5 Worst Interview Mistakes We’ve Made

You get the “ding” notification – new email!!

You open it up … and YES!! there’s a new inquiry! Even better, it’s with a couple that sounds AMAZING! And you’re available! And they want to meet in person!

YES!!! Fist pump! Happy dance!

You’re on top of the world!!

You meet, you love them, you think they love you … and then … nothing.

They don’t book with you.

Insert deflating balloon sound here, right?

Look friends, we’ve been there. This has happened to us a few times, and it’s one of the lowest feelings in the world. We could blow sunshine your direction and say things like “it’s them, not you!” or “their loss!!” and most of the time, those supportive quips would totally be spot-on.

But …

What if it is you?

What if you blew the interview, without even realizing it?

We want you to be successful. We want you to connect with the clients of your dreams, just like we have! Ever since we really took a look at where we’ve been very successful with booking our dream clients and when we’ve totally blown the interview … and put that knowledge to work, we’ve got nearly a 100% post-interview booking rate now.

So … today, we’re going to share the 5 worst interview mistakes we’ve made!

If you have ever heard the phrase “A smart person learns from their own mistakes … but a wise person learns from the mistakes of others” – we are going to share some wisdom with you guys. Don’t laugh too hard at just how dorky we’ve been, or judge us too harshly from our mistakes!!

So, here we go!

1.) At Ashley’s first ever interview for a shooting job, she showed up with her camera. Because – you know, she shoots with a nice camera.

Seriously. This is a true story. A few years ago, Ash got contacted by this amazing couple who wanted to do a lifestyle maternity session in their baby’s nursery, and Ashley brought her freaking camera, and lenses to the interview … as if that proved she was a professional and should be charging.

No, friends. Just no. If you’re meeting with a couple – it’s because they want to get to know YOU … NOT your equipment!! Clearly, if they’re at the interviewing stage – they already love your work. Now they just want to see if your personalities gel, and if you’re someone they want to spend their hard-earned money on.

And no, Ash never even heard from that couple again.

2.) We showed up with holes in our jeans.

We had an interview with this gorgeous bride and her mother for her wedding – which was to a professional athlete. And we wore less-than-professional looking attire. As cute as our stylishly ripped jeans were – you don’t wear them to an interview!!

Dress for the job you want. You can’t expect a person to not judge you by your appearance – and first impressions matter.

And yeah, it goes without saying – didn’t get THAT wedding.

 

3.) We just didn’t connect.

We met with this couple … and it was nothing but crickets. Look, we’re super chatty people – we love to tell stories, laugh, ask questions, answer questions … but there was one time that we met with a couple who just didn’t know a damn thing about us, and they were both very quiet and reserved types of people … and we swear, you could hear crickets chirping from about a mile away.

This wasn’t so much a mistake at the interview, but a mistake made BEFORE the interview … we didn’t put enough of ourselves out there, for people to know our voices and personalities. At the time, a couple of years ago, we had no idea how important it was to be YOURSELF as much as humanly possible when you’re an artist who works in a service industry and how important it was to put yourselves ‘out there.’ We don’t just spend wedding days with our couples – there’s breakfasts beforehand, engagement sessions, pizza and beer, rehearsal dinner, engagement parties, boudoir shoots with the brides – we hang out, as much as we can. And we want to only surround ourselves with people who value the same things we do, have the same kind of outlooks on life and generally just people we love to spend time with.

Life’s too short to be around people who don’t make you a better person … and so when we met with this couple, it was a disservice to everyone because we clearly weren’t a good fit from the get-go.

4.) We didn’t shut up.

Look, we all suffer from verbal diarrhea from time to time. It happens to the best of us, right!? Well, there was a time where we realized – much too late in the interview – that we were doing all the talking.

Interviews go both ways, friends … And that’s something that we’ve learned over the years. We interview couples as much as they’re interviewing us, because like we said before … life’s too short to be around people you don’t love (or hell, even just like!).

5.) We showed up unprepared.

This is a big one, friends – especially for those of you out there, like us, who want every couple to have a wedding album for their coffee table.

If you sell albums, you gotta show up with albums. And – you HAVE to have albums that really tell the story of the couple and the wedding, designed exactly how you would typically design a wedding album for a couple. Not just a hodgepodge collection of random photos you love.

And not only that, we’d go so far as to say that you need to have a few different sample albums to showcase different cover options (if you offer that sort of thing), and also – it’s a good idea to have different albums that showcase different types of venues.

For us, we don’t shoot ballrooms very often (and we don’t attract the ballroom couple, which is totally fine!) … but we do a LOT of backyard intimate weddings, so we showcase one of our favorite backyard weddings. We do a lot of outdoor weddings, so we showcase one of our favorite outdoor weddings. We love weddings with lots of DIY/boho details, so we showcase one of our favorite boho weddings.

And really – your work grows year to year (and your style evolves, too), so we’d recommend getting a new sample album every year (or every other year) so you’re showcasing albums from weddings that maybe the potential couple has stumbled across on your website or blog.

So tell us … what are some of the worst interview mistakes YOU have made??? Share them in the comments!!