"The interviewer and I really connected," a neighbor gushed. "She said she was going to tell her daughter all about Overeaters Anonymous."
Overeaters Anonymous? How did that find its way into a job interview? Of course, the neighbor didn't get the job. TMI (too much information) is sinking so many employment prospects, ranging from full-time jobs to freelance opportunities.
There are a million ways to explain the TMI epidemic: Oprahitis, the talk cure, narcissism, hangover of Me Decade, loneliness (we're down to 2 people we can talk to), poor boundaries and more. But, as my trusty cognitive therapist Amy Karnilowicz insisted, causes don't cure. What does cure, Karnilowicz (based in West Hartford, CT) hammered and hammered is action: Do things differently.
Here's what I would recommend TMI addicts do to improve their professional prospects:
- Realize that all professional conversations have an agenda. The only effective way to get what you want through talk is to be totally strategic in every word, pause, bit of body language.
- Assume all personal information can and will be held against you. It wasn't until months after my client hired a woman that he discovered she had 3 children. Would he have hired her if she had disclosed that in the interviews? She didn't want to take that risk.
- Answer personal-type questions carefully, but answer them. "What are your hobbies," the interviewer asks. Consider what the interviewer might be searching for. That could range for evidence of passion to getting a sense of what kind of person you are. How I handle this is stating with passion but briefly that for years I have been tutoring adults in literacy skills. That indicates I am an enthusiastic person and civic-minded. Makes me a safe bet.
- Look for signals that the interview is drawing to a close. Often we mistake wrapping it up for a lull in the dialogue that we have to fill. Nervously we start chatting away.
I've only been TMI-free for 35 months. Not vomiting up every sorry detail of my life is still, for this chatterbox, one day at a time.