12th May 2008
Don’t Be Weird and Other Interview Advice
CNN has a list of the top 10 interview mistakes, which includes all sorts of odd behaviors in terms of grooming and hygiene gaffs, some oversharing, some underpreparation, and then plain rudeness:
• Candidate answered cell phone and asked the interviewer to leave her own office because it was a “private” conversation.
• Applicant told the interviewer he wouldn’t be able to stay with the job long because he thought he might get an inheritance if his uncle died - and his uncle wasn’t “looking too good.”
• The job seeker asked the interviewer for a ride home after the interview.
• The applicant smelled his armpits on the way to the interview room.
• Candidate said she could not provide a writing sample because all of her writing had been for the CIA and it was “classified.”
• Candidate told the interviewer he was fired for beating up his last boss.
• When the applicant was offered food before the interview, he declined saying he didn’t want to line his stomach with grease before going out drinking.
• An applicant said she was a “people person” not a “numbers person” — in her interview for an accounting position.
• During a phone interview the candidate flushed the toilet while talking to hiring manager.
• The applicant took out a hair brush and brushed her hair.
Advice in the article seems pretty obvious.
This reminds me of a time when I was riding the bus on a weekday afternoon, and there was an attractive woman in her early 20s wearing a decent pinstripe suit. She was thin, and her hair was nicely done, her jewelry tasteful. She was standing about eight feet away from me on the crowded bus. She was on her cell phone talking to someone about how she’d just come from a job interview, but didn’t know what to think after months of job hunting rejections. She kept saying things like, “I don’t know why I’m never the number one choice,” and “All that private school and college education is being wasted.”
When we got to her stop, she stepped off the bus, and I watched her walk down the sidewalk. At that point I noticed she was wearing 3 inch high lucite heels.
What greatly disturbs me here is that I bet I can tell you where she got them. Shoes USA has an enormous collection of all types of lucite heels. And they’re made in the USA!
My husband works at a company where roughly 90% of the employees are female. He once interviewed a man who was in his late 40s/early 50s who asked “Are there any hot chicks who work here?” when he noticed a group of women holding a meeting in a conference room.
Hmm. . . US-made huh?
I think I could pull off lucite, but at 6′4″ would be hard pressed to wear three-inch heels.
The clear heels thing has GOT to end. I don’t know how they made their way from the stripper stage to Main Street, USA. I checked out shoesusa.com and all I can say is … not one of those pairs of shoes on the main page is appropriate for a job interview (unless the workplace is named Bada Bing).
I can muster sympathy up for one of those–#5. I had been working for a defense contractor, doing tech writing work that was classified (except for the corporate newsrag) for three years. I was asked in the interview for a RECENT sample of my writing. I offered the journalistic material–and was rather snottily asked for some TECHNICAL writing. My explanation that I didn’t have copies of any it, because if I did, I’d have committed a felony, and if I had it and showed it to them it would also be a felony didn’t seem to get through either. “Well you must have SOMETHING recent you can show us…”.
Um, no. I had some years worth of stuff BEFORE that, and evidence I’d been working for the defense contractor, and stuff I’d written during that time–just not the (classified) tech writing.
I’m certain that the list of equivalently strange, stupid, rude and deranged interviewer comments and behaviors would be equally “good.” My favorite may be the job requirement for at LEAST 10 years of experience with a programming language that had only been around for three years at the time.
Of course, there was the guy who wanted to know if I played the guitar (applying for a writing/editing job in a firm that had nothing to do with music). That was strange…