.\r\n\r\n- It is a conversation.\r\n\r\n- Stop talking and relate, that's my STAR method. Had to get that in there. How scripted is too scripted? We don't know. We kind of gave you some answers, we hope that helped. Anyways, this has been \"What's Career Got to Do With It?\" We hope to see you next time, even though we don't see you 'cause it's a podcast.\r\n\r\n- Bye.\r\n\r\n- Bye, y'all.\r\n\r\n- Bye.","author_name":"Sandhya Pakala","html":"\u003Ciframe width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/warpwire.duke.edu\/w\/83UIAA\/\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media; camera; microphone; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003E\u003C\/iframe\u003E","height":360,"width":640,"thumbnail_height":360,"thumbnail_width":640,"url":"https:\/\/warpwire.duke.edu\/w\/83UIAA\/","type":"video","title":"Preparing for the Interview \u2013How Scripted is too Scripted","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/warpwire.duke.edu\/img\/10ED13AE-DB77-4E78-BDAA-21F9B14D30E1\/139E370A-EE07-450C-9FE2-9781F496C44B\/large\/"}