There’s Only One Right Answer To The 'How Are You?' Question In A Job Interview, According To A Career Coach
If you're messing up the small talk, you're probably messing up the interview!
sturti | Getty Images Signature | Canva Pro Job seekers have to jump through so many hoops these days to even get an interview that it often feels like the only parts of them that matter are the meat — your qualifications, your education, your career goals.
Yet one expert says all too many workers these days mess up a seemingly insignificant part of an interview that makes a far bigger impact than most of us realize.
A career coach said that there's only one right answer to the 'How are you?' question in a job interview.
Anna Papalia is a veteran HR professional, teacher, and speaker who literally wrote the book on job interviewing — she's the author of "Interviewology: The New Science of Interviewing." In it, she explains that each of us falls into one of four styles of job interviewees, the success of which is all dependent on one vitally important skill: self-awareness.
For many of us, that self-awareness piece, or perhaps the lack thereof, tends to start us off on the wrong foot right from the jump.
"At the beginning of a job interview, they're going to say 'How are you' and they're also going to say 'Did you have any problems finding us,'" Papalia said in a TikTok. "There's only one right answer to this question," she said, and a lot of us are getting it wrong.
She said that many of us give way too much information in job interview small talk.
Papalia said it's important to remember that small is a "formality" — questions like "How are you?" and "Did you have any trouble finding us?" are ones to which the interviewer does not want or care about the actual answer.
"This is not therapy," Papalia bluntly stated. "When someone in a job interview asks you, 'How are you?' you say, 'I'm great, thank you, how are you?'" And then you shut up! The same goes for the question about commute problems. "You say, 'No, none at all, the commute was really easy,'" Papalia said. And then that's that. Hush!
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My folksy, Southern grandmother was a legendary oversharer who constantly answered a cashier's "How you doing?" with a monologue. "Honey, I don't know whether I'm comin' or goin'," she'd say. "My arthritis is killin' me, my knees are givin' me fits, and the doctor says I gotta have my gall bladder out. It don't rain, it pours!"
Depending on who the cashier was that day, they'd either find her insane or endearing — or maybe endearingly insane. Obviously, she was an extreme example, but many of us assume we're connecting or humanizing ourselves by being candid in response to these questions. In a job interview, Papalia insisted this has the opposite impact.
Overanswering these small talk questions can fill your interviewer's head with red flags.
"I don't care if you had to make three transfers and you almost missed your train, you are not going to say that in the job interview," Papalia said, "because if you say that they're going to think, 'Ugh, they're never gonna get here on time or the commute's too long for them.'"
Likewise with the "how are you" question — if you take my grandma's oversharing tack, you're filling the interviewer's head with all kinds of potential problems you might have that will interfere with your performance.
Papalia said this can be especially problematic when it comes to "company culture," which, no matter what a company says, is always at least partly about conformity. Oversharing tells them you swim more upstream than a lot of others do.
Papalia advised keeping your answers short, simple, and positive.
Papalia said the small talk part of a job interview is actually very easy: "You are optimistic, happy, excited, easy, and you're agreeable," she said — whether or not you actually ARE any of those things isn't the point.
In the end, this all comes down to that self-awareness piece Papalia talks about in her book — you have to know how you're coming off to the person you're talking to. People may have found my grandma's candor endearing, but nobody was gonna hire ol' Wanda (yes, her name was Wanda) to work in a cubicle — she'd have distracted everyone with anecdotes about dropping her school books down the outhouse in Arkansas or whatever.
Ultimately, the working world is a game, and you have to play it at least somewhat by its rules. As Papalia put it, "don't overcomplicate this" — and save the gall bladder stories for therapy!
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.