{"id":64157,"date":"2014-03-10T11:30:35","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T16:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=64157"},"modified":"2014-03-10T12:48:24","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T17:48:24","slug":"3-ways-that-your-job-interview-can-go-seriously-awry-and-how-to-avoid-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=64157","title":{"rendered":"3 Ways that your Job Interview can go seriously awry, and how to avoid them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charissa Brammer, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Maine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

3 Ways that your Job Interview can go seriously awry, and how to avoid them<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"charissabrammer\"<\/a>Like most people, I feel really awkward in an interview situation. There is pretty much nothing\u00a0in an interview situation that is designed to make people feel comfortable, but they do give the\u00a0interviewers a good look at how the people they are interviewing act under pressure. As a person\u00a0who has aced a few interviews, and made a fool of myself at others, I have developed a few\u00a0strategies to deal with some of the problems I have faced, and I want to share them with you, in\u00a0the hopes that someone can use them to turn potential interview foolery into an aced interview\u00a0and a job offer.<\/p>\n

Problem 1. Clothes that don\u2019t fit, making you seem fidgety and, frankly, uncomfortable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like many people in the Western United States, I have very few fancy clothes. I have a closet\u00a0full of cardigans, but if I have to dress up past business casual, I have to go get the clothes in\u00a0the special closet in the spare room and, if they fail me, go to the store and buy another fancy\u00a0outfit. This means that my interview clothes are always potentially ill-fitting, depending on how\u00a0much exercise I have been doing at the time I need to interview. I had one interview a few years\u00a0ago where my clothes were so ill-fitting that they were a distraction for me and, potentially, for\u00a0my interviewer. I\u2019m sure that some of my laid-back Western ladies can relate. Since finishing\u00a0my MA and beginning my MLIS, I have found that a professional wardrobe is a requirement\u00a0more and more often. In order to deal with this on a limited budget, I\u2019ve come up with two solid\u00a0strategies: cruising the sales in the business-ladies department at the store when I am out getting\u00a0a pile of plain, v-neck tee shirts to replace the worn ones and making sure that I try on the fancy\u00a0clothes that are exiled to the guest room every once in a while to gauge where I am in the fitting\u00a0spectrum.<\/p>\n

Problem 2. Finding yourself unable to come up with a question for the interviewer when\u00a0prompted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

True story: When I was interviewing for my current job for the first time, when I was asked this\u00a0question, my two questions were: Do you have a policy on tattoos? and Do you have a dress\u00a0code? I mean, seriously, could I have come up with two questions that made me seem less like\u00a0an up and coming, employable professional than those? I think that it was these two questions\u00a0that led to me being passed over the first time and only being offered the job when the original\u00a0hire decided to light out for greener pastures after two months. My solution to this problem was\u00a0an easy one: just google lists of questions to ask your interviewer. There are hundreds of them\u00a0out there, and even if 99% of them are cheesy, they are a sight better than basically telling your\u00a0interviewer that your interview outfit is the only nice outfit that you own.<\/p>\n

Problem 3. Over-answering interview questions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am almost certain that I am not the only person who, when seated across a conference room\u00a0table from a panel of people, seems to lose complete control over my \u201cstop talking\u201d capability.\u00a0If I don\u2019t consciously control this impulse, I will just talk until I see their eyes glaze over and\u00a0then try to think of a way to wrap it up in three sentences or less. This is a terrible strategy. If\u00a0you do this, I would recommend that you take a moment to gather your thoughts, say your piece,\u00a0and then leave a little silence at the end of your statement. If you, like me, tend to think and talk\u00a0simultaneously, this will feel really weird, but it won\u2019t seem weird to your interviewers as long\u00a0as you are keeping the pauses a reasonable length. If I am consciously thinking about silences\u00a0before and after my thoughts, I find that I come off more like the calm, reasonable professional\u00a0that I strive to be and less like a babbling over-sharer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charissa Brammer, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Maine 3 Ways that your Job Interview can go seriously awry, and how to avoid them Like most people, I feel really awkward in an interview situation. There is pretty much nothing\u00a0in an interview situation that is designed to make people feel comfortable, but they do give the\u00a0interviewers a good look…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":57249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,5974,3605,4514,5929,6031,4590,111],"class_list":["post-64157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-charissa-brammer","tag-inalj-maine","tag-interview-tips","tag-job-interview","tag-job-interview-problems","tag-preparing-for-interviews","tag-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/charissabrammer.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-gGN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}