How To Interview… For Dummies
April 13, 2008 by fsford
A few friends and I were lamenting the amount of “How-To-Interview” sessions we’ve sat through over the past six or seven or eleventy years. It seems that high schools want to tell you how to interview for college, colleges want to help you find jobs or get into grad school, grad school needs to to get jobs… but all of the “tips” are pretty much the same. Also, the more often you hear the “tips,” the more you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon. (Much like seeing The Hoff draped in Puggs.)
Below the jump, a quiz my friend Nick Gregory and I came up with - can you spot the actual interviewing “tips” you get in a career services workshop from common sense “tips?”
- Don’t fiddle with jewelry
- Look me in the eye
- Don’t challenge my masculinity
- Wear hose, ladies. Wear hose.
- Keep your shoes on
- Put your clothes back on
- Don’t call the employer “Pal”
- Have a firm handshake, no dead fish.
- Always have a pad of paper and a pen so it looks like you care.
- Pause before answering a question so we know you’re really thinking about the answer
- Please don’t jump on the couch, it’s leather
- Seriously, put your clothes back on.
- Don’t chew gum
- Don’t smear your gum under the desk
- Speak clearly - not too slow, not too fast.
- Speak in the language the interviewer is asking you questions in
- Don’t throw up from nerves in the office, especially in the interview room.
- Above all, have fun!
Anything I should add to the list? Any you’ve heard that made you want to die?
Also, for an amazing (awful) interview by an amazing band (Sigur Ros), watch the video
http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/2007/10/when_good_interviews_go_bad.html
Steve Wieland
fsford
timhilton
smahieu
Morgan N. Engling
maryiowa
jaimiesuzi
jarens
kevinjames
brieanne
lcm
Andrew
sandista
enwinfield
WEAR A SKIRT - employers hate a muffin top and thongs. thank you, career services. oh also, keep the girls in.
If both the interviewer and the interviewee are males, bare your teeth so that there is no doubt that you are the dominant male. If you are female and the interviewer is male, you should “present,” out of respect. I’m pretty sure Karen Klouda told me that at one point.
Flems I think those are Shar Peis on the Hoff. FYI
Shower the day of your interview. Don’t look like a homeless person.
whoa lindsay, that’s a really good one! i really think we could all get jobs in we follow these AMAZING tips.
Sadly enough, I found all of them incredibly useful.
1) Going to a public high school in Iowa, we didn’t bother discussing the college application interview. If you’re in the top fifty percent of your high school class, you are (or, were until recently) automatically accepted to all of the state schools.
2) Knowing that I was going to grad school after college, my profs and career services department didn’t bother me with the interviewing stuff.
If it weren’t for those classes, I’d probably still say howdy when introducing myself and eat a lot of “forkable” foods with my bare hands. I (would like to pretend to) think that there are other people in the BLB who are/were on the same boat as me . . .
Regardless, if you have found the classes useless thus far, I wouldn’t recommend OCI Boot Camp.
I’d like to contribute something to this discussion, however, I just can’t get past a nearly-nude Hoff wearing a couple of wrinkly dogs.
I’m so happy our brainstorming session led to a fun blog post.
You know what this topic reminds me of? When Homer is being interviewed for a job at the power plant and they ask him what his biggest weaknesses are. He says (paraphrase):
“Well, I don’t learn very quickly. . .
And when things start disappearing from the office I’m usually the guy you’ll want to look for.”
Absolutely Brilliant. That could be another helpful tip for the seminar: don’t steal shit during the interview.
I’m so happy our brainstorming session led to a fun blog post.
You know what this topic reminds me of? When Homer is being interviewed for a job at the power plant and they ask him what his biggest weaknesses are. He says (paraphrase):
“Well, I don’t learn very quickly. . .
And when things start disappearing from the office I’m usually the guy you’ll want to look for.”
Absolutely Brilliant. That could be another helpful tip for the seminar: don’t steal shit during the interview.