The Dreaded Job Interview
Job interview techniques invariably seem to ebb and flow with the economy. When employers are desperate to fill positions, nonchalance bordering catlike becomes the default demeanor of the qualified applicant. When we know the job is ours, it’s so easy to James Bond into the interview chair, smoothly arch an eyebrow and initiate the salary requirements debate with the dispatch pedantry of a campaigning politician.
It’s this kind of confidence that businesses are often searching for, even when the job market is as depressed as it is now. A good hire is a good hire, no matter what the economic situation, and confidence generally presages competence. (Of course, confidence and arrogance are often split by nothing more than opinion, so it’s probably best we applicants err on the side of caution. No one likes a smart-ass.)
By comparison, in times of high unemployment, like now, companies can afford to tire kick and melon thump until their feet and fingers burst. Job interviews become vaguely disguised displays of interviewee desperation. They want James Bond but, more often than not, we give them George Costanza.
The two things we forget
1. The most common mistake we make is failing to understand the employer wants us as much as we want them. It’s as much their role to convince us to take the job as it is for us to persuade them to hire the uncomfortably sweating Costanza clone across the table. Adopting this belief goes a long way to calming the jitters that can ruin a productive interview, but try to avoid busting out the other side into Seinfeldland.
2. Research. Especially if we’re going to a lot of interviews, we often neglect to look into the companies we’re canvassing for employment. A significant portion of our future lives may be tied up with a firm, so it’s simply common sense to learn something about where we may be spending the majority of our waking hours. While researching companies may have been somewhat challenging in decades past, involving hiking to libraries and suchlike, the internet has made it laughably easy.
Experts? What experts?
There’s a whole industry of advice out there about interview techniques and, as with most things, a lot of it is sound, but at least an equal amount is wordy, over-detailed, contradictory garbage vomited unsparingly onto pages to justify the author’s salary.
If you feel yourself getting crushed beneath the aggregate weight of interview tips, it’s often wisest to step back from the labyrinthine pettifoggery and consider the simple approach. You’ve got your practiced answers to the rote questions. You’ve done your research about the company, and you know they want you: after all, they asked you in for an interview!
A focused noggin is a far bigger boon than a cluttered one.
A psychologist, historian, and keen amateur anthropologist, Stefan Abrutat’s humble beginnings working construction in frigid Canadian winters and swelteringTexas summers rewarded him with an insight often lacking in academia: hands-on experience.
