interviewing
Having proper perspective
A wise man in Ireland pushed a tea cup in front of another man one day, handle pointing directly towards the other man.
The wise man asked, “from where you are sitting, does that tea cup have a handle?”
The other man replied, “of course.”
The wise man then said, “from where I’m sitting, there’s no handle on that cup. It’s all about perspective.”
When we say ‘perspective’, what we’re referring to is how one person might view a situation versus how someone else would view that situation.
One way to see various perspectives, go to your favourite social media platform, click on a news headline, and read all the comments. The comments often reflect perspectives that close themselves off from understanding how other people may see the same situation.
By putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes and changing your perspective you can imagine why they felt a certain way, or why they did something they wouldn’t normally do–that may help you better understand their thought process and reasoning.
This approach is especially beneficial for interviewers. First, having perspective helps you understand what somebody thinks of you when you walk into the interview room. Secondly, taking yourself out of your own perspective helps you think, “If I were this person, what would I need to encourage me to tell the truth today?” Lastly, having perspective helps remove bias.
It helps you realise that there are multiple versions of every story. There are multiple perspectives of each story based on the context in which we see it; is there a handle on that cup?
