An interview is a command performance. Make your responses come alive each time!

As the world is besotted by the recent Royal Wedding of William and Kate, consider any interview process as your own command performance to highlight your best attributes - customized specifically for them - and discuss any of your "gaps."

Your selection for the next step, the interview, is terrific news. They think that you have the skills and experience on paper and want to find out whether you will be a "fit" for them?

1. Be committed to the moment. You are there - now! Be totally present and focused on THEM, not yourself. Many people get so caught up in planning to get in what they want to say that they miss the connection of being actively present with the person with whom they are interviewing. This goes both ways, of course. You can be committed to being "in the moment" and you can influence their concentration by being persuasive.
2. Listen actively to make sure you understand what they say - or don't say. They will give you clues from which you can try to understand the question behind the question. What is their true business-related concern? Do not just listen waiting to break in and interject what you want to say. Hear them out completely. Is there a subtle nuance, new direction or emphasis?
3. Know, don't memorize. Being effective in an interview is like being on stage. The beauty and excitement of a live performance is that it is NEW EVERY TIME. A good actor keeps the performance fresh, as if they had never done it before and they are there, performing for this audience alone. The actor feeds off the energy in the room, from the other players and the audience itself. If you are speaking from rote memory it comes across as passive, rehearsed and uninterested, as if you have switched to autopilot. Many people go to films in movie theaters because they think the audience reaction enhances their enjoyment; however, the film never changes. It is exactly the same every time. As you may be asked the same questions by a variety of people during the interview process, your response needs to be as lively and committed the third time as it was the first. You can do that by realizing each time is a new LIVE performance.

By the way, sometimes the interviewer may not be as involved in the interview as you are. It will be hard to be persuasive when they are just perhaps "going through the motions." Realize that the interviewer may:
• not like to interview (judge people or even be a people - person),
• not know how to interview (fairly likely, unless the group for which they interview has a structured process) or
• have other, more pressing, things on their mind, related to work or their personal life or health.
Stay actively "in the moment" and you will have an easier time showing your best self to the interviewer as you step on stage during your command performance.