What is the worst thing you could possibly do or say in a job interview?
There are many ways to guarantee you come up short during an interview. Many of them, as it turns out, are completely outside your control. A hiring manager might have already settled on an internal candidate, taken an irrational dislike to your résumé, or decided for some unexplainable reason that they don’t think you’d be “the right fit.” Still, there are plenty of genuine pitfalls to avoid, and these hiring managers gathered in an online community to share the moments that instantly made them decide they weren’t going to hire a candidate. I promise that nothing you have done in an interview is as bad as some of these.
The advice given by the hiring managers serves as a pretty good guide for avoiding some extreme job interview blunders.
In a space dominated by performative acts, where everyone is trying to present the most polished and employable version of themselves, interviews really take the cake.
Let’s face it: corporate life exists in an almost liminal space compared with the rest of reality. Everything is canned and sterile—much like that idiom I just used. Managers and employees stick to familiar, carefully approved scripts. Outside of talking about the weather, weekend plans, and sports, few people seem willing, or perhaps properly trained, to venture beneath that tepid surface.
Job interviews concentrate all that corporate artificiality into a single uncomfortable conversation. The interviewer pretends that “What made you want to work for our company?” is a meaningful question and that they don’t hate their job. The candidate pretends that they didn’t just Google what the company was 5 minutes before they walked through the door. Then they swiftly answer the follow-up question by confidently stating that their greatest weakness is that they care too much about their work. Everyone understands that a performance is taking place, yet acknowledging it would break the spell.
If you’re like me and really struggle with interviews, you might also struggle with the entire idea of putting on this performance in the first place. And you probably have a tendency to overthink them because of this and try to predict and rehearse how the entire thing is going to go from start to finish.
Unfortunately, all that overthinking can leave you tied up in knots. You rehearse every possible question, memorize perfect STAR answers, and become so focused on appearing natural that you forget how to actually act naturally. Interviewers can usually tell when someone has spent too much time preparing.
The trick, apparently, is to perform without appearing to perform. You need to seem prepared but spontaneous. Basically, you need to deliver exactly the right performance while convincing everyone in the room that no performance is happening at all.
Of course, sounding a little over-rehearsed is hardly the worst thing a candidate can do. There are plenty of faster and far more bewildering ways to remove yourself from consideration, and you may raise an eyebrow at what some candidates apparently consider acceptable to do or say during a job interview.
Author: Kayitsi.com
