--- title: The Link Between Interviews and Worker Happiness description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6990827/happiness-interviews-tessa-west/ author: Michelle Peng article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-06-23T11:31:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-28T07:07:28.057Z article:section: Charter og:title: The Link Between Interviews and Worker Happiness og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. og:url: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6990827/happiness-interviews-tessa-west/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9813e327985be2b5/698a580316d884db3fc3ec5c/charter-west.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1600 og:image:height: 900 og:image:alt: charter-west og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Link Between Interviews and Worker Happiness twitter:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9813e327985be2b5/698a580316d884db3fc3ec5c/charter-west.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- The information presented here is created by Charter, independently from the TIME editorial staff.  Time charter * [happiness](/partner-content/charter/tag/happiness/) ## happiness # The Link Between Interviews and Worker Happiness > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Jun 23, 2024 11:31 AM UTC  Art: Charter  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Jun 23, 2024 11:31 AM UTC With a tightening job market, especially in white-collar industries, many job candidates are facing an increasing number of [hurdles](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-31/job-interview-process-amid-slowing-labor-market-frustrates-applicants?srnd=work-shift&sref=qysce8Zq&utm%5Fsource=DO+NOT+EMAIL+-+Full+list&utm%5Fcampaign=22bdc71de1-EMAIL%5FCAMPAIGN%5F2024%5F05%5F29%5F02%5F44&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fterm=0%5F-22bdc71de1-%5BLIST%5FEMAIL%5FID%5D) to secure a job offer. But these initial recruiting experiences go beyond forming workers’ first impressions of a company—they can have long-term effects on workers' long-term happiness in their role. [Tessa West](https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/tessa-west.html) is a professor of psychology at New York University and author of the forthcoming book, [_Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works for You_](https://amzn.to/3yZsBQb)_,_ a deep dive on diagnosing and treating unhappiness at work_._ “The real reasons why people tend to be unhappy at work are much more psychological and emotional in nature,” she says. “When you start pulling it out of people, they sound a lot more like the reasons why they're unhappy in other types of relationships.” For West, job interviews are the first place to start for organizations hoping to build happier, more fulfilled workforces. We reached out to her to better understand the link between recruiting and long-term worker happiness, as well as strategies to improve interviews to better serve candidates and organizations. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity: Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). **Why is the recruiting process so important when considering worker happiness?** The interview is a first date, and this is the critical period where miscommunications start. They often feel small or inconsequential in the interview stage, but the small miscommunications that happen here are the ones that can really cascade and lead to big ones down the road. The reason why we often don't take it super seriously is because a lot of us go through a standard interview process with like four stages. It's like a frog in boiling water effect where sure, maybe this one interviewer during their 30 minutes with the candidate could have clarified a little bit around why the job ad was taken down and put back up, but they didn't. But that's not really a big deal because once the person's hired, who cares? Well, that small miscommunication can lead to a belief in that job candidate. They then carry through with them to the next stage of the interview, to the onboarding process, to their understanding of how social norms work in the workplace, to understanding big things like role clarity and whether they're taking the right visible roles. So little communications matter a ton, but because communication is so dispersed in the modern interview process, we don't see how all those things are building up to that miscommunication. **If I'm a hiring manager or other leader, how can I design a more ideal interview recruiting process?** Hyper transparency is always better. You will get people who are more likely to be a good fit, who will actually want to stay here. It reduces the revolving door of talent, even if it feels harder and more uncomfortable in the moment. First, it's critical that you give the person you're interviewing the questions ahead of time that you're going to ask. The killer of us at work and in life for most of us is uncertainty-based stress and anxiety. In any context where you can remove that, you should. A no-surprises version of an interview is going to get the best answers out of a candidate. You want to give people a chance to prepare their answers, and you don't want to test them on their ability to think on their toes unless that's actually part of the job. It’s also good to have \[the interviewer\] give \[the interviewee\] a list of questions that they should also be asking you. Create the norm that it's okay to ask things like, ‘How do you fail at this job? Tell me all the ways in which one could really screw this job up or the last person in this job failed.’ Those answers are going to be really critical for candidates to then say, ‘I actually have that same shortcoming coming into this. What would then your process be to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to me? How are you going to put some guardrails in place?’ Those tough questions, if you hand them over to the interviewee, you're giving them permission to ask you tough radical candor questions that will then open up the conversation to be much more honest about failures in this organization or in this role. Be super transparent about your sourcing process and how you chose candidates up to this point. One of the biggest reasons why people misstep at work or end up being unhappy is because they think they were chosen for one reason and they were chosen for something completely different because they don't have an accurate sense of what that process looked like. **Read West’s advice for how white managers can give better feedback to Black employees in** [**Charter Pro**](http://www.charterworks.com/white-managers-tessa-west/)**.** --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: AI Did Not Kill the Entry-Level Job. Leaders Did.](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/ai-did-not-kill-the-entry-level-job-leaders-did-/)  ### AI Did Not Kill the Entry-Level Job. Leaders Did. [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/ai-did-not-kill-the-entry-level-job-leaders-did-/) [Open article: Why the Office Isn’t a Cure for Loneliness](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-the-office-isn-t-a-cure-for-loneliness/)  ### Why the Office Isn’t a Cure for Loneliness [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-the-office-isn-t-a-cure-for-loneliness/) [Open article: How to Pitch AI More Effectively to Workers](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-pitch-ai-more-effectively-to-workers/)  ### How to Pitch AI More Effectively to Workers [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-pitch-ai-more-effectively-to-workers/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6990827/happiness-interviews-tessa-west/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6990827/happiness-interviews-tessa-west/"},"headline":"The Link Between Interviews and Worker Happiness","datePublished":"2024-06-23T11:31:39.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-28T07:07:28.057Z","description":"Insights from NYU psychologist professor Tessa West, author of the forthcoming book, Job Therapy.","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6990827/happiness-interviews-tessa-west/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9813e327985be2b5/698a580316d884db3fc3ec5c/charter-west.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michelle Peng","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9813e327985be2b5/698a580316d884db3fc3ec5c/charter-west.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-west","caption":"Illustration featuring headshot of Tessa West, a white woman with light-colored hair.","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6990827/happiness-interviews-tessa-west/","name":"The Link Between Interviews and Worker Happiness"}}]}] ```