When companies seek exact repetition of activities, they hire the IT department – not conduct job interviews

As a solution-focused systemic coach specialising in migrants in D-A-CH, I see a recurring pattern – but it shows up differently depending on the candidate.

Let me start with a group that often goes unnoticed: younger applicants.

The young applicant’s quest for safety through repetition

Many early-career professionals believe that a successful interview is a word-perfect performance. They memorise answers. They rehearse project descriptions until every number and date sits flawlessly. They try to eliminate spontaneity – because spontaneity feels like risk.

I understand where this comes from. In school and university, exact preparation leads to good grades. If you learn the material by heart, you pass the exam. So why wouldn’t the same logic apply to job interviews?

Here is the problem: Interviews for strategic, steering roles are not exams. And the interviewer is not a scanner.

When a young candidate delivers a perfectly memorised monologue about a past project – emphasising how repeatable their success was – they often trigger the opposite reaction to what they hoped for. Instead of feeling reassured, an experienced interviewer (especially one who knows frameworks like CYNEFIN or understands complex systems) feels uneasy.

Why? Because in a VUCA or BANI world, exact repetition is rarely valuable. Strategic roles demand adaptability, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to respond to unpredictable human dynamics. A candidate who clings to a script signals that they might struggle when the situation shifts.

Here is the paradox: The harder you try to sound like a reliable machine, the less suitable you appear for a role that requires human judgment.

But for migrant professionals, there is an even deeper trap.

The migrant’s additional trap: hiding VUCA superpowers behind grammar

Dear migrant professional – I am writing this directly to you now.

You often enter the interview with a secret fear. It is not about your professional skills. It is about language. You feel less confident in German (or English, depending on the context). You worry about cases, prepositions, sentence structure. You are afraid of making a grammatical mistake.

So what do you do? You prepare. Intensively. You write out answers. You memorise whole paragraphs. You practise until you can deliver a flawless description of your last project – perfect Dativ, perfect word order, no hesitations.

And in doing so, you fall into the same trap as the young candidate – but with an extra twist.

Because here is the irony: You, of all people, should not be trying to sound like a robot.

Think about what you have already achieved. You left your home country. You navigated a new culture, a new bureaucracy, a new professional environment. You dealt with uncertainty, volatility, ambiguity – not as abstract concepts, but as daily life. You have lived VUCA and BANI from the inside. You have proven that you can adapt, persist, and succeed when the rules are unclear and the stakes are high.

That is exactly what strategic employers say they are looking for.

But when you walk into the interview and deliver a perfectly memorised, grammatically flawless monologue, you hide your greatest strength. You present yourself as someone who needs a script – instead of someone who thrives without one.

You prioritise the correct Dativ over your real superpower: the ability to find your way in completely new, uncertain situations.

And the interviewer? They cannot see what you do not show. They only see a candidate who sounds rehearsed, rigid, and possibly afraid of spontaneity. They do not know that you have already mastered the most complex system of all – migration.

What strategic employers actually want to see

Whether you are a young applicant or a migrant professional – or both – the message is the same. Stop trying to sell repeatability. Start selling your ability to navigate the unknown.

Experienced interviewers (especially those who understand systemic coaching or frameworks like CYNEFIN) are looking for:

• Comfort with ambiguity – Can you act without a complete map?
• Agile flexibility – Can you change direction when reality shifts?
• Situational perception – Can you read people, power, and hidden dynamics?
• Knowledge integration – Do you bring different perspectives together?
• Ownership creation – Do you turn others into committed co-owners of ideas?

None of these require perfect memorisation. All of them require presence, honesty, and adaptive thinking.

Let’s contrast robotic safety with adaptive strength side by side.

How my coaching helps you break the pattern

I do not coach you to memorise better answers. I coach you to stop relying on scripts altogether.

We work on:

• Recognising your own “safety reflexes” – that urge to fall back on rehearsed lines when you feel uncertain.
• For migrants specifically: Shifting focus from grammatical perfection to strategic storytelling. Yes, language matters – but not more than your lived experience.
• Practising live, adaptive responses – so you can enter an interview without a script and still feel grounded.
• Reframing your migration journey as leadership capital – not as a disadvantage. You have already succeeded in extreme VUCA conditions. That is your evidence.
• Learning to pause, think, and answer from the moment – instead of reciting from memory.

The goal is not to make you more confident in the old, linear game. The goal is to help you stop playing it.