Trying to get a job? Guide on what NOT to do. Part II

I recently wrote a post on what not to do when writing your CV. Here's also another interesting post on CVs and CVs in Catalan. Now let's assume you followed my advice, or you didn't, but nevertheless got invited to an interview.

You got your foot on the threshold! They want to meet you! You are already in the top 20% of their choices, well done! Let's now go through in how many ways you can still screw up.

There is an advantage of interviews compared to the whole CV-sending business: you can see their faces (or at least listen to them if it is a phone interview). This means that you can assess the situation and adapt.

Let's now go through a list of interview NO-NO situation. Unfortunately I have to tell that all these examples are based on real experiences. Tough.


Don't be late
You managed to give a good enough impression so they want to meet you. This is the fastest way to ruin it. Managers love to feel busy and it pisses them off to waste time. Because of somebody else that is.

Don't miss the building
The candidate calls me telling he's waiting in the lobby, so we went to pick him. But the lobby was empty so we called him back. He was in a wrong lobby, that means a wrong building, which means wrong company. Not a great way to cause a good impression.
In the meeting invitation the address and company name were written in three different places, but he went to the wrong place, and I quote, "because my friend told me it was here!" and he was upset with us. Not good.

Not knowing your own CV
...so that you need to check the interviewers copy to explain your own experience. This is actually a specific case of the main rule of trying to get a job: don't lie.

Don't check check your mobile phone continuously
I hope it doesn't require an explanation, but I'll write anyway: you were trying to impress them. Checking your phone continuously screams "I don't care. I don't know what I'm doing here". There is an acceptable exception though, if your partner is about to go into labour.

Don't stretch, yawn or spend more time looking through the window than the interviewers
Of course, there is the chance that you are actually bored, and not interested any longer in the job. That's actually OK. Say it out loud, and you'll save some wasted time for a bunch of people.

Don't whisper or yell
It just makes the conversation very awkward and in occasions not understandable. The best interviews are those which feel like a conversation, rather than an interrogation.

Don't stare at the chest (to put it nicely) of your female interviewer
This happened while doing an interview together with a female colleague. The result? It was a very uncomfortable situation, and I felt ignored. Labelling yourself as a pervert won't get the interviewers interested, it will scare them!

Don't be scared :)
This is easy to say from this side of the table, but you have to remember that it is a two sided road. You need to impress them, but they need to impress you as well!

Don't ignore the interviewers
If they start yawning, sighing, checking their phones, staring at the screen longer than looking at you the chances are that you're boring them. And you don't want that. You can see how  they react, so you can adapt.
Of course, most of them will be better than you at this game and reading body language, so remember: adapt, but don't lie!


Will these advises land you a job? No way. But at least it will give interviewers less reasons to reject you.

Good luck!

Trying to get a job? Guide on what NOT to do. Part I

Being a recruitment manager is part of my job. What does that mean in practice? That I have to say no to lots of applicants.

Put in numbers, for each position I have to fill I will receive around 50 applications and we will interview around 10 of them. That means that I have to reject 4 out of every 5 applicants based on their CV. And that’s the focus of this post.

What is the purpose of the curriculum vitae then? It is not to describe to the last detail of every position you’ve held. It is not a collection of meaningless acronyms. The purpose to cause such impression that the recruiter wants to meet you.

There are several ways to fail there. If the following questions/thoughts pop into my head when going through an application… bad sign.

Why are you applying?

Now there are several ways to solve that. You can enclose a cover letter, or write your motivation in the same email where you attach your CV. You can even write your motivation in the CV itself.

You need to introduce yourself and make it interesting. A factual list won’t do that.

Who sent me this!?

Funny addresses like funnyboy_xxx69@veryhotmail.com or lordoftheshadows@mordor.com don’t inspire lots of trust. It is easy, and free, to get proper email addresses and I can tolerate numbers.

john.smith1988321@geemail.com is ok. Lucky dude the first John Smith to land a google account!

To whom are you writing?

Don’t misspell the name of the company where you’re applying to. It is not much different from a neon sign saying “I don’t care about you guys!”.

I can’t breathe!

Don’t write…. unreadable-text-that-it-is-very-long-and-there-are-no-pauses-and-all-the-stuff-is-explained-in-there-but-it-is-impossible-to-get-a-good-picture-and-it-is-so-long-that-the-one-paragraph-uses-the-full-page-with-single-spacing-and-font-eight-and-there-are-almost-no-comas-or-dots-so-it-is-very-difficult-to-read-to-the-point-of-loosing-your-breath-and-faint.

You don’t want to give them a headache, do you?

…that’s it?

I had an applicant who wrote: ”I meet the requirements. I want 2500,00€/month, after taxes”.

That was it, nothing else, no CV, no information. If there’s nothing to tell, probably there’s nothing that I want to hear about either.

Oh no… another one

You need to make your CV stand out. Three pages with the same font, all black and white, all same size, booooriiiiiing.  Add a picture, add some colours, have a decent layout. Remember, you’re trying to get my attention.

Why didn’t he send me a PDF?

When I open a MS Word file, the first thing I want to do is edit it: it’s the same with your CV. A plain text (yes, *.txt) file is as ugly and boring as it gets. Wow, that dude send me a zip file! What is he sending so that he needs to zip it, really?

Eight pages, really!?

One page is ideal. Two are acceptable. You need very good reasons to go beyond that. I don’t understand a 22 year old undergraduate with an 8 page CV. Nor I want to read through all the details of all your projects of your career. That will bore me, so I won’t be interested, so we won’t meet. Too bad.

Try to avoid the recruiters from getting those thoughts when reading your CV and applications, and while I can’t guarantee you and interview, you’ll have a better shot!