You’re sitting in the chair. Or, more likely these days, you’re staring at a tiny green dot on your laptop.
The interviewer asks the big one: “Tell me about a time you handled a difficult situation.”
Suddenly, your brain turns into a dial-up modem. You start searching for that perfect, polished, STAR-method script you spent three hours memorizing last night. Your voice gets tighter. Your posture gets stiffer. You start sounding like a corporate brochure that someone left out in the rain.
You aren’t being yourself. You’re performing.
And that’s the problem. Performance is for theater. Interviews? They’re supposed to be conversations.
If you’ve ever felt like your "professional" self is actually just a robotic, boring version of the real you, it’s time to stop prepping and start pivoting. It’s time to lean into Guess What Energy™ (GWE™).
The Script Trap: Why Memorizing is Killing Your Confidence
We’ve been taught that the best way to win an interview is to have an answer for everything. We write scripts. We bullet point our lives. We try to predict every possible question like we’re playing a high-stakes game of Chess.
But here is the truth: Memorization is the enemy of connection. ⚡
When you memorize a script, you aren’t listening to the interviewer. You’re waiting for your cue. You’re stuck in your head, checking your mental notes to make sure you didn’t forget that one specific metric from 2019.
When you’re in your head, you aren't in the room.
The interviewer doesn't just want to hear your results. They want to know what it’s like to work with you. They want to see your personality, your problem-solving style, and your vibe. If you show up as a script-reading robot, they can’t see any of that.
Enter: Guess What Energy™ (GWE™)
So, what is Guess What Energy™?
It’s the secret sauce that changes everything. Think about how you tell a story to your best friend. Imagine you just landed a huge deal, or you finally figured out a bug that had been haunting your team for weeks.
You don't sit down and say, "The situation was a software malfunction, the task was to identify the root cause..."
No. You lean in, your eyes light up, and you say, "Dude, guess what happened today?"
That is the energy.
Guess What Energy™ isn't about being unprofessional. It’s about being authentic. It’s about taking the stories of your career and telling them with the same natural, conversational confidence you already use in your real life.
When you use GWE™, you stop trying to "get it right" and start trying to "make them get it." You move from a state of being interrogated to a state of sharing wisdom.
It’s the difference between a lecture and a coffee chat. And guess who gets the job? The person the team actually wants to have coffee with.
Step 1: Build Your Brag Bank
You can't have Guess What Energy™ if you’re trying to come up with stories on the fly. But you also shouldn't be memorizing scripts. So, what’s the middle ground?
The Brag Bank. ⚡
Your Brag Bank is a collection of your wins, your pivots, and your "I can’t believe I pulled that off" moments. It’s not a list of polished answers. It’s a raw inventory of your experience.
Stop trying to find the "perfect" story for a specific question. Instead, find the stories that make you feel proud. The stories where you were at your best.
When you build a Brag Bank, you aren't preparing for an exam. You’re gathering evidence of your own greatness.
- What was the hardest day at your last job?
- When did you save a project from the brink of disaster?
- What’s the one thing you’ve done that you wish everyone knew about?
Once you have these stories, you don't script them. You just know them. Like you know your favorite movie. You could tell the plot of that movie to anyone, at any time, because you know it. You don't need a script for it.
Step 2: The "Guess What" Pivot
Here is a practical trick to use in your next interview.
When an interviewer asks you a behavioral question, take a breath. Instead of jumping into your STAR method, mentally prepend the phrase "Guess what happened?" to your answer.
You don't have to say it out loud (though sometimes, in the right culture, you totally can). But thinking it changes your physiology. It relaxes your shoulders. It brings a natural cadence to your voice.
It shifts you from "answering" to "telling."
Specific. Engaging. Real.
Instead of saying, "I am a proactive communicator," you say, "Actually, there was this one time when the whole project was about to go off the rails because of a missed email, and guess what I did?"
Now, the interviewer is hooked. They aren't just checking a box. They’re listening to a story. They’re seeing your "Guess What Energy" in action.
Why Storytelling is Your Competitive Advantage
Let’s talk science for a second. Our brains are wired for stories. We’ve been telling them around campfires for thousands of years.
Studies show that stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts alone.
If you list your skills, the interviewer might remember three of them by the time they finish their lunch. But if you tell a story about the time you handled a crisis with Guess What Energy™, they will remember you.
They’ll remember the way you stayed calm. They’ll remember the specific detail about how you fixed the server at 2:00 AM. They’ll remember the feeling of talking to you.
Confidence is the missing piece. ⚡
You already have the experience. You’ve done the work. The only thing standing between you and the offer is the way you’re communicating that work. GWE™ bridges that gap.
Stop Performing. Start Connecting.
The goal of an interview isn't to be the most "prepared" person in the room. It’s to be the most present person in the room.
When you let go of the scripts and lean into your natural energy, you give the interviewer permission to do the same. You break the wall of corporate stiffness. You make a real human connection.
And in a world where everyone is using the same AI-generated scripts and the same tired buzzwords, being a real human is your biggest superpower.
Less prep. More pep.
You don't need another mock interview. You don't need to spend six hours on Reddit looking for "trap" questions. You just need to own your story.
Ready to Find Your Energy?
If you’re tired of freezing up and want to start showing up as your best self, we’ve got the tools to help you get there.
- The Pep Kit: This is your roadmap. 20 worksheets and the 3 core pillars you need to build your Brag Bank and master GWE™. No scripts. Just strategy.
- Less Prep, More Pep: The Book: The full framework for interview success, available on Amazon. Learn how to tell your story naturally and land the role you deserve.
You’ve got the experience. Now, let’s get you the offer. ⚡
About the Author
Ebonee is the founder of Less Prep, More Pep and the creator of the Guess What Energy™ method. After years of seeing brilliant professionals freeze up in interviews, she decided to flip the script. She teaches candidates how to communicate their experience naturally, helping them land roles at Fortune 500 companies without the burnout of over-preparing. Less prep. More pep. More wins. ⚡