College Interview — How to Create a Deep Chemical Connection with Your Interviewer with Three Simple Linguistic Techniques That Change Brain Chemistry

Written by Nina, UCLA MA; Former Teaching Fellow, Harvard University; and author of 20 textbooks and a novel

The natural response to a college interview is to be nervous. High levels of cortisol and adrenaline course through the body, causing you to feel unmoored.  But what if you could substitute "feel good" chemicals linguistically for these negative chemicals? I don't just mean that you'll feel good. I'm saying you can cause your interviewer to enjoy the interview and remember you positively. 

Let's take a common interview question and see how three different linguistic techniques can change the brain chemistry in the interviewer. 

What specific chemicals can you change in the interviewer?

Dopamine. This chemical will create increased focus, motivation, and memory (of you).

How can you linguistically increase dopamine in the brain of the interviewer? With a story.

A common interview question might be, "Tell me about yourself." You can answer this in many ways, but if you want to increase the dopamine in the interviewer, you would answer this question with a story. In this example, I'll answer this question with a story from my own life.

Interviewer:  "Tell me about yourself."

Me:  "I'm very motivated, and I don't give up on my goals.  When I wanted to publish my first novel, I kept getting rejections. With each rejection, I threw myself into learning more by going to several writing conferences, taking more writing classes, regularly reworking the material, and sharing rewritten drafts of my book with my weekly writing group. I don't know how many times I rewrote that book, but I got over 100 rejections, which were gut-wrenching. It took seven years, but the novel was finally published, won some national book awards, and sold internationally and in paperback."

Oxytocin. Oxytocin is sometimes called the "love hormone". It can also increase the interviewer's feelings of trust and bonding. According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "one storytelling session with hospitalized children leads to an increase in oxytocin. . . and positive emotional shift".

The story you tell to release oxytocin is much more personal and emotionally revealing than the story you tell to release dopamine. The more emotionally personal the story, the more trust and empathy are created in the interviewer/listener.

Here's the second example from my own life.

Interviewer: "Tell me about yourself."

Me: “I readjusted my values after my father got Alzheimer's disease. He was a very intelligent person, a flight engineer who could fix anything with a motor. When he wasn't flying commercially, he was piloting his own small aircraft. If I had to choose one word to embody the most important thing to my father, it was "freedom". That's why he flew. After his diagnosis, he had to be in a locked memory care facility for his own safety. Before he was in the memory care unit, he'd wandered around during the middle of the night, knocking on stranger's doors because he'd forgotten how to get home. He'd talked about taking his private airplane up, but we worried that he might not remember how to land it.

One day when I went to visit him in the care unit, he was staring at the TV. I greeted him, but he looked at me blankly. I said, "Hi, Dad," but he clearly didn't know who I was. He'd forgotten his daughter.

On that day, something became very clear to me. It's easy to buy into the "me" that has achieved "x" and "y" and to get so caught up that we think those represent the most important things. The most important thing shifted for me on that day to memories; particularly memories of my family. I never want to forget my family members and what they mean to me, and when I get lazy about eating the best diet I can, having the healthiest habits, and exercising regularly, I remember my lesson on that day."

Compare your response in this example from my own life to the previous story. Did the stories make you feel different? If so, in what way?

Endorphins. Laughter creates endorphins; feelings of being relaxed and having a good time. If the interviewer has a good time, he or she will likely remember you favorably.

The third example from my own life.

Interviewer: "Tell me about yourself."

Me: "At this stage, I'd like to write children's books. I love the way young children look at the world sideways or sometimes upside down. When my son was three years old, his pre school teacher had a rule that all children had to clean their desks at the end of the class. While my son was doing what he thought was a good job, his teacher came by and said, "No, no. Use some elbow grease!" He was totally confused until he figured it out. He put his elbows on the desk and started scrubbing the desk with them."

In conclusion, remember that words are the foundation of communication, but they're just Step 1.  The emotion the words create are what the interviewer will remember.