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How to Give a Great Job Interview

by Joel Kirschbaum ***

*****An Invitation from TSS*****

TSS Directory



These hints are aimed at those interviewing to get a new job, and you think another applicant may be superior. Now you need an added advantage, or edge, at the job interview to obtain your employment objective. What's important here is not merely great garb but gab that grabs. Below are some suggestions on to ensure an auspicious interview.

It's terribly tasteless to admit you inferred an opening existed for the job from reading obituaries; instead, say that you acquired this information from an acquaintance of the dearly extinguished.

If interviewing on an expense account, add any charges that will possibly put you in a positive light, such as a solitary, lengthy telephone access bill to an Internet provider. Never, on an expense account, wreck a rented car.

It's best to appear with a reporter and camera crew from a major TV network that is seeking a story with an enjoyable ending.

Avoid arriving armed, unless interviewing as researcher into attitudes toward the NRA, in which case you should use cologne or after-shave with a scent of gunpowder, and have a shell casing stuck to a shoe.

If you are kept waiting, use this time to create a positive impression. Depending on your specialty; for example, sociology, review a MS, without revealing that it was either unsubmitted or repeatedly rejected. If raising extra money or in sales, use a laptop with a wireless telephone to examine your site on eBay where you profitably "auction", over time to scattered individuals, trinkets that you purchased cheaply in quantity. If you would be dealing with money, read a financial magazine. It always helps to work on a puzzle in Scientific American. Use your imagination to attempt to achieve instant appreciation of your individual area of expertise when the interviewer initially sees you. If this interview is for your first job, carry a book about obeying bosses. If you're interviewing for a job as interviewer practice both piercing and paternal looks.

If the interview involves eating with a possible boss, follow his or her lead- if you are to order first, as part of either politeness or testing; it's best to chose the least messy. Also, pick water over wine to avoid any embarrassing incidents. Choose silence over outspoken speech. Never make a burnt offering to show obsequiousness to any unknown gods.

When describing previous work, you should appear to leave a chronological lapse to attempt to induce an inquisitorial question, which will result in your apt answer about an outstanding achievement.

During the interview, insert at an appropriate aspect of the conversation that all of your relatives enjoyed excellent health until retirement, and then, the next month, suddenly died. It can only help to say that your spouse has a cousin who is married to either (depending on the specific nature of the work) the President of Princeton University, the head of grants committee at the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mayor, the Sheriff or a Supreme Court judge.

If you are to give a talk of any type, first rehearse it on tape and time it to last less than the allowed limit. After playback, revise it as needed, especially if you fell asleep. Employ graphics; they demonstrate that you are both sufficiently computer literate to make the figures and possess sufficient mechanical skills to operate an overhead projector. Please note that during prolonged darkness experienced supervisors might "rest their eyes". Signal the sleepers (also called "deep meditators") that they are within their last few seconds of darkness, before turning on the lights, by sharply raising your voice to summarize your talk.

Forebear fear: All sapiens can sense or smell fright, so concentrate on appearing adept, adroit and articulate, but not aloof, indifferent or incapable.

Avoid repetitious movements unless you can enter the interviewer into a helpless hypnotic state where you can implant employment instructions.

Adjust education, even including degrees, as needed. For example; if you have Ph.D. in astrophysics and want BS level job as statistician, either drop a degree from your resume or emphasize prior research on statistical populations of stars; always explaining actual experience using words of two or fewer syllables. If you need a degree immediately, get one from the fastest and cheapest Internet On-line University (I.O.U.). By the way, you should expect that your name on the commencement list would be sold endlessly to telemarketers.

If you are much younger and of the opposite sex than the interviewer, get "caught" accidentally gazing for a fraction of a second longer than is professional to appear to impart a hidden compliment. If you are significantly older, interject that you won't be trying for your superior's job due to your age, but that you will be employed long enough to preclude a time-consuming, new search to refill the slot. You may want to add that the interviewer resembles your beloved (pick one) spouse, fiancée, son or daughter, or sister or brother, who you just went with on a vigorous wilderness white water raft expedition.

If you're asked if you have any weaknesses, state that you're a compulsive-neurotic workaholic who must meet all goals, with the friendly help of all coworkers, thus solving problems with brilliant solutions which always reflect favorably on the department director, who you came to idealize.

If you're asked why you left the last job, the answer is that a rumor circulated that your operation was bought out (or privatized) by a Russian organization, and you didn't want to risk being transferred to Siberia, and be forced to leave the land of your loved ones.

Finally, remember that the goal of employment explains your need to almost imperceptibly adjust the interviewing environment. Clip and save this article, perhaps under the heading "Machiavelli" until it may be needed.



















Dr. Kirschbaum published about 40 parodies and about 90 technical papers...the obsolete ones being now of inestimable value only to insomniacs.