An interview isn’t hard because it’s complex. It’s hard because it’s exposed. Someone is waiting on you. There’s a purpose attached to the conversation. There might be a recording light on. There’s a little clock somewhere counting down, even if you can’t see it. All of that pulls the task out of muscle memory and drags it into conscious thought.
How many things do you do in a day? I mean, around the house, getting to work, working, getting home, things. Like making coffee, turning on lights, and preheating the oven. Things that you do every single day, time and time again. How many of those things do you do in one day? Now, take one of those tasks, say making coffee. Break it down to its components. What do you do first, second, third? While you're doing this, try to override muscle memory and approach the task as if it were the first time. Which means, remember far back when you learned to make your first cup of coffee. Now think about all the tasks, all the things you do in one day that are basically controlled by muscle memory. You don’t have to have absolute silence and hawk-like focus to make coffee. Usually, you’re doing in conjunction with reading the paper, making a to-do list, and getting the kids set for school. My point is, there are things we do in life now that we no longer think about how to do.
We usually call this muscle memory, but scientifically it's known as procedural memory, a type of long-term memory in which the brain automates complex motor skills through repetition, making tasks like typing, driving, or playing an instrument require little to no conscious thought and elicit efficient, automatic responses. Consider how much of your life is an automatic response. Huge parts of it, when you really think about it. From waking in the morning to your morning ablutions, all throughout the day, you’re doing things that don’t require your full attention, and you just do them, almost without thought.
This procedural memory happens to us all, but what happens when you decide to break the procedural portion and ask yourself how? For example, Sunday morning, blue skies, sweet air, no hand on your time, so you think, this is the perfect time for a bike ride so, off you go. You know how to ride a bike; you’ve been doing it for decades. But this morning, while riding, you get a little philosophical, and you ask yourself, how am I doing this? How am I balancing on two wheels while moving forward, making directional choices, saying hello to my neighbors, and avoiding the dog? How am I doing this? That question pierces the procedural memory, and suddenly, you just fall over. You thought about it too much; you gave it too much attention, and now you have learned about the paradox of control, also known as the ironic process theory. Basically, what both of these deal with is the idea that the more you try to control something, the more it slips away and gives you the opposite outcome.
Now, at this point, you’re wondering what I'm getting at? Okay, I’ll tell you.
One of the things that is firmly in my muscle memory is interviewing someone. I have interviewed for business, for character building and creation, for pure information, and sometimes just for fun. I have been interviewed on radio, TV, and online, and that is fun, and I understand how to do it. At least I thought I did.
This morning, I was supposed to interview a gentleman to gather information about a company I’m working on messaging for. The interview took place at 7 am, and for some reason, when I got up today, I had no idea how to run an interview. It was like a dog wearing shoes. I was stumbling about, nervous and afraid I would mess it up. But I took a breath, had a cup of joe, and forged ahead.
This is what got me thinking about procedural memory and what we do on reflex, and I thought, I bet there are a lot of people who have to do interviews all the time, or some who are about to do their first interview, and they are nervous, so I decided to write today’s blog on the basics of conducting an interview. How’s that sound?
Why Interviews Feel Harder Than They Are
Here’s the strange part. The moment something becomes important, it stops feeling automatic. You can do it a hundred times without thinking, but the second it matters, really matters, your brain steps in and starts narrating the process. Am I asking the right thing? Am I missing something? Should I be steering this differently?
That narration is the problem.
An interview isn’t hard because it’s complex. It’s hard because it’s exposed. Someone is waiting on you. There’s a purpose attached to the conversation. There might be a recording light on. There’s a little clock somewhere counting down, even if you can’t see it. All of that pulls the task out of muscle memory and drags it into conscious thought.
And conscious thought is clumsy.
It’s the same reason you can drive for miles without thinking about it, but the second you start wondering how you’re staying in your lane, your hands tighten on the wheel. You didn’t forget how to drive. You just started trying to manage something that works best when it’s trusted.
Most interview nerves come from a quiet assumption that you’re supposed to perform. That you’re supposed to sound prepared. You’re supposed to guide the conversation to a specific point and land it cleanly. So you grip the handlebars a little too hard.
The truth is, feeling awkward at the start of an interview isn’t a sign you’re bad at it. It’s a sign you care. And caring has a way of pulling things out of autopilot before you remember how to let them run again.
That’s the wobble. It doesn’t mean you’re about to fall. It just means you noticed the bike.
If this feels right, we’ll move into the next section, where we start quietly dismantling the idea that an interview is a performance at all.
An Interview Is Not a Performance
Most people walk into interviews thinking they need to bring something. Energy. Intelligence. A plan. Good questions. A sense of control. It turns the whole thing into a kind of low-level performance, even when no one has said that’s what it is.
You can feel it when it happens. You start talking a little more than you need to. You explain the question before you ask it. You stack context on top of context so the other person understands why you’re asking, which is usually just another way of reassuring yourself that the question is valid.
That’s not conversation. That’s self-soothing.
The interviewee can feel it too. They start answering the question they think you want instead of the one you asked. Or they stay safe. Or they wait for you to rescue them from silence. Now, both of you are managing the moment instead of being in it.
Here’s the quiet reframe that helps. You’re not there to impress anyone. You’re not there to demonstrate how prepared you are. You’re not even there to prove you know what you’re doing.
You’re there to pay attention.
That’s it. That’s the job. Everything else is extra. When you stop performing and start listening, something interesting happens. The pressure drops. The other person relaxes. The conversation stops feeling like an interview and starts feeling like two people trying to understand something together.
Most good interviews don’t feel good in the moment. They feel ordinary. A little slow. Sometimes slightly uncomfortable. That’s usually a sign you’ve stepped out of performance mode and into something real.
Next, we can move into the one responsibility that actually matters when you’re interviewing, the thing that keeps the bike upright even when you feel a little shaky.
The Only Job You Actually Have
When you strip everything else away, there’s really only one thing you’re responsible for in an interview. Not the flow. Not the outcome. Not even the insight, at least not directly.
Your job is to create enough space for the other person to think out loud.
That’s it.
Most people aren’t asked questions often that require them to slow down and notice what they actually think. They answer emails. They give updates. They stay on script. An interview, when it’s working, interrupts all of that. It gives someone permission to wander a little, to contradict themselves, to discover the answer while they’re saying it.
That doesn’t happen when you rush. It doesn’t happen when you fill the gaps. It doesn’t happen when you jump in to redirect the moment it starts to drift. It happens in the pause.
This is where a lot of interviewers get uncomfortable. Silence feels like failure. Like you’ve lost control. Like you should be doing something. So you step in too early. You save them. You move on. Trading depth for momentum without realizing it.
But silence is often where the useful stuff lives. The pause after the first answer. The moment when they realize they haven’t quite said what they mean yet. If you stay there, just a beat longer than feels polite, people almost always keep going. And when they do, that’s usually when the interview actually starts.
You don’t have to be clever. You don’t have to be fast. You just have to resist the urge to manage the space. Hold it steady. Let them do the work.
Now, can talk about questions themselves, not as a checklist, but as doorways, and why the second question is almost always more important than the first.
Questions Are Just Doorways
Most people put a lot of pressure on the question itself. Is it smart enough? Is it specific enough? Is it the right one? They write them down. They organize them. They worry about the order. All of that feels productive, but it’s mostly misplaced effort.
A question isn’t the thing. It’s the opening.
Think of it like knocking on a door. The knock doesn’t matter nearly as much as what happens after it opens. You’re not trying to show off the knock. You’re just trying to get inside.
This is why interviews fall flat even when the questions are technically good. The interviewer asks the question, gets an answer, and then immediately moves on to the next one, like they’re checking boxes. The door opened, they glanced around, and then they left.
The real work almost always happens in the follow-up. The small turn. The “say more about that.” The moment when something interesting slips out, and you don’t rush past it because it wasn’t on your list.
Good interviewers aren’t hunting for answers. They’re listening for energy. A change in tone. A pause. A word that feels heavier than the rest. That’s the doorway worth walking through.
And this is where you have to let go of your plan a little. The best interviews rarely follow the outline you prepared. They zig when you thought they’d zag. They spend time in places you didn’t expect. That’s not a failure of preparation. That’s the whole point.
The question just gets you in the room. What you notice once you’re there is what actually matters.
Now I want to talk about what to do when you’re mid-interview, you feel lost, the map is gone, and that familiar urge to regain control starts creeping back in.
What To Do When You Feel Lost Mid-Interview
There’s a moment that shows up in almost every interview, even the good ones. You ask something. They answer. And somewhere in the middle of their response, you realize you don’t know where this is going anymore.
This is usually where panic sneaks in. You start scanning for your next question while they’re still talking. You stop listening fully. You think about how to get the conversation back on track, whatever that means.
Here’s the counterintuitive part. That feeling of being lost is often the signal you’re exactly where you should be.
When you don’t know what comes next, it usually means you’re no longer running a script. You’re in real territory now. The instinct is to tighten up, to redirect, to save time. But the better move is almost always to slow down.
Take a breath. Literally. Let them finish. Then sit in the space for a second longer than feels natural.
People hate unfinished thoughts. If you give them room, they will almost always try to complete the idea themselves. And when they do, what comes out is usually more honest than the polished answer they started with.
If you need an anchor, keep it simple. Repeat a phrase they just used. Ask them why that mattered. Ask what made that hard. You don’t need a clever bridge. You just need to stay with them.
Feeling lost doesn’t mean you’ve failed as an interviewer. It means you’ve stopped pretending you know where this is supposed to go. That’s not a problem. That’s the opening.
Now, we’ll bring this back to where we started, the bike, the balance, and why letting go is often the only way to keep moving forward.
Letting Go So the Bike Stays Upright
What all of this really comes down to is trust. Not confidence. Not preparation. Trust.
Trust that the skill is there even when it doesn’t feel like it is. Trust that you don’t have to manage every moment for the conversation to work. Trust that paying attention is enough.
The paradox is that the more you try to control an interview, the worse it usually gets. You grip it too tightly, and suddenly you’re thinking about balance instead of riding. You start steering toward outcomes instead of staying present with what’s actually happening.
The interviews that go well tend to feel almost uneventful while they’re happening. You’re not impressed with yourself. You’re not checking mental boxes. You’re just there. Listening. Following the thread. Letting the other person move at their own pace.
That’s procedural memory doing its thing. Not because you forced it, but because you stopped interrupting it.
You don’t need to disappear as the interviewer. You just need to stop trying to be the most active thing in the room. When you let go a little, the balance takes care of itself. The bike keeps moving forward.
The Takeaway
At ThoughtLab, a lot of what we do starts with conversations like this. Not because we love interviews for their own sake, but because they’re one of the few places where people stop performing long enough to tell the truth. About their business. About their customers. About what’s actually working and what isn’t.
The irony is that the better you get at this, the less it looks like a skill. It just looks like attention. Asking the question. Letting it hang. Following the thing that feels alive instead of the thing you planned to ask next.
If you’re about to run an interview and it feels awkward or uncertain, that’s not a problem to solve. That’s the moment to stop gripping the handlebars. Trust the process. Stay present. Let the conversation do what it’s been trying to do all along.
That’s usually where the real work begins.
