"You have exactly ONE chance to make a good FIRST impression."
FReegards!
Posted on 06/27/2010 5:46:22 AM PDT by STONEWALLS
Daphne Batts sometimes wonders if practical jokers with hidden cameras are spying on her as she interviews people for jobs at Bankrate Inc., an online publisher of financial information in North Palm Beach, Fla.
That's because job candidates—including experienced professionals—behave so inappropriately that Ms. Batts, vice president of human resources, suspects she's the target of a prank.
"I find myself peering out my blinds to see if Ashton Kutcher is on my office balcony with a camera crew," she says, referring to the host of the former MTV show "Punk'd," which featured pranks being played on celebrities.
Of course, there's nothing funny about a bad job interview, especially for the long-term unemployed. Yet hiring managers say many job hunters don't take their search efforts seriously enough and make the kind of mistakes that they should know better to avoid. In fact, many say they are frequently amazed by some of the colossal blunders they witness at a time when there are five job seekers for every job opening, according to the Labor Department.
Here's a look at eight bone-headed moves job hunters commonly make.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Dressing right is crucial. Get someone to advise you if you think you might need help. I looked for a job for months, traveling from NJ to NY in a black dress, which is what I thought NY women wore to work. One day the black dresses were in the cleaners and I wore my old cotton paisley suit. I got the job.
I used to be in sales, so thankfully I know how to interview.
The best one was where I mentioned I had forgotten something, pulled out the cell phone, and turned it off. The interviewer mentioned the previous person they interviewed not only had the phone go off, they also took the call in the middle of the interview.
I got the job.
“This isn’t an urban legend - a man came in to my office with his 3 year old who’s legal name was Bronco Billy. Let’s just say, the name fit because he did nothing but bounce off the walls the entire time.”
...Good One Bgill!....your post cracked me up.
A woman applied for a job at my brother’s CPA firm. The interview was going well until she dropped a bomb, “I need Tuesday mornings off for my tennis lesson.” She did not get the job.
Right. Bring two, so you can give one to the interviewer.
Cheers!
My previous employer was one with a large footprint in India. When I began to conduct technical screenings of candidates for our Indian operations, I was warned of "CV inflation". Candidates would learn what skills got interviews and would list them on their CV.
Most of the time, they were honest in interviews and admitted they knew nothing about the skillset
No joke, when I was involved in the hiring process at a call center I used to help supervise we had people on a few occasions show up to the interview hung over and smelling of alcohol. We had one candidate show up so drunk we called him a cab.
No, they didn't get hired.
The last job interview I went on was in 1966 (obviously, I was hired) and I did’t need any of the advice proffered here. I knew then—from common sense—that one went into the interview dressed in a neat, well-fitted suit, cleanly shaven, and on one’s best manners. The shenanigans outlined here would have been unthinkable to me.
"You have exactly ONE chance to make a good FIRST impression."
FReegards!
Miss Manners, (Washington Post columnist Judith Martin) said that job interviewees should dress for the job they want. A flight attendant wannabee would wear a navy suit, for example.
For recreation, she participated in a local blowing league.
I've seen this a lot. A person lists Web Services on their resume, and they don't even know what SOAP and WSDL are.
Had you already turned it off beforehand? A good gambit, that.
Decisions, decisions. What rank??
SEMs are used to examine biological specimens. Osmium tetraoxide is the std. stain. Modern scopes use low kV with high current filaments to obtain high resolution images.
Well, I never saw that movie so for me, the line was original.
Yeah, yeah, don’t wear flip-flops or take your kid to an interview. But fill out a job application? Listen, all you whiny, put-upon Human Resources types: hand-written job applications are a pointless holdover from the early twentieth century, when nobody had a typewriter and copiers hadn’t been invented.
EVERYBODY has a resume with contact info, job history, and education. Painstakingly transferring a bunch of dates by hand to boxes on a form is ludicrous. Imagine if you had to fill out an ID form every time you swiped your credit card — you’d take your business somewhere you could just show your driver’s license. (But you can’t — you’re out of a job, so you shut up and take it.)
With resumes the norm, filling out redundant, obsolete applications are a Human Resources petty power thing, serving only to humiliate vulnerable job-seekers and to show you who’s boss from the get-go.
I admire applicants who refuse and sensibly hand the little tyrants a copy of their resumes. (Not that I’m one of them — I want the gig! I just denounce. And complain about it later on FR, obv.)
Especially if you're applying to be an MRI Technician.
These people getting out of these schools will be entering a meat grinder of employer greed, stagnate wages, slashed benefits, and phony meaningless incentives in lieu of real deserved raises...Where all the corporate insiders spend their day devising schemes to reduce employees incomes while increasing their work load...
I feel for the young people graduating in today's America.
They will be entering a meat grinder.
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