Until last week, I had thought that between Google, friends/ family, and college career centers, people had the resources they needed to understand the basics of interviewing. Even if the answers were rough, common sense would tell you what to do or what not to do. Boy, was I wrong.
Allow me to share with you some "interviewing don'ts" that I encountered last week...
1. Do not greet your interviewer by saying "oh hey, you made it after all. I was wondering if you'd find the room". Well, Interviewee, it is only 1 minute after when our meeting was scheduled... And in case you forgot, I work here so I'm fairly familiar with where to find the various rooms.
2. Do not follow up your inappropriate greeting by removing your suit jacket, half-hazardly throwing it over the chair next to you, and then tilting your own chair back against the wall so you can more easily cross your leg over your knee. In case you're new to this, I am interviewing you, not the other way around.
3. When describing the behaviors you took in a various example, refrain from using the phrases "yada-yada-yada," "blah-blah-blah," or "ya know." The point of the behavioral question is actually to understand what specific behaviors you did, in case that wasn't clear.
4. When asked about your current job duties, do not start your description by saying you like to do your first task as slow as possible so you can "work up the muscle memory in your brain." Is that even a real thing?
5. Do not start an answer to a question by saying that you "have a story for that" and then after 3 minutes of rambling, tell me you're going to expand more on that piece of info you've touched on that isn't relevant to the question.
6. Please refrain from putting your coworkers or teammates down and/or referencing how your partying habits had to be adjusted to be taken seriously as a part of your answer on leadership.
7. When forming an answer for a question, do not say "crap I had a really good example for that one" and then start paging through your notes for a few minutes. When you do finally come up with something to talk about, I don't need to be told that you could tell me about a time that you did what I asked in the question, but that you're instead going to focus on an example that shows your "great leadership skill set." Based on the first 5 minutes, you already are on the bottom of the list of candidates, so please do us both a favor and just answer it as it's asked.
8. After asking me to describe my team structure and what they are responsible for, do not tell me that "wow, you actually did a good job of laying out how many people you have and what they do." Believe it or not, understanding how many direct reports I have and what they do is a critical piece of being a manager.
9. Do not click your pen agressively for the entire interview. That, paired with your completely inappropriate body language, does not help give off a good impression and is slightly distracting.
10. And lastly, after going over the allotted time for the interview, it's not a good idea to tell me how efficient you were with answering the questions... You had 5 questions in 40 minutes. Are you sure you understand what efficient means?
Also, if you choose to write a thank you card, I'd recommend spelling "sincerely" right the first time instead of trying to re-write over the top of your first attempt as well as using phrases accurately.... "hit the hammer on the head" doesn't really make sense....
There were multiple points in this interview where I thought Ashton would jump through the door and tell me I was being punked. Sadly, not the case.
Hopefully these interview no-no's gave you a laugh... they sure did for me :)
