How to Take Control of Your Next Job Interview, with Tanya Maldonado

Did you know that when you walk into an interview room, you are in the driver’s seat? If you struggle to know what to say during interviews, Find Your Dream Job guest Tanya Maldonado suggests teaching. You teach the employer who you are, what you have to offer, and how you have impacted previous companies. Tanya also says you should prepare questions for them, to get to know more about the company, and so that your answers can address those issues. Your words matter, so use them carefully, sparingly, and to become a known entity to the employer and no longer a stranger.  

About Our Guest:

Tanya Maldonado is a career specialist at Portland Community College. 

Resources in This Episode:

• Connect with Tanya on LinkedIn.
• Use promo code DREAMJOB at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual plan at incogni.com/dreamjob.

Transcript

Find Your Dream Job, Episode 504:

How to Take Control of Your Next Job Interview, with Tanya Maldonado

Airdate: June 4, 2025

Mac Prichard:

This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life.

I’m your host, Mac Prichard. I’m also the founder of Mac’s List. It’s a job board in the Pacific Northwest that helps you find a fulfilling career.

Every Wednesday, I talk to a different expert about the tools you need to get the work you want.

When you meet a hiring manager, you need to answer the questions you’re asked.

But if you want to get the job, you can’t let the employer run the conversation.

Tanya Maldonado is here to talk about how to take control of your next job interview.

She’s a career specialist at Portland Community College.

For more than 25 years, Tanya has helped adult learners understand and map out the steps to achieve a satisfying career.

She joins us from Portland, Oregon.

Well, Tanya, let’s jump right into it. Let’s talk about what many job seekers do in an interview. They take a passive approach. What does a passive approach look like?

Tanya Maldonado:

I think a passive approach is when someone says, “I’m just gonna go in there, be myself, and wing it.” And they haven’t done what I call homework, which is preparing. What are your strengths? Preparing for what you’re going to use as stories to demonstrate those strengths and their context.

And in many ways, it’s like studying for a test. You don’t know exactly how the question will be on the test, but you have an idea of the subject matter. And so knowing your subject matter is the work you have to do before the interview, so that you can take control and master what you’re going to say.

Mac Prichard:

You’ve worked with so many candidates over the years. Why do you think applicants do this, take this passive approach when they walk into the interview room?

Tanya Maldonado:

I think it’s simply that folks don’t know that there are rules. And I don’t mean to make this sound like it’s a game, but I think folks just don’t know what the format, what the purpose, and how to navigate an interview. They simply are uninformed.

Mac Prichard:

And when you do take that passive approach, how does that affect your chances of landing the job, especially compared to your competitors who might be doing something different?

Tanya Maldonado:

So we’ve all heard about someone who was qualified but didn’t get the job, and someone else who was less qualified got it.

And it really is about knowing how to interview, to take control of what you want to say, to look for openings to get your points across, even if the interviewer doesn’t ask you things that allow you to shine. It’s your job, you’re your own business. You need to find a way to not be a stranger at the end of the interview.

So if you don’t show me your skills and your strengths and personality in their context, I don’t know you, and therefore I can’t invite you into the house. So, just like in our own lives, we don’t let strangers into our house; it’s the same dynamic.

And it’s also very much the dynamic of a first date. People getting to know one another, and I don’t mean to say that glibly, but it is very much the same dynamic of, you have to get past that stranger aspect. So that you become a known asset in the mind of the interviewer.

Mac Prichard:

Some listeners hearing the phrase “take control of the interview” might worry that that could jeopardize their prospects with an employer. Can you say exactly what you mean when you talk about taking control in your next job interview?

Tanya Maldonado:

Yeah, and thank you for allowing me to clarify that, cause control can sound negative. I don’t mean being cocky or domineering. What I mean is you have to be in control of your own emotions, of what you are going to say.

So that’s what I mean by control. It’s controlling yourself. Realizing that there is so much agency that you have when you come to an interview. That’s what I mean by control. I think I use the parallel of driving. If you’ve been a driver and then you’re in the passenger seat, you’re not in control, and it’s more nerve-wracking because you don’t know what’s happening.

So, taking the passenger aspect versus the driver aspect in your interview is going to leave you uncomfortable. Every question is going to come at you as a surprise. The dynamics of it will be a surprise.

And so that’s what I mean by taking control is becoming educated. Learning what are typical questions, what are gonna be your answers, so that you can feel as relaxed, because you’re reminding yourself of how much control you have over what you say in the interview. That’s what I mean by using the word control.

Mac Prichard:

Alright, well, let’s talk about the steps you recommend a candidate take in order to take charge of that interview.

One of the most important suggestions I know you have for the people you coach is preparation. You mentioned this a moment ago.

What kind of preparation do you recommend, Tanya, and how do you get started?

Tanya Maldonado:

Every work environment can be divided into four aspects. A people aspect, a data aspect, a thing, and an idea aspect.

Your job as the job seeker is to anticipate what are the dominant aspects. Is it primarily, so, for example, if I’m applying for a position as a barista, that’s going to be primarily people aspect. So then I can anticipate what will be the types of questions that will be asked. They will ask me people type questions, like teamwork for example, or working with diverse team mates and the population at large, communication.

So those are what I think of as how to prepare, thus taking control of what you’re gonna is by anticipating what questions will be asked. Chunking up by people, data, things, and ideas.

So, in looking at those aspects, predicting the questions, then your task is to look at all of the aspects of your own life and saying, “where can I show this skill/personality trait/attribute in its context?”

And I like to show – my interview style is an overarching answer that demonstrates the types of teams I’ve worked in, the different roles, and then I do a deeper dive into a specific example showing teamwork.

Mac Prichard:

So that’s a good model. It can sound overwhelming the first time you hear it.

What’s your best advice for breaking it down, so that you understand which of the aspects you need to focus on, and how do you recommend people research those likely questions that they’re going to get, depending on the job?

Tanya Maldonado:

So, ChatGPT you can plop in questions and answers for…” given the job type and putting in some factors showing teamwork. And you can get a good start there with “oh that might be a question” and if it’s not the exact question, again, think about types of work in those chunks. Versus memorizing a hundred answers to a hundred questions, because if they don’t ask you that particular question, then you’re stuck.

So think about skills in a context and what skills are going to be needed to do the tasks of the job you’re applying for. So again, it’s like that test, you don’t know what question is going to be exactly asked, but you have an idea of the subject matter. And you are the subject matter.

So, looking up the tasks of a type of position. You can find that through looking at O*Net in Oregon, Oregon’s career information system, Googling a position description, whether it’s the one you’re applying for or another one. Those are how you get your cues, just like you do with the resume, the keywords is going back to that same job posting, and looking at the keywords. Researching the employer and finding out who do they serve and how do they serve, like what’s their mission, and connecting your values to their mission statement.

Mac Prichard:

What kind of benefits do you see people get when they follow this approach, particularly, and do this kind of preparation, Tanya, in an interview room? Particularly compared to their competitors, who might just be winging it?

Tanya Maldonado:

Well, so you are no longer a stranger to the listener, so they can hire you. You’ve given them that opportunity. So I look at every question as an opportunity to teach.

We have to recognize, the interviewer must think we meet minimum qualifications or they wouldn’t have invited us in for an interview. So that’s already a nice position of comfort to go “wow, they already like me.” Then your job is just to become real in the interview, making that resume become something that got you into the interview, and now your opportunity to become a real person.

So I think that stance allows us to feel more comfortable in an interview, which thus allows us to have better answers. Those better answers, meaning the skills in their context of a story, allows the employer to learn about us and thus be able to hire us.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific. We’re going to take a break. Stay with us. When we come back, Tanya Maldonado will continue to share her advice on how to take control of your next job interview.

We’re back in the Mac’s List studio. I’m talking with Tanya Maldonado.

She’s a career specialist at Portland Community College.

For more than 25 years, Tanya has helped adult learners understand and map out the steps to achieve a satisfying career.

She joins us from Portland, Oregon.

Tanya, before the break, we were talking about how to take control of your next job interview.

We talked about what many candidates do, taking a passive approach, and you described what you meant by taking charge of an interview and the benefits of doing that. And we started to walk through your recommendations for how to do it.

One point I want to go back to that you touched on in the first segment is the importance of managing your emotions in a job interview. Tell us more about that, Tanya. Why is it important, and how does it help you not only take charge of your next job interview but stand out from your competitors?

Tanya Maldonado:

So something that occurred to me, must have been a couple of years back, I wish I would have thought about it when I was job searching, was to realize that I’m wanted. If I’m called for an interview, that means I’m wanted.

That gave me a position of power in managing my emotions, cause I didn’t have to feel like I was competing for a job. I was given the opportunity to share who I am. That was, for me, a mental shift. That I’m not someone who does well when I compete with the “someone’s gonna win, someone’s gonna lose, and it’s not gonna be me that loses.”

And because I approached it with that, it cramped my mind, so to speak, in thinking about me and how to connect to the interviewer and have them see me as someone who, one- understands their problems, which is the tasks that I pick up on when I read the job description. And I want them to see who I am and how I support their mission with the work that they do.

So it’s a blend of not only I have the capability to do the tasks they need, which are fixing the problems. But I also up as someone who is motivated to be there, which means I’m gonna be easier to supervise. So all of that helps me manage my own emotions going into this because I see myself as an equal at the table. It’s not, “Oh, I’m waiting for the interviewer to grant me this job;” it’s more I am an asset. I need to let this person see how I can be of use to them.

And a little snippet is, if you do that well, that’s the same thing when it comes to negotiating salary, is knowing how you can benefit them and conveying your worth.

Mac Prichard:

How does taking that approach, knowing that you’re wanted, help you deal with negative emotions that can surface in a job interview?

Tanya Maldonado:

So I think that’s like anybody, if you feel like you’re liked, you do better. So for me, a trick with a panel interview is to tell myself, at any one time, I know someone likes me. I don’t need to know who they are, I just need to believe I’m liked. And therefore, my mind is more relaxed, my answers come easier to me.

So I, like I said, had to reframe this whole experience into a learning moment that I am teaching them about me. That helped me, and maybe it’s because I’m in education. Someone else might have another way to reframe this process, so they become emotionally comfortable with the process. Which thus, you’re more relaxed and you will interview better because you feel mentally more at ease.

Mac Prichard:

When you’re interviewing for a job, you may want to please your interviewers, and one way you might choose to do that is to answer questions immediately. What’s your advice here about that, Tanya? Can answering questions right away hurt your prospects in an interview?

Tanya Maldonado:

In normal conversation, if I, for example, said “Hey Mac, when’s the last time you ate lasagna?” You would stop a minute and think about when is the last time, unless it was last night. And so I think interviewers, or interviewees, feel like they must answer immediately cause that makes them look like they’re the ideal person.

In fact, if you need a moment to gather your thoughts, to really understand like what are they really asking in this question, you will do yourself a better service because most likely that time to reflect what are they really driving at, what’s the real agenda to this question, you will then actually answer what they’re looking for, what their agenda is.

So it’s okay not to rapid-fire your answer because you want to make sure that you are actually answering what they’re driving for. And sometimes it’s really listening to what that question is. So it might be a situation question or a behavior-based question where there’s multiple parts to it. If you can train yourself to not start thinking of your answer until they’ve stopped talking, that’s one tip.

And it could be that you start your answer and you forgot where you were going with that, you can stop and say, “I know there were three parts to your question, can you repeat the last part?” I work with adult learners who may not have English as their first language, and they might not necessarily know exactly what a word might mean. Then it’s okay to ask for clarification. You’re not showing weakness. You’re showing, hey, I will not do something that I’m not comfortable with, and then have the agency, the business, the supervisor, whatever, have to apologize or fix a problem. It’s much wiser to let someone know I need help with this, versus having to do clean up later.

So I think sometimes folks don’t realize it’s okay to be human, it’s okay to ask for clarification, and sometimes I deliberately ask for a question to be repeated after I’ve given most of my answer, because I need a moment to reflect. I need a moment to calm down and go, did I say everything? And if I have something to add, I add it. If I don’t have something, then I say I have nothing further.

But a tip on if you are someone who, typically extroverts like me, can get off topic. When you feel that discomfort, or you forgot where you were going, or you’re getting into the weeds, that’s your moment to summarize and cut yourself off. So la, la, la, la, la, your answer, and then I think this shows you that, and hit the point you wanted them to take home from your answer. So that’s what you do when you get off topic.

Mac Prichard:

You mentioned the importance of listening to an interviewer’s question and not rushing into your answer. I know that you also say that every question is an opportunity to teach the employer about yourself.

Explain more about that, Tanya. What, how do you make the most of that opportunity, and what might you want to teach an employer about yourself as it relates to the question, or should you have some bigger strategic goals before you walk into the interview?

Tanya Maldonado:

So I think it always helps your own emotions to know what messages you want to get across. So if the questions do not allow you to share a certain aspect that you think is important for the employer to know, in that moment when they say, do you have questions for us, you ask your questions.

But that is also the time to do what I call “batting cleanup.” Which might be asking them, given what you’ve learned about me today, what are your concerns? Or it could also be, I think you might be interested to know that… And then I might say something I think I want them to know, but their questions just didn’t give me that opportunity to teach them.

I’m trying to think of other things. I like to stack answers. So let’s say I’m getting a question about teamwork. I may also throw in that the teamwork experiences I’ve had in mentioning my different roles, I might also throw in the diversity of my team. So that when they ask me later a diversity question, they keep hearing consistently the answers they need, the information they need, versus just one question, one type of answer.

That is somewhat a disservice to you. So if you can stack information into each question, they just keep hearing that message over and over, which again, reduces you being a stranger, so they can hire you.

Mac Prichard:

Well, it’s been a great conversation, Tanya. Now tell us, what’s next for you?

Tanya Maldonado:

Well, I’m fortunate. I love what I do. I love helping people. I love when they have that aha, that like they didn’t know there are rules to writing a resume or rules to interviewing. So I get a lot of joy from what I do.

I also love working for education because I believe that education is truly the answer for everyone. Whether it’s a better life or quality of life, just understanding what is happening in your world. So I really am a good fit for education.

But someday I will retire, and I have flirted with the idea of being an end-of-life doula cause I think that’s gonna incorporate a lot of my helping others, values, and my comfort at meeting others, which is my personality piece. And it’s gonna use skills that I’ve been using for the last 30-some years. So I’m looking for that blend, just like any job seeker, for what matches my values, personality, skills, and my interests.

Mac Prichard:

Well, terrific. I know that listeners can learn more about you and your work at Portland Community College by connecting with you on LinkedIn. When you do reach out to Tanya, I hope you’ll mention you heard her on Find Your Dream Job.

Now, Tanya, given all the great advice you’ve shared today, what’s the one thing you want a listener to remember about how to take control of your next job interview?

Tanya Maldonado:

You want to be remembered for your words. So that means you have to prepare what you want to say. So do your homework beforehand, look at like what do you think your strengths are, what are your aspects that they need to know about, so that allows you to manage what you want to say.

It allows you, at the end of your interview, to say, “Oh, I missed a piece, I still have a moment to tuck that in.” And should you leave the interview and you then remember something, you’ve got that thank you letter that you’re gonna follow up with, or thank you email, that can address things you thought about after the interview that sparked your attention, or things you might have forgotten to say just because you got yourself a little off track.

So you can control what’s going on in you by preparing ahead of time.

Mac Prichard:

Next week, our guest will be Kimi Schiefer.

She’s a human resources generalist at the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

Previously, Kimi was a recruiter for an online publisher, a large retailer, and a national staffing agency.

You will not only change jobs a number of times in your career, you may change where you live, too.

And doing a job search while relocating has its own challenges.

Join us next Wednesday when Kimi Schiefer and I talk about how to look for work while moving to a new place.

Until next time, thanks for letting us help you find your dream job.

This show is produced by Mac’s List.

Susan Thornton-Hough schedules our guests and writes our newsletter. Lisa Kislingbury Anderson manages our social media.

Our sound engineer and editor is Matt Fiorillo. Dawn Mole creates our transcripts. And our music is by Freddy Trujillo.

This is Mac Prichard. See you next week.