How Having Improv Skills Can Be a Game Changer for Your Next Interview
Interviewing for a new role, especially in a tough economy, can be both exciting and stressful. Not only are all the normal interviewing stressors present, but you have to find a natural way to showcase the best version of yourself. Learning improvisation is a great avenue to help you tap into the skills you need to feel confident, prepared, ready to tackle your interview, either online or in-person.
Let’s break down a few ways improvisation can help you with your next interview:
Allowing Your Thoughts to Flow
Do you ever find yourself at the end of an interview, wishing you had gotten your point across more clearly? Or maybe you find yourself all of the sudden on a tangent you wish hadn’t taken. This all comes down to being able to properly allow your thoughts to flow so you can communicate exactly what you want to say. And hey, interviewing can be a unique and stressful encounter. Good news is, when you think about your objective before the interview, improv teaches you to be flexible on how to meet that objective in the moment. When your thought pattern falls off track, you have adopted the mindset to always go back to your main objective. When you allow your thoughts to flow, the conversation becomes easy.
Prepare for the Unknown
The HR recruiter asks a question you weren’t expecting, and all of the sudden, your brain goes into full blown over-think panic mode. We have all been there at some point in our lives! Improv is all about learning how to respond to anything that comes at you in the moment, with confidence and clarity. No matter how many interview questions you practice, you can’t predict what will be coming at you the day of. Improvisation teaches you how to stay calm when a question you aren’t ready for presents itself. The good news is, this skill is not only important in an interview setting, but in everyday work life when dealing with meetings, customer service, and clients.
The Power of Your Story
Telling a good story is the #1 way to get people to remember you. And at the end of the day, an interview is all about how you tell your story. It’s a gateway to establishing an emotional rapport with your potential employer, and connecting with them past the bullet points listed on your resume. If you are interviewing with multiple different companies, every time you approach your story will be different depending on the role and company, but you can still prepare with the basic same elements. Well, that’s how it works with improvisation! You learn the basic elements of how to build a compelling story no matter the prompt. Improv can give you the skills to turn any interview answer into a meaningful story between you and your potential employer. Remember, they already have read your resume, now it’s time to wow them with meaningful connection.
Interested in learning Improvisation to help with your interviewing?
We at Tightrope Impro Theatre have courses designed to help you with these skills plus many more. Check out our upcoming course Improv for Interviews at tightropetheatre.com/improv-for-the-workplace!
Dan and Afro will be your instructors. Combined, they have over 15 years experience with supporting clients through the interview process. They love using the skills they have learned in improv, and applying them to real world experiences, like speaking confidently in interviews!
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