The Résumé Studio Blog

It was 6:45 p.m. more than a decade ago, and I’d just met for coffee with the board president of a New York organization where I was helping assess the prospects for a turnaround.

She had 20 minutes to spare, but I had at least an hour of details to hammer through. Staff to be paid. Deadlines to be met.

At 70 m.p.h, I relayed budget numbers and donor strategy, program results and marketing plans, government funding gaps and vendor relationships.

Too fast!

At about 10 minutes in, she took a sip of tea, blinked, and asked me to slow down.

“What?” I thought. Here was the general counsel of a New York hedge fund. Couldn’t she keep up?

I slowed down and we spent the next ten minutes profitably.

As we parted, she leaned in: “You know I like you. But if I’d just met you, I wouldn’t have been impressed during those first ten minutes.”

Call it New York. Call it the lawyer in her. Whatever. Call it right.

What she saw was this: 

• A disconnect from my normal professional composure
• A frenetic connection to detail, when an overview would have been better
• A waste of time with little focus

Next time, I was prepared, and the experience transformed how I communicated from then forward.

Working with mid-career professionals today, I’m always surprised when some haven’t mastered the ability to synthesize data. The same was true when I was still interviewing candidates as a recruiter. People struggling to slow down and communicate at the level both they and I knew they were able.

There’s a time and place for everything. A time to lead, a time to follow. A time to detail, and a time to summarize.

Being able to assess the purpose and tone of an interaction is vital to getting what you want.

It’s true whether interviewing for a job or meeting a friend for drinks.

If you sense that your own motor-mouth tendencies have gone unchecked — or that they might resurface while interviewing for a new job — here are some ways to reign yourself in:

• Consider your purpose, it is king
• Lead with big ideas, they will lead the back-and-forth of a normal conversation
• Distill the conversation, always leading top-down
• Create connections between topics, human beings like continuity
• Ask questions, your goal is likely a joint effort

Filed under: Job Search Tips, Mostly Young Professionals |