The Professional Series: Stuttering During Interviews

Howdy friends! I’m introducing the first part of a three part professional series on stuttering – stuttering during interviews, with colleagues, and with clients. In each series I’ll address the three trickiest components of stuttering – advertising, open stuttering, and saying everything you want to say – in that particular setting. This is by no means an expert guide, just my personal opinions based on experience!

Interviews are a tricky situation for everyone, but if you stutter, they can be a double whammy. I used to struggle so much with interviews because I put a lot of pressure on myself to sound “perfect”. To me, perfect used to mean complete fluency. But now I think the perfect interview consists of advertising, strong open stuttering, and saying everything I want to say!

From the first “hello” to the last “thank you for your time”, I have struggled with knowing when to advertise my stutter. Through lots of trial and error, I’ve found it’s best to weed it in during the “tell me about yourself” portion. It’s a great opportunity to let the interviewer(s) know something more personal about me, plus it saves them from having to respond. There’s nothing wrong with letting your interviewer(s) respond, but sometimes I think they can feel a little awkward because they don’t want to say the wrong thing. If they don’t ask me that question, my second best route is to state it at the very beginning before I answer their first question. I’ve said something along the lines of “just so you know, I’m a person who stutters and you may hear it. If you need me to repeat anything, I’m happy to.” Sometimes I’ll leave out the second sentence and just state that I’m a PWS and continue on with answering the question. The reason I sometimes give the option of repeating something is because I feel it gives the interviewer(s) a good way to respond – a simple “ok, thanks for letting us know” is honestly the ideal response I want from someone when I advertise.

Open stuttering, or allowing myself to stutter as much as I want, is another hard component of interviews. I used to use tons of tricks to avoid stuttering, which ironically made the interviews a total disaster. My answers made no sense because I was substituting words left and right, and I said “um” every other word *face palm*. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it’s better to stutter and take longer to say the right response than to not stutter and quickly say the wrong response. I’ve spoken with a handful of HR managers and other people who have conducted interviews and they’ve all told me the same thing: it doesn’t matter that you stutter, but it does matters that you represent yourself well and give honest, thoughtful answers. Even though it can sometimes be hard to resist the time pressure while speaking, I try and remember that my time to speak is my time, and I can take as long as I want.

Finally, saying everything you want to say during an interview can be hard because it’s tough to be put on the spot. I think the key is to be comfortable with silence; give yourself five seconds to think about your answer before speaking. If you do that, chances are you’ll give a better answer because you actually spent time thinking about how you wanted to answer. So many people are uncomfortable with silence that they start talking as soon as they can and end up regretting their answer later on. Those first five seconds can feel like eternity, but it gets easier each time! When I do this, I can reflect back on the interview and feel confident that I said everything I wanted to say. And if I stuttered while giving the perfect answer, that’s even better because I spoke with some personality!

For more tips on stuttering in professional environments, check out the NSA. They just launched the We Stutter @ Work initiative, which seeks to eliminate some of the workplace stigmas about stuttering and to improve employment outcomes for people who stutter. They offer mock interviews, webinars, and one day conferences. They also have great information for those interviewing a candidate who might stutter. It’s worth checking out!