I should also add to this, after having done a bunch of interviews, there are a lot of myths about how important unimportant things are.. like how they decide if they like you within the fist x time, or if you don't quite grasp the hand correctly you wont get the job, or you fail the "chair problem" (still smirking about that, btw @truant haha).

All of the interviews I have gone to so far have been done on a points system, based on the actual answers you give. Certainly, you can push the needle in either direction by social ability, maybe considerably, but its not an etiquette thing, because there aren't any points allocated to the chair problem, or the handshake problem.

Also thanks for that post truant, helped me a bit, as I'm struggling with moving on from some mistakes .

I was brought up in a very perfectionist environment and it sucked. Looking back now I feel like I never allowed myself to be a kid; to satisfy my parents I always had to get the highest grades and be the Good Christian Boy. Hell, here I am attending university for a second degree and they're still obsessed with me getting perfect grades, like straight A's will somehow make up for a complete lack of social skills, relatively little work experience for my age and a general dislike of the entire corporate system. I'm starting to realize that I'm never going to have a successful career no matter how well I do in my classes.

I'm fairly certain that at least some of my generalized and social anxiety can be traced back to those constant unrealistic expectations, and I'm sure the same could be said for many of us here.

That's actually not how it works in music. Usually you have one main songwriter. It actually serves music a lot more to have one cohesive vision than multiple perspectives which results in calamity/an incomplete vision. Classical music does this, and so does most modern pop music.

I don’t think the rest of the world is perfectionist but we are.

Hmm maybe perfectionist isn't the right word, I think what you're getting at is rules.

The chair example sounds pedantic, though obviously it's common sense not to drag a chair across the floor. Pretty sure I learnt that as a child or something it rings a bell.

I don't think it's perfectionism per se, it's more like...every e-mail gets marked with a red exclamation mark. Everyone wants you to dedicate all of your time and effort to their particular obsession and you have to learn to push back, or you get swamped. Whether it's your parents wanting straight As, your employer wanting you to wear a particular type of shirt or your therapist wanting you to find three hours in your day to dedicate to your mental health. I don't think the whole world is that way too, just people with control issues and insecurities behind them, or people whose reality is just really far away from ours. I try not to worry about it, I decide what's important to me and push back on the rest.

I don't think the world is at all perfectionistic. I think those who are anxious or neurotically inclined may feel that way and then pass on their neuroticism to others (the professor teaching you abt interviews sounds a touch neurotic, but that's only my opinion.)

There are thousands of ways to leave a good first impression in a professional setting. Most of them having to do with relaxing just enough to come across as comfortable and following professional enough norms. I've screwed the pooch at interviews and gotten the job or even went into details of my struggles with anxiety and gotten the job. In fact, when they ask how are you I always say a little nervous. This automatically helps me relax and not feel I have to pretend to be confident. In every instance I've done this the interviewer immediately extends their humanity and says something along the lines of it's ok, don't be nervous or yea interviews are stressful, etc. Instant connection. Instant ease.

Humans are not perfect and it's ok to be human. The pressure to be perfect is usually in your head or passed on from some other, likely miserable, person who had the misfortune of having the lie of perfectionism passed on to them. Freeing yourself from this lie is a surefire way to relieve a ton of stress from your life. Practice makes perfect (not perfect, but you get it,) keep trying, we all make mistakes, never give up. Why are these sayings so often related in healthy families? Cause no one mentally healthy expects anyone to be perfect. Perfection doesn't exist and it's not possible. No one deserves to live with that pressure.

Edit- The work I've primarily done is in mental health and with people with disabilities. In fact, most everything I've done has been with vulnerable communities (children and elderly.) What's seen as a strength in mental health and human service interviews might not fly in other fields.

@SplendidBob You're welcome.

My problem is i am way too much of a "whatever" free-flowing creative person, so on a job interview or date, I tend to just not say the standard, routine thing. I would more just come up with my own random unique thing to say or do. You can't really veer off from the norm THAT MUCH. There is really unfortunately, generally a set way to go about doing things. All you can really do to succeed in a job interview or date, is the standard BS, and then add a small slice of your own original take to it, but very little. If you are not a standup comedian, you probably won't wow most people with your bright sense of humor. If you aren't the best looking guy or girl, you probably won't wow most people with your looks. I guess just basically stick to the main straight and narrow path, and rarely veer off into something a little off the beaten path. I am generally sick of the set way that people operate in all facets of society. People are mostly just phony and boring, and I guess that is the standard for what is expected of you

I was talking about rock bands. Yes there always has to be one main leader who decides what finally goes in, but in genres like rock and metal, its common for each musician to uniquely contribute. Listen to some of Megadeth's early songs. They had a jazz drummer for some time and their songs had a jazz influence to it. Then they later got a guitarist who was deep into classical, and their sound changed after they got him.

This works in movies too. Like Star Wars. You have lots of concept artists who come up with ideas based on their own background, and in the end its George Lucas who filters out the best ones.

Now that you say it, yeah it could be more about being a pedantic than perfectionism. But people like this aren't far from that perfectionist mindset. They care a lot about what other people think and care more about self image than about the bigger picture.

I know exactly what you mean and this is pretty much how I operate too. I don't like following any strict protocol, I just like being spontaneous.

It seems like people in creative industries are more accommodating of this, which is why I got surprised that my art teacher was saying all this lol.

But I can understand the employer's concerns too. If they get a candidate who is just a rebel and deliberately going out of their way to not listen to the boss, then its a concern for the employer because their company's productivity is at stake. But as long as they're honest and diligent, I think they should overlook silly stuff like being socially awkward or not moving the chair properly.

Ok cool. I think in a job interview, I would tend to act like a robot, and make absolutely no effort to try to be creative or stand out, just kinda brag about what I (didn't actually) accomplish. My problem is, if i got the job, I would start to be inefficient or screw up or not take anything seriously. Even with a lot of potential, generally just underachieve. I am working from home now but I can work from midnight to 8AM to get everything done so I can work on my own schedule. I can sleep from 2PM to 4Pm and then rush to ship everything out before the 5PM cutoff at the post office. I could also work from 3Pm to like 9PM and then sometimes take the next day off and sleep all day. Any 9-5 job I would consistently be 20 minutes late and take too long for lunch, I have to work on my own schedule.

On a date, my natural tendency is to just be a goofball. Even as an older guy now, I feel like a teenager in many ways, i take nothing seriously and would rather say shocking and offensive things to break the tension than just ask the standard questions or say the standard things. Most women have no clue if i am serious, a wacko, a goofball or what my agenda is. All it really is is that I don't take anything seriously. I could carry on a sarcastic ridiculous conversation for 3 hours and never come back down to earth. Most people are not like that. From what I observe at games I go to or restaurants I very rarely go to, (I never eat out, only order or get food to go)... Most older guys who are married or in a serious relationship, tend to not really talk much, to their wives or girlfriends. I just see a lot of silence, where often the man is the provider, although you see that less and less in 2020, but the guy is just kinda the worker bee, who sits and provides, maybe asks a few questions, maybe makes one remark every 40 minutes, but not ruffling anyone's feathers, just generic talk and questions but mostly dignified silence. The wife or girlfriend might be talking to her friend or talking on the phone or texting. My point is people don't want people like me around or know what to do with them. I would say or do inappropriate things for shock value. Kinda like I am doing a prank show like Jackass or Impractical Jokers.

I think my degree of perfectionism tends to be uncalibrated, because I don't interact with people so I don't have an intuitive sense of what matters and what doesn't. So, I can try to make perfect an irrelevant detail and skip something important. Other people have a better sense for priorities. Not sure if related to SA.

When therapists say this to SA patients, I think they mean "you avoid doing things out of fear you won't do them perfectly." We do this to avoid opening ourselves to criticism. Not extending a greeting when you enter the room is part of that. You might not do it because you don't want to be the center of attention, or don't want people to criticize your presence or the sound of your voice. I can't speak for everyone, but when I was at my worst, I used to convince myself that all the things I didn't do because of my anxiety were nonsensical or too demanding or that they somehow didn't apply to me. The things you complain about are more related to making people around you feel comfortable and not doing them comes across as defiant.