- If you're interviewing for a job, you probably want to appear confident about your abilities. Be wary, however, that you don't take it too far.
- Walter Robb, co-CEO of Whole Foods, says that over-promoting yourself definitely won't get you hired at his company.
- That works for interviews at Google as well, although if you're interviewing at Oracle, you might want to take a different approach.
- Ultimately, be aware of your audience — of the culture of the company that you're interviewing for, and how you'll want to best present yourself.
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Job interviewing is about persuading a company you're the perfect person for the job, but you have to make sure you don't appear overconfident or delusional about your abilities.
That's according to Walter Robb, co-CEO of Whole Foods.
In a 2016 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Robb said the one trait that won't get someone hired is "a lack of humility and an over sense of self-promotion," and he isn't alone in steering away from arrogance.
As Thomas L. Friedman writes in The New York Times, Google places a similar value on humility. One of the core traits the company hires for is intellectual humility, or the ability to learn quickly, even when you fail, because your ego isn't too tied to your own solution.
According to Laszlo Bock, Google's former SVP of people operations, your ownership over your own solutions must be combined with humility to accept better solutions from others. Only then will you be able to contribute most effectively to Google as a whole.
"What we've seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position," Bock told Friedman. "But then you say, 'here's a new fact,' and they'll go, 'Oh, well, that changes things; you're right.' " You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time."
So how, exactly, do you strike that balance between confidence and humility during a job interview?
In The Harvard Business Review, John Baldoni said it's important to talk about coworkers' contributions to solving problems, instead of just your own.
And over at Forbes, Margie Warrell suggests that instead of promoting yourself, you promote your value, meaning that you show how you can contribute to the success of others and the organization overall.
Of course, there are some execs who look for confidence and self-promotion. Oracle cofounder and former CEO Larry Ellison, for example, used to train recruiters to ask candidates if they were the smartest person they knew.
If they said yes, they were hired.
So ultimately, success in a job interview may come down to knowing your audience. For a general rule, however, if you constantly present yourself well, emphasize how you fit in with the company as a whole and back up positive statements with anecdotes or data, you shouldn't come across as arrogant.
Chances are good that the company is looking for some degree of humility, but they may also want to hear you toot your horn when it comes to certain desirable traits and skills.
SEE ALSO: The ultimate guide to nailing your job interview
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