Every placement season at IIM Ahmedabad, companies would arrive on campus looking for people to hire. As a professor of communication, I had the privilege of watching this process from a vantage point very different from that of the students preparing for interviews.
For students, understandably, the interview could feel like a high-stakes evaluation. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I don’t know an answer? What if they find a reason to reject me?
But from the other side, something was equally apparent. These organisations had come to campus precisely because they wanted to hire. They had invested time and resources in recruitment. They wanted to find someone.
Recruiters want to hire you.
It sounds obvious. But it is almost the opposite of the psychology with which many of us approach interviews.
We imagine the interviewer sitting across from us looking for weaknesses. A difficult question feels like a trap. A moment’s hesitation feels disastrous. We enter the room thinking that our job is to avoid giving them a reason to reject us.
But think about the situation from the recruiter’s perspective.
They have a position to fill. They have spent time identifying candidates, reading applications, and conducting interviews. If you are sitting across from them, they already think you could be good for the role. They hope the conversation goes well. They would like you to turn out to be the person they came looking for.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t evaluating you. Of course they are. However, do not make the mistake of conflating evaluation with hostility. That distinction can change the way you experience an interview.
If you assume that the interviewer is looking for reasons to reject you, you begin anticipating traps. You become defensive. You overthink questions. You may become so preoccupied with producing the “correct” answer that you stop listening to what is actually being asked.
Instead, try asking yourself:
“What does this person need to know in order to feel confident hiring me?”
Then prepare accordingly. Think “What anecdotes, story buckets can help the interviewer see me in this position?”
Your task is not to produce a flawless performance. It is to help them understand what you can do, how you think, what you might bring to the role, and see you in that role.
A difficult question can then become something other than a threat. Perhaps there is an uncertainty they are trying to resolve. Perhaps they want to see how you think. Perhaps they are trying to understand whether something you have done before translates to what they need.
There is another psychological shift that follows from this:
You are not asking someone to do you a favour by hiring you.
They need something. You offer something. And the interview is a conversation in which both sides are trying to determine whether those things match.
And it really is both sides. While they are deciding whether they want to hire you, you are also learning about them. Do you want to work with these people? Does this role offer what you are looking for? Are their expectations compatible with yours?
Of course, none of this means you will always get the job.
You can have an excellent interview and still be rejected. Fitment is incredibly important. Recruitment is not necessarily a ranking exercise in which the “best” candidate wins. It is often about finding the person whose skills, experience, interests, and ways of working align most closely with the requirements of a particular role. A rejection, therefore, does not automatically mean that you performed poorly or were somehow inadequate. In fact, sometimes this can work in your favour, keeping you from ending up somewhere that clashes with your personality or working style.
What is important to remember is this: rejection is a possible outcome of an interview. It doesn’t have to be the assumption with which you enter one.
So the next time you walk into an interview, try replacing:
“They are looking for a reason to reject me.”
with:
“They are hoping I might be the person they are looking for.”
Because very often, they are. They want to hire you. Give them the opportunity to do so.
Dr Sai Amulya Komarraju 