Wednesday, March 18, 2009

What not to do on a job interview - week 5

With the current job market, many people will be searching for new jobs. To help out, I thought I would take one day each week for 5 weeks and give you my "Top 5 things not to do on a job interview". We are in the 5th and final week. These are things that have actually happened during one of the job interviews I have conducted. If you are interviewing for a new job, please do not do these things.

5) Forget where you are interviewing - One of the first questions that I always ask is "Tell me why you want to work for our company". During one interview, I asked the interviewee this question. His response, "The books you sell are great. I love to read. I find it a great escape to just lose myself in a book, and that is what makes what you guys provide so valuable." See, that may have been a good response if we had been a book store. The interview was to work at a science and nature gift store. We did sell books. Actually there were only two that we sold. "The Gas We Pass" and "Everybody Poops". I assume he forgot what store he was interviewing for or didn't really know what we sold. Either way, not good. In hind sight, "The Gas We Pass" could be a great escape, but I hope you don't lose yourself in "Everybody Poops". We did not offer him a position.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great advice, cleverly delivered.

Anonymous said...

Would you hired someone that watch March Madness