Why Delivery Counts in an Interview

I love working with college students and young adults as they launch their careers. It's rewarding to help them navigate the transition from academics to real life. So I was happy to step in recently as a mock interviewer at a local university event.

The students arrived well prepared with good experience to share, and fairly good responses to my practice questions.

What I noticed, however, was that many interviewees didn't spend as much time preparing for the delivery of those answers, as they did on the development of them. By "delivery" I mean the way you communicate using elements other than your words. For example:

body languagefacial expressionsgestureseye contactthe volume, tone and inflection of your voice

Why does this matter to you? Some researchers assert that 55% - 80% of communication is non-verbal. Let's assume this applies to interviews as well. That means I'm evaluating you not just on what you say, but how you say it.

Think of the interview as a way to leave a "whole person" impression of who you are, what you know and what it will be like to work with you. An excellent delivery will help you accomplish that.

When you think about it, if delivery didn't matter in an interview, I would ask you to e-mail written answers to my list of questions, and we would go from there. But that's not how it works. Interviewers want to know much more than your answers, they want to know who you are as a person. They want to get a sense for how you'll show up in the workplace.

So as you prepare for an interview focus on both your verbal and non-verbal behaviors to tell your story, and respond to questions, in a way that:

is authentically youflows comfortably and easilyincludes non-verbal cues that support your engagement in the conversationexudes confidence in your answersis professional and respectfulshowcases you as the potential employee this team will want to work with

Investing in the extra time to prepare will really take the anxiety out of the interview experience, improve your outcome and boost your confidence.

You can improve your delivery by spending time preparing, rehearsing and recording your interview responses. That's right, if you want to know how you appear to others, take a video of you responding to some role play questions. You'll see pretty quickly what you need to do to improve your delivery.

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