before i went into an interview recently, someone gave me advice that stayed with me throughout my recruiting process:
the point of an interview is *not* actually to get a job. it’s to reveal as much of yourself as possible, and understand as much as possible about the company/role, to see if there’s real alignment
there’s such a tendency in interviews to become performative, to say the right thing because you can usually intuit what they want to hear. that you care about X mission or Y role when really you deeply don’t. but getting an offer for something that isn’t actually a fit or what you want is ultimately not in anyone’s interest, neither yours nor the company’s
the more honest both parties can be, even within all the constraints, the better