The One Thing You Must Do Before Every Interview, According to Career Influencer Anna Papalia

How someone prepares—or doesn’t—for an interview can vary widely depending on the industry. But according to career influencer and Interviewology CEO Anna Papalia, there is one thing that everyone should do before meeting with a hiring manager.

Papalia recently joined editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike for a conversation at Marie Claire's Power Play summit in Philadelphia, which has been released as this week's episode of "Nice Talk". She’s made interviewing into something of a science, identifying four distinct categories that she says capture every interviewing style.

Whether you're a "charmer", "challenger", "examiner", or "harmonizer," Papalia says before an interview "think your way into the job."

"It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 50, my clients all have very similar fears, and that is: I don't think I'm good enough," the author of Interviewology: The New Science of Interviewing, explains.

Papalia says that people tend to focus on the reasons they don't deserve or aren't qualified for a job. They "get in their heads and they think: Well, I didn't finish college, or This last job wasn't the way I wanted it, or I got laid off, or I don't have everything on the job description. I mean, you name it. There's a million things you could think your way out of a job, but instead, think your way into the job."

Papalia suggests deliberately changing the way you speak to yourself prior to an interview.

"A mantra I coach people on all the time is, before an interview, you tell yourself: 'They would be lucky to hire me.' Everyone goes into interviews [thinking], 'They're not going to hire me.' Well, yeah, with that attitude, no, I wouldn't either. It starts with self-belief first."

Papalia acknowledges that building confidence isn’t easy. She says it starts with knowing yourself and being comfortable staying true to who you are—something that will naturally come across in interviews.

The biggest mistake Papalia saw applicants "making over and over and over again is they thought that they had to tell people what they wanted to hear and have these perfect answers. There is no such thing. There is no perfect interview answer. There is no perfect way to be ... But, man, when you come in confident, and they're like: 'That girl can do the job.' They didn't know that. That's what they needed. You just went in and you owned who you were."

For more from Papalia—including why she considers "networking" to be a "dirty word"—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.