the whys and wherefores of interview tips

the whys and wherefores of interview tips

I've said before - haven't I, Reader, haven't I? - that books on job interview tips are inevitably 99% fluff, because all meaningful job interview tips are self-evident and require no explication.

• Dress smart.
• Don't eat a boiled sweet during the interview.
• Research the company beforehand.
• Don't badmouth your last employer.
• Don't cancel the interview THE DAY BEFORE and ask if it can be rescheduled for next week.

Granted, there are some tips that raise questions. For example:
My tip: Ask questions.
You: What kind of questions?
Me: Good question.
The thing is, these kinds of questions can usually be answered in short sentences:
Me: Ask questions that show you're interested in the company, and questions that show you've researched the company.
You: Such as?
Me: (suddenly rising and overturning a table) Can't you people think for yourself for once? Can't you even -
Anyway, I was thinking today how maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some of my interview advice isn't as perspicuous as I imagined. At any rate, recruiters like me keep posting interview tips on blogs, and candidates keep turning up to interviews dressed in jeans, eating boiled sweets, and slagging off their previous employers. So, to begin to make amends, let me expand a little on the tips listed above.

• Be clean, wear a suit, tuck things in. Why? Because there are occasions where it's appropriate to wear a certain kind of clothing, and a job interview is one of those occasions.
• Don't eat boiled sweets during an interview. Why? Because you're not seven years old, you're not in a playground, and also you don't want to drool while you're discussing Unix shell scripting. (If you naturally drool while discussing Unix shell scripting, seek counsel.)
• You should research the company. Why? Because you're going for a job interview. A job interview is where you show that you want to work at the company in question. If you don't know anything about the company, you can't do that.
• You should avoid badmouthing your last employer for the excellent reason that the people interviewing you are not your personal therapists. They are here to talk about how you may or may not fit into their organisation; anything else is a waste of their time. They could be doing other things, fun things, with the time that you are wasting. They could be standing around playing a game they call 'Firing Squad', which involves firing rubber bands at a polystyrene cup placed on top of a filing cabinet, a cup to which they have affixed a tiny blindfold made of masking tape - or sometimes they call the game 'Gangsta Drug Bust', which is a variation that includes some slow-motion leaping and diving and addressing the cup as 'honky'. But no - they're listening to you moan about how you were the only person in your office who ever made coffee.
• Re. cancelling the interview THE DAY BEFORE and asking if it can be rescheduled for next week - how do you think this makes you look? If you can't show up on a day you've already agreed to show up on, and you're okay with leaving your prospective employers with two hours and an empty room to fill, what else will you not be able to do? If you're unreliable even before you get the job, how much more unreliable will you become once you have your feet under a desk? Presuming you ever turn up for work at all.

Hope this helps!