I was faced with my enemy and I responded as trained: I extended my hand and offered him my warmest, most irony-proof smile. As our eyes met, I complemented the gesture with a subtle, repetitive head nod-intending to indicate my eagerness-and said something to the effect of, “Yes, yes, how very nice to meet you-just splendid!” His response, however, was something of a surprise. He gave me a firm, practiced handshake and a pressed-lip smile that seemed, annoyingly, sincere. With a gentle, almost fatherly chuckle he invited me into his office.
I swallowed hard. Already things had gone desperately awry. I detected a naturalness, a contentedness about him-my sworn enemy-that was very disquieting. Disarmed and deflated by his composure, I felt the strategic advantage slip out of my grasp. In order to regain the psychic upper hand, I hawkishly scanned my opponent for weaknesses. After noting that the gentlemen before me was, more or less, bald, about twelve pounds overweight and wearing Christmas-themed socks, I felt much better. It was, once again, advantage Goodwin.
I should pause here to explain that I am, actually, not an asshole. In fact, nearly none of the above is my fault. I place the blame squarely on “Cheetah Negotiations.”
You see, in preparation for the many rounds of interviews required to find a job, I took a trip to the library. Olin’s countless racks offered a handful of books on the interview process and a whole shelf’s worth on negotiation tactics. I scanned the rows and noted titles like, “The Winning Attitude: Interviewing for Success,” “The promise of Mediation: Mutual Respect,” and “The Win-Win Solution.” While they all surely offered sage advice, I was looking for something with a little more, well, teeth. So when I stumbled upon a book called-honestly, I couldn’t make this stuff up-“Cheetah Negotiations,” I knew I had found something special.
Over the following week, I immersed myself in the tenets of the Cheetah. As a pupil “on the Cheetah Trail” I was supposed to treat all prospective business partners as mortal enemies, or as the book titled them-again, I can’t make this stuff up-“Cheetah food.” I was expected to be disingenuously happy and confident at all times. In keeping with the cheetah metaphor, I was instructed to speak uncomfortably quickly and to speak at least twice as much as my opponent.
Finally-and this is really the cornerstone of the Cheetah Method-I was taught to artificially boost my confidence by making long lists of my opponent’s physical flaws.
Flash forward to this week and picture me sitting across the table from the most genuine, Christmas-sock-wearing fifty-year old the world has ever known. I was trying will all my cheetah-inspired might to continue cataloguing his imperfections, but I found the whole thing a bit silly. As I saw it, there were two problems: First, this was clearly a warm, wonderful man and I was clearly being an asshole-even if I was doing it silently. Second, I was at Wash.U.’s Career Center-not a real job interview-making me, I’m quite sure, the first person in the long history of capitalism to come to a mock interview with negotiation techniques at the ready.
Then, something more important happened. The mock interview portion of our meeting had ended. My counterpart had pronounced my eye contact “consistent” and my resume “pretty much okay.” We were just talking, without any cheetah-related motives. I mentioned that I was, you know, pretty worried because my proposed field was, you know, competitive. He looked at me with an inspired stare and said, “I once heard a commencement speech that I thought was pretty good. The speaker-it was at Stanford, I think-ended with just five words: ‘stay hungry, and stay foolish.’ It was just about the best speech I ever heard. If you want this enough, you’re going to do fine. Just go and do it.”
And that was it. It doesn’t really sound profound, and it certainly doesn’t look it in print. But if you could see his eyes and the confidence with which he said it, you’d think differently. And sitting there, I came to the following conclusions: (1) The author of “Cheetah Negotiations” should acquire some awful, terminal disease; (2) Christmas socks are actually cooler than you’d think; (3) the funny-sock-wearing gentlemen’s serene smile must have something to do with his being very good at his job.
So, I’ll close with this: I still have no idea how to give a good job interview, but I’m feeling much better about my prospects. Partly, I’m feeling better because of the kind words of my fifty-year old friend. But, also, there was something comforting about seeing someone who looks truly happy doing his work-and doing it quite well.
I’ve realized that future happiness may not be strictly and directly tied to the one job I have in mind at the moment. So, maybe I’ll end up in Washington, D.C. Maybe I’ll end up at the Career Center, or maybe I’ll end up in any one of the other 3.4 million fields. Regardless, I just hope to be as content as my friend. And to have such excellent taste in socks.
Zach is a senior in Arts & Sciences and a Forum editor.