Wednesday, February 01, 2006
How Not To Do A Job Interview
I interviewed someone today.
I’m not a big fan of interviewing. I’m a decent judge of character so I can get a fairly good idea if someone’s going to fit in or not, but it’s the technical side of things that bothers me. Short of sitting them down and making them take a test it’s really difficult to gauge the depth of someone’s skillset.
Fortunately this guy made it easy. The resumé was a train wreck and had I had the time to read it properly and not just scan his experience and qualifications he wouldn’t even have made it to an interview.
The first thing that gave it away was the way he managed to spell his address wrong. The next was the way that on every bullet-pointed line the first (at least) two words were capitalized. Then there was the vast array of malapropisms… it was just a disaster area.
As for the actual interview, make sure your verbal description of your previous jobs matches the written one. Also, try not to contradict yourself twice within the space of a minute. People pick up on that kind of stuff, you know. Please note that describing how you walked out on a job generally is something I would attempt to avoid.
A word about embellishing your resumé. We all do it, but the trick it to embellish it a teensy, weensy bit. Whilst it’s plentiful in supply, in terms of demand bullshit is generally not way up there on people’s wanted lists and also has a very high detection rate. When you claim to be an expert in your chosen field but can’t answer rudimentary questions it does give the game away somewhat.
Finally, I find dressing for the occasion does tend to infer that you actually give two hoots. That doesn’t mean ladies without panty hose would be sent packing but surely, for the gentlemen, is a suit too much to ask ?
Oh, and if you know you’ve been rumbled and the game’s up, don’t be so persistent about getting a second interview. It only makes saying goodbye more painful, and we don’t like long goodbyes.
# posted by SideshowPete : 11:05 pm
