CATEGORY: JOB SEEKER
Nail That Next Job Interview

Whether you’re on the job search for the first time or you’ve been at this for a while, mastering the interview remains an elusive art. How, exactly, do you pitch yourself? To what extent does what you wear matter, and are you doing anything that strikes potential employers as red flags? To answer all these anxious questions and more, the Cut spoke with Raeshem Nijhon, the founder and executive producer of Culture House, a Black-, brown-, and women-owned cultural consultancy and production company with projects forthcoming from the likes of Tracee Ellis Ross and Brie Larson.
Reviewing pitches — and interviewing people — is what Nijhon does 24/7. And she’s no stranger to pitching herself: as Nijhon tells it, she got her first job at MTV by sending a follow-up email every six weeks for a solid eight months. Finally getting called in was only the tip of the iceberg: “They asked me to bring a reel, but I didn’t have a great one,” she says. For three days before the interview, she and her husband “went out and shot a bunch of things on our 5D and cut it together. “I was just like, Okay, I don’t have a reel? I’m going to fucking make one. I don’t have this thing, but I know I can do this thing. How do I get creative and make it happen?” Needless to say, she was hired. Below, Nijhon’s top tips for nailing the job interview.