Why Hiring Managers Should Stop Judging Job Candidates Based on Interview Enthusiasm 

I’ve been a hiring manager several times over the 15+ years of my career in tech and nonprofits. Across my hiring experiences, I always considered vibrant, obvious enthusiasm for the job as a hard requirement. Indeed, today’s job-seekers are given advice to maintain an enthusiastic outlook during an interview process at all times. And sure, it makes sense that hiring mangers want new hires to be eager to join the company and stay for years, not disinterested and bored within a few months.  

But it turns out that not all recruits are equally set up for success at maintaining a high level of excitement throughout the interview process. In particular, Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) may be uniquely disadvantaged when enthusiasm is required.  A Highly Sensitive Person has increased sensitivity in their nervous system, leading to a deeper, more intense experience of life on many levels. Other people’s actions and emotions, their own feelings, natural beauty, and physical sensations all deliver heightened impact on HSPs. 

HSPs are not rare; experts believe 15-20% of all people fit the criteria. HSPs’ sensitivities and strengths can be very beneficial to business and team success, such as in: 

• Building a strong, thoughtful company culture

• Growing trusting client relationships

• Managing and building high-functioning teams 

• Collaborating well with others

• Creative problem-solving

• Driving innovation

And yet many professional rituals, such as the corporate interview, were definitely not created with HSPs’ perceptiveness in mind. In particular, when a hiring manager is looking for unbending excitement for the job throughout the interview process, an HSP recruit can get overlooked due to a seeming lack of cultural fit. 

Why? Let’s review a few of the hidden abilities of the HSP and the way that they experience the world:

• HSPs tend to be in tune with others’ micro facial expressions and slight changes in vocal tones. A hiring manager’s side glance or body language shift is likely to be  noticed by an HSP during an interview. 

• HSPs can frequently correctly sense the emotional state of the person or people they’re speaking with. Depending on how strong those emotions are, an HSP’s own emotions can be temporarily affected by the person they’re with. 

In other words, HSPs read the room very well. So much so that, at times, they are affected emotionally by what can be imperceptible to most other people. Although these effects are temporary, they can change the tenor and even outcome of an interview. 

Let’s take some examples. During an interview, an HSP could: 

1. Sense dysfunctional culture very easily. If, for instance in a panel interview, the dynamic is strained  among the hiring team members, an HSP can pick up on it. They may start to wonder how deep that tension goes, or how collaborative the team can be if folks are so tense on an interview. And the concern on their face may be logged by the hiring manager as ambivalence about the role. 

2. Draw off the interviewer’s negative energy. If an interviewer’s mood is low or lethargic, an HSP interviewee can get dragged down, despite their best intentions to maintain enthusiasm. By the end of the interview, they may be reflecting the interviewer’s low-energy state. The interviewer may then read this as lack of enthusiasm or ambivalence about the role.  

3. Get down on themselves. Brief awkward responses or moments in an interview can turn an HSP in on themselves for a few minutes. HSPs frequently have Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), a syndrome shared by many neurodiverse individuals as well, that leads them to feel a strong negative emotion when they make a mistake or have been rejected. In life they can recover from these failures, but in a fast-paced interview, they may get distracted by the disappointment of missing a question. The hiring manager may again misinterpret this flattened demeanor as lack of enthusiasm for the role.  

Their perceptiveness can lead HSPs to quickly gain a deeper understanding of the nuanced cultural challenges at the organization than other recruits. Through a few conversations, they may have already intuited the best ways to communicate with some of the team members.  And despite not showing unfettered enthusiasm throughout the interview process, they are likely thoughtfully considering how they could help improve the team in the long-term and work well within the culture in the short term. 

Most Hiring Managers would rather have an employee with strong people skills show up to the job cognizant of problem areas that need addressing, rather than seeing everything through rose-colored glasses. But if they are screening for top levels of enthusiasm, they may rule out these HSPs!