You already know that an interview is your one chance to get a job that might allow you to live in a space that doesn’t resemble a Harry Potter’s closet. F*cking finally.
5 Things TO NEVER Do In A Job Interview
1. Bring Up Your Personal Sh*t Problems:
The good news is if for some reason you do have 99 problems stuff going on, by law I’m pretty sure a company is not allowed to be biased towards you while working there. So there’s no need to bring it up during the interview.
2. Bypass The Opportunity To Ask Questions
Even if your dying to get out of a stuffy interview room because your sweat stains are seeping into creeping into places I won’t even dare bring up in this post, you need act REALLY interested in what Susan from HR had to say (remember the theme of this post?!).
- What is the day to day like of this position?
- Can you tell me what success look like in this role?
- What is your management style like?
- Tell me, what is your ideal candidate for the role?
3. Be a Negative Nancy
The funny part about interviews is that you are asking questions prompting you to complain and put down yourself! “What is your biggest weakness?!” “Tell about a time you failed”. The BEST thing you can do when someone asks these questions is to answer positively.
If someone asks your biggest weakness, don’t tell the truth (duh, not taking advantage of the Nordstrom anniversary sale), GIVE a positive answer. For example, I have trouble saying “no”, so my biggest weakness is often that there ends up being too work on my plate. I usually add that I am working on my time management, which turns my weakness into a positive. AKA that I’m a really hard worker.
If I were you, I’d practice these questions in advance! Turning a negative into a positive doesn’t come at the moment, so the best thing you can do is make 3-4 examples of times that you failed or weaknesses that can be turned into a positive.
4. Act Like You Don’t Want or Need This Job
As I mentioned before, the best advice I’ve ever gotten is to act like this is your ONLY job opportunity to get a job if you are in an interview. Your role is to make the other people in the room and the company feel special AF. So make eye contact, ask questions and say you are extremely interested in the job (if that is, you want it of course).
You also just never want to act like your better than anyone else. I mean, you might have won your Bachelor Fantasy league this year (congrats, babe) but someone is still taking their time out of their day to talk to you – be gracious and of course, don’t waste anyone’s time without showing excitement and interest!
5. Say Something That Isn’t True
This starts with your resume. Even if you don’t have a lot of experience, don’t lie (you can follow this guide instead). You might fib that you went out instead of watching Netflix to your friends on a Saturday night (and trust me, I can’t say I’ve never done that either…), and that’s OK. I mean your friends might be mad but whatever.
When an interviewer is asking you a question that you don’t know the answer to, the response should *not* be to just make some sh*t up.
If you don’t know the answer to the question or your brain is just drawing a blank, try these two strategies:
- Repeat the question…basically, give yourself time to THINK. If someone says, “what’s your biggest weakness?”, say, “My biggest weakness is…” and then you’ve stalled for like, 3 seconds.
- Say you don’t know! If someone says, do you know how to use Javascript, it’s ok to say you don’t! Just pair it with the fact that you’d LOVE to learn it in the future AND that you’d even be happy to learn it prior to coming on the job.
It’s no secret that job interviews are hard.
I want you to go live on to the biggest and the best of things, so go ahead and crush this job interview.
If you want information about how I prep for any job interview, click here for another post!
How do you feel about job interviews?! Comment below!
