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"Of Course I Know HTML" and Other Interviewing Tips
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Image via BusinessTalkInc.com
HYGIENE
Wear deodorant.
This is the most important piece of advice you’ll ever receive. A person who smells nice will be forgiven multiple sins, while an applicant with BO is DOA. If you’re prone to sweat stains when nervous, wear layers and make sure one of them is black. Of course, also brush your teeth and your hair and, if you have cats, your clothes.
TIMING
Show up for your interview about ten minutes early.
Promptness reflects well on you, and it allows you a few moments to take a deep breath and calm down. Practice pronouncing the name of the company in your head or out loud in the bathroom. Ask someone to make sure you have it right, if necessary—a security guard is a good neutral bet. And formulate your answer to The Question ("Why do you want to work here?")
Remember to arrive on the correct day.
Once I had an interview in a town in New Jersey. Two train rides and an hour later, I arrived, only to be informed that I was even earlier than I thought I was—about twenty-four hours early, in fact. Back I went to Brooklyn, only to have to return the next day. The experience had an upside: it drove home the realization that a commute like that was not for me.
ETIQUETTE
Don’t argue with an interviewer.
Somehow, though I was interviewing at a famously leftist academic publishing house, I found myself across a desk from a grumpy old white man of the Dead Before Red variety. He sniffed at the “hippie” school I attended and the “feminist, PC” education I must have received. I smiled and nodded. “Everything’s about ‘identity politics’ these days,” he groused. “Whatever happened to military history? Political history? Real history?” I smiled and nodded some more. “What sort of books are you working on?” I asked, rather than defend my degree. “One about how we could have won in Vietnam if we hadn’t just given up,” he replied. I had never bitten my tongue harder in my life, but who cares? Good manners count even on what amounts to a bad blind date.
Don’t just smile and nod in response to a question you didn’t hear.
An interviewer at a prestigious trade publishing house and I had covered almost all the bases—my experience dealing with high-powered and occasionally difficult bosses, a work challenge I’d overcome, my college thesis—and we were really clicking. If this had been a date, we’d have been thinking of whether to go my place or his.
Finally, glancing down at my resume, he saw that I was working on a novel inspired by my experiences at my first job. “Oh, a novel,” he said, in a casual voice. “Sort of a Devil Wears Prada type of thing?” I didn’t catch the question, and rather than ask him to repeat himself, I smiled and nodded. His face clouded over, the interview equivalent of signaling for the check. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What did you say?” Once informed, I backpedalled, glistening with flop sweat, assuring him that my novel was completely different than The Devil Wears Prada, that I would never disparage my former bosses in print, that I could, in fact, be trusted. Unfortunately the damage had been done. I never heard from him again.
Answer inane questions with a straight face.
My first job out of college was not easily gotten. A phone interview, a preliminary interview, a grammar test and a typing test were followed up by one last face-to-face interview with the head of HR, an unsmiling woman in blood-red glasses that matched her Dansko clogs. After grilling me for about forty-five minutes, she got down to the heart of the matter. “I’ve hired a lot of people who turned out to be stupid,” she said, slamming her hand down on her desk, “and I’m tired of it. So I have to ask you, Ester: are you stupid?” And looking her in the eye, I had to reply, “No. I’m very smart.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re hired.”
DRESS
Wear a suit, period.
If you end up looking better than the person asking you questions, so be it—I once interviewed with a woman wearing what looked like pajamas. Doesn’t matter. The idea that females should wear skirt suits if being interviewed by older men strikes me as irritating and sexist, but perhaps that’s my “feminist, PC” education talking. If you think showing some leg will give you a leg up, by all means use the tools at your disposal. Avoid flashy jewelry, though, and don’t overdo it at Sephora before you show up at reception. Nothing about you should be too distracting.
Wear shoes you can walk in.
HR might send you to another interview in a building that’s fifteen minutes away on foot, and if you show up chafing and blistered the discomfort will probably show on your face.
ACCURACY
Be the best politician you can be.
Telling the absolute truth is not of paramount importance in an interview. Present the facts in a way that puts you in the best possible light.
Situation: You had to leave a job because one of your bosses was furious that you went to the emergency room to treat your kidney infection when he told you not to.
You say: “I decided I didn’t want to be an agent after all.”
Situation: You were let go because the boss’s niece moved to NYC and wanted your job.
You say: “That particular office wasn’t a good fit.”
If someone asks you if you know HTML, say yes.
PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and basic coding languages are easily learned. Don’t lose a job by confessing ignorance of something you can teach yourself over a weekend.
PREPARATION
Bring at least two copies of your resume in a folder and an answer to The Question: Why do you want to work in [business, advertising, trash collecting]? You might assume you can answer that off the cuff; after all, you have mad improvisational skills. But never underestimate the danger a blank stare can do to your chances and your ego, especially after an hour of carefully building rapport with an interviewer.
RESILIENCE
Of course, sometimes everything will seem to go right and you still won’t get a second interview or an offer. In these cases, it is helpful to remember that the position may not have been the best fit anyway; that you can do better; and that people’s nieces can pop up needing jobs at any moment. Resilience is a more important quality than luck. Know that no rejection is the end of the world, buy some more deodorant, and keep plugging. And if all else fails, there’s always grad school.
