Hierarchy Theater
Job interviews like to pretend they are conversations. They are not. Most of the time they resemble a low-budget television format with a rigid script and a passive audience. The interviewer sits back, relaxed, waiting to be entertained. The candidate is expected to perform: narrate a life, confess weaknesses disguised as strengths, radiate motivation on command. The ritual is familiar, soothing, and mostly empty. Everyone knows the lines. Nobody learns much.
What interviewers often want is not information but confirmation. Confirmation that their role makes sense, that the process works, that they are justified in sitting where they sit. The candidate becomes a projection surface. Competence is assigned or withheld based on tone, enthusiasm, and compliance. Substance is secondary. Silence is suspicious. Precision is unsettling.
Speaking less disrupts this arrangement. When you answer only what is asked, when you stop after a clean sentence, when you do not rush to fill the silence, the burden shifts. Suddenly the interviewer has to think. They have to ask real questions. They have to be specific. They can no longer hide behind ritual. Like a police stop conducted properly, clarity protects you. You do not talk yourself into a corner. You do not volunteer narratives that can be reframed or used against you. You let authority reveal itself through its questions.
This is where discomfort enters.
Many interviewers interpret restraint as resistance. Not because it is, but because they are used to asymmetry working in their favor. The unspoken contract is simple: we relax, you perform. Break that, and the imbalance becomes visible. Some respond with irritation. Others retreat into vague language about “fit” or “communication.” These are not judgments about you. They are tells.
There is, however, another reaction. Rarer. More interesting.
Competent interviewers wake up. They lean forward. They stop playing host and start doing their job. With them, silence becomes productive. Questions sharpen. The interview turns into an exchange about reality: how decisions are made, what autonomy actually means, how failure is handled. These conversations are short, dense, and memorable. They do not feel like auditions. They feel like negotiations.
Refusing the script is a filter. It costs opportunities, but only the wrong ones. It repels environments built on hierarchy theater and attracts those that value responsibility over performance. In cultures that prize procedure and politeness, like Switzerland, this approach is risky. That risk is the point. You are not there to be liked. You are there to find out whether the place can tolerate someone who does not confuse verbosity with value.
Most people overtalk because they are afraid of silence. Silence, however, is diagnostic. It shows who prepared and who did not. Who knows what they want and who merely occupies a chair. When you stop entertaining, the room reveals itself.
Interrupting the script is not arrogance. It is refusing to turn your working life into a television show you never wanted to star in.