My boss did five interviews today. I did the reference checks. Here is my list of things not to do on an interview.
Show up in jeans and a college sweatshirt for a job that requires business casual.
Bring your boyfriend along.
Bring your kids along.
Bring your sister along, and have her circling the area.
Call to schedule the interview and complain that no one ever tells you at the interview whether you are hired, they say “we’ll get back to you”. Complain that no one wants to hire you because you have three kids and can’t work weekends. Then tell my boss, “Okay, this is how the interview will go: I’ll get there, and you’ll tell me all about the job…” (She didn’t hear the sarcasm when my boss replied “Really? Is that how the interview is going to go?”)
Have an email address that references the fact that you are a Star Trek/Voyager fan. It’s yahoo, for gosh sakes. Get a free one just for job stuff that at least sounds professional and grownup, “3of6” (it was longer than that, and definitely Trek related)
Give us, as a reference, your previous boss who is very mad at you because you just quit without notice during a very busy week when she was already short-staffed.
I was interviewing for a telemarketing position (shut up) and the woman asked me why I’d left a previous job.
I said something about it being repetative and lame (not those words, obviously), and how I didn’t like doing the same thing over and over an… whoops! Forgot what I was interviewing for, for a second there. I guess it’s no wonder I didn’t get the job. :smack: Oh well, it probably would’ve been awful anyway.
Claim that, while working for company A, you coded a subsystem that was actually coded by person B before you were even hired by company A. Especially if person B moved on to the company that you’re interviewing with. And is, in fact, on the interview team.
My email address isn’t a Star Trek reference, but it isn’t professional either. why should I be shot down for a job just because of the name of my email address? I don’t want to create a new one, because then I’ll have to maintain it, check up on it every now and then so the account isn’t deleted, and if I ever forget about it I could miss an important message. Why add an extra hassle to your life?
My favorite was the folks who didn’t know if we made foam containers for hamburgers or nuclear warheads. Know how to intelligently answer, Tell me why you’d like to work for Widgetron LLC.
Don’t ask for a writing instrument. Have the foresight to bring your own damned pen.
Hygiene, people. Fool me into thinking you own a bar of soap, a fingernail brush, and have used them since the Reagan administration.
Because productivity is one of the major keys to happiness, as are the shelter and clothing that said productivity provides. Work is important, but it’s not something I like to keep on my mind once I get home any more than I have to.
He brought in a bunch of artwork that ‘he’ had done. Except it was artwork done by me! He had worked as a programmer coding my art into a project when worked together less than 6months earlier.
We had worked closely, there’s no way he didn’t know who I was, especially as we’d spoken before this interview and he was excited to be coming to see me!
He didn’t bring the coded project. He didn’t bring anything other than the illustrations that I had drawn (remember I said he was the programmer? Yeah… well, this was a graphic design job). He brought nothing of his own and made no convincing argument why he should be hired. Not even a plaintive, ‘but we were friends’. Nothing.
I got an email from him a week later telling me he thought it was time for me to get a ‘serious’ job and that I needed to think about the future and maybe it was time for me to be more ‘adult about life’’.
I still don’t know why he thought he’d get the job…
Dress like you came directly from your other job at the strip club. Especially, when you know the the company is run by a conservative woman. Even if you’re not meeting her that day.
Tell me about all your medical problems and about the L&I claim that kept you home for 4 months at your last job.
Complain about the receptionist giving you a TEST! Aptitude, indeed.
Wear as much perfume as humanly possible. See if you can cause an asthma attack in the next building.
By all means chew gum, show me your talent, blowing bubbles and making really loud snapping noises. I really like watching the spittle spray after the pop.
While we may bear some responsibility for what happened, for the love of Og please don’t do what this young man did. To this day, I don’t what possessed him. Probably alcohol.
We interviewed an American for a writing/production position a while back. His qualifications looked ok, but his Japanese was a problem. On paper, he had good test certifications, but in action he got too nervous to use what he knew. He seemed nice, though, so when we told him we’d contact him shortly for a second interview, our president (whose English is fairly good with occasional bizarre lapses), trying to give him some encouragement, clapped him on the back and said “don’t be afraid to expose yourself.”
The next day we received his email, thanking us for the interview.
It had attached photos.
Of him.
Taking our president’s advice.
Literally.
I guess it says something about our office that although he didn’t get the job, this performance didn’t automatically disqualify him.
Tell the interviewers you’ve been up all night, so this might not go so well, because your idiot sister got robbed by smackheads the night before and her keys and address we’re in the bag, along with her mobile, and said theives kept ringing up all night.
They loved that when I did that.
Walk in the room and go “I know you’re loving this shit right here!”
Be the kid that was a security guard at my previous job, coming in for a job in the art dept (graphic design of POS basically). He gave us a sketchbook with 3 different designs of the word LONDON, done in pencil, and a company internal application form acting as a CV.
‘So, do you know Illustrator/Photoshop, or how we do vinyl cutting?’
‘Nah, but i’ll pick it up in a couple of weeks. I could start by doing the paintings instead actually, I used to paint in GCSE art’
(me and dept head look at each other) ‘Well, I handle the illustration, so don’t worry about that. We’ll let you-’
(Interrupts me) So when do I start then? It’s doing my head in being in security.
I’ll leave you to guess whether he got the job, or whether we burst out laughing after he left the room.
Or a kid called ZORAN, who’s response on being shown round and introduced to people in the dept was ‘YES, the painting. I will do that. Ah, reDESIGNING the mezzanine floor, this seems SUBSTANDARD to me, when ZORAN starts, he will make changes.’ before telling us he would work there. but only for £5k more than everybody else was on due to his talents. His work examples were a parent directory of badly photoshopped pictures of himself, which were also piss poor hilarious.
He ended up working on the rock floor (this was Tower Records, while it was still alive) and reapplying for the art dept twice. He made a formal complaint because e wouldn’t interview him, even after it clearly stated ‘previous applicants need not apply’.
This thread is about what to do at a job interview.
If you’re at the interview you presumably want the job.
If you want the job, you won’t have a Star Trek reference in your email address.
You ever see “Bull Durham”?
Crash (the old vet) tells the new kid this.
Your shower shoes have fungus on 'em. You’ll never get to the Bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. Think classy and you’ll be classy. If you win 20 in the show you can let the fungus grow back on your shower shoes and the press’ll think you’re colorful. Until you win twenty in the Show, however, it means you’re a slob.
A guy I knew was living on unemployment and intended to do so for as long as he could. He was also very lactose intolerant.
An hour before any job interview, he would drink a quart of whole milk. By the time he got to the interview, the sounds and the smells would be unbelievable. If that wasn’t enough, he always asked to use the bathroom, filled up the bowl, and didn’t flush.
He was on unemployment for over a year before someone told the unemployment office exactly why he wasn’t getting hired with all these job interviews.
An interview isn’t about getting you a job. It’s about the interviewer getting the best hire. I’m not going to hire someone who’s not willing to work hard for me when there are plenty of applicants who will. Keeping a separate “business” email account isn’t difficult, nor is it particularly time consuming. It’s also simply a good idea, since most employers aren’t thrilled with you checking your personal email at work. (This assumes a business who doesn’t give you a business email; you can still use your more professional sounding one for your work.)
The way to interview is to convince your interviewer that this job will come first. You will eat, sleep and breathe WidgetsInc. You will not rest until WidgetsInc makes an IPO that puts Amazon.com to shame. You will sell your soul to Satan to increase market shares of WidgetsInc, and you’ll see your kids at their graduation. Better yet, you won’t ever have kids, because all your testosterone will be used up in service to WidgetsInc and you’ll be an impotent, lonely man. But you’re looking forward to impotence, because women are a distraction, taking up valuable time you could be working for WidgetsInc.
And the best way to get a job is to say all that at an interview and not sound like a syncophantic jerk.
