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Thursday, October 23, 2025
How ‘answer inflation’ bores recruiters, sinks jobs applicants
www.fastcompany.com: The job market is rough. So when candidates are landing interviews, they’re often cramming every skill, accomplishment, and experience they can muster into the interview process, hoping to edge out the competition.
Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong.
This rings so true to me. I think the majority of interviews are not just tests but ways for hiring managers to see if they want to work with the person. Often time it ends up being alot more important in an interview if you seem not only easy going and easy to work with, but fun to be around. Of course it depends on the type of job, but people like someone that doesn't bore you. No one likes someone that talks about themselves too much. So answer inflation, and/or answering questions in paragraphs and paragraphs shows that someone is incapable of certain social cues. Which honestly sucks because yes, it is an interview, but i feel like you shouldnt act like it. Its important to find the right amount of professionalism with the ability to read the room. And its hard because when you step into an interview, you are doing your best to manipulate the social situation in your favor.
I think this was an interesting article to read because I understand where it's coming from, and I know I fall into the pitfalls of some of the things they've mentioned into before, but I also don't know if it's fully taking into effect the actual realities of the job market at this point in time. For example, they're having a couple interviews that I have had where the person who has been interviewing me arrived late, and I knew I had a very limited window of time in order to sell them on myself. I think that I didn't do answer inflation, but it is important to know how to successfully jam bits and pieces of what makes you a good candidate into questions that might be more surface level. I think that sometimes what I prefer to do is lead with a more funny anecdote, and then expand on why it made me a good candidate after expanding on why the anecdote was funny. However, this is not always possible. I know exactly why I shouldn't do this, and I try my best to stop myself from doing this, but I do also think that it just can be a nerve thing.
I think this article stood out to me because my portfolio website falls victim to this idea of showing everything which becomes overwhelming and not useful to a viewer. I think concision is one of my greatest enemies but I like the points the article brings up in argument against showing the world vs showing like three advanced, interesting countries. I also like the addressing of the age-old question in interviews “tell me about yourself.” While I usually prep myself to be asked that question it still overwhelms me as I never know whether to talk about where I am in life as in school/work, or what kind of work I do, or something entirely different. I like the article’s template of giving one strong point about what you are doing currently. It informs them of the most recent job you’ve had and why you’re the “solution” to the hirer’s “problem.”
Cutting through the noise of technology and getting to a real person and not an infographic or chart is a challenge on its own. Talking and impressing someone in 30 minutes or less is even harder. I grew up right in the transition between children not having a phone with them 24/7. When I was finishing middle school and starting high school, elementary school students had their iphones to keep them busy. I feel like this technology is primarily for keeping kids busy and not bothering other people or at least that's one of the worst side effects. Technology gives a flood of information, noise, and time sinks that face to face interaction is low and worse than it has ever been. So when a new generation is brought up on being self contained in a broader sense than anyone else has before. Making that first, lasting impression is harder and more difficult.
I wish interviews were more straightforward. It’s difficult enough to land one these days, with all the AI-regulated hiring processes and “invisible jobs” floating around the market. I always see posts that are like “here’s how to answer the tricky ‘tell me about yourself’ interview question!” but those posts usually dodge around the point and don’t give you an actual answer. I still feel like this answer is weird though. “Tell me about yourself” except what they’re really asking for is why you’d be a good asset as a worker. The better way to word the question would be “tell me about why you’re good at what you do,” but of course we can’t have THAT because that sound too dystopian. This article is just a crazy way of saying “companies don’t care about you, just your value.” Which is true I suppose. Previously, all of my interviews have been for minimum wage jobs (which exist to prove you can actually think,) and college interviews (which were for a hyperspecific major and didn’t usually ask the “tell me about yourself” question.)
5 comments:
This rings so true to me. I think the majority of interviews are not just tests but ways for hiring managers to see if they want to work with the person. Often time it ends up being alot more important in an interview if you seem not only easy going and easy to work with, but fun to be around. Of course it depends on the type of job, but people like someone that doesn't bore you. No one likes someone that talks about themselves too much. So answer inflation, and/or answering questions in paragraphs and paragraphs shows that someone is incapable of certain social cues. Which honestly sucks because yes, it is an interview, but i feel like you shouldnt act like it. Its important to find the right amount of professionalism with the ability to read the room. And its hard because when you step into an interview, you are doing your best to manipulate the social situation in your favor.
I think this was an interesting article to read because I understand where it's coming from, and I know I fall into the pitfalls of some of the things they've mentioned into before, but I also don't know if it's fully taking into effect the actual realities of the job market at this point in time. For example, they're having a couple interviews that I have had where the person who has been interviewing me arrived late, and I knew I had a very limited window of time in order to sell them on myself. I think that I didn't do answer inflation, but it is important to know how to successfully jam bits and pieces of what makes you a good candidate into questions that might be more surface level. I think that sometimes what I prefer to do is lead with a more funny anecdote, and then expand on why it made me a good candidate after expanding on why the anecdote was funny. However, this is not always possible. I know exactly why I shouldn't do this, and I try my best to stop myself from doing this, but I do also think that it just can be a nerve thing.
I think this article stood out to me because my portfolio website falls victim to this idea of showing everything which becomes overwhelming and not useful to a viewer. I think concision is one of my greatest enemies but I like the points the article brings up in argument against showing the world vs showing like three advanced, interesting countries. I also like the addressing of the age-old question in interviews “tell me about yourself.” While I usually prep myself to be asked that question it still overwhelms me as I never know whether to talk about where I am in life as in school/work, or what kind of work I do, or something entirely different. I like the article’s template of giving one strong point about what you are doing currently. It informs them of the most recent job you’ve had and why you’re the “solution” to the hirer’s “problem.”
Cutting through the noise of technology and getting to a real person and not an infographic or chart is a challenge on its own. Talking and impressing someone in 30 minutes or less is even harder. I grew up right in the transition between children not having a phone with them 24/7. When I was finishing middle school and starting high school, elementary school students had their iphones to keep them busy. I feel like this technology is primarily for keeping kids busy and not bothering other people or at least that's one of the worst side effects. Technology gives a flood of information, noise, and time sinks that face to face interaction is low and worse than it has ever been. So when a new generation is brought up on being self contained in a broader sense than anyone else has before. Making that first, lasting impression is harder and more difficult.
I wish interviews were more straightforward. It’s difficult enough to land one these days, with all the AI-regulated hiring processes and “invisible jobs” floating around the market. I always see posts that are like “here’s how to answer the tricky ‘tell me about yourself’ interview question!” but those posts usually dodge around the point and don’t give you an actual answer. I still feel like this answer is weird though. “Tell me about yourself” except what they’re really asking for is why you’d be a good asset as a worker. The better way to word the question would be “tell me about why you’re good at what you do,” but of course we can’t have THAT because that sound too dystopian. This article is just a crazy way of saying “companies don’t care about you, just your value.” Which is true I suppose. Previously, all of my interviews have been for minimum wage jobs (which exist to prove you can actually think,) and college interviews (which were for a hyperspecific major and didn’t usually ask the “tell me about yourself” question.)
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