Interviewing yourself out of a job: Common interview mistakes

You've perfected your resume, handed out what seemed to be a hundred copies at every store, restaurant, bar and banana stand that you could find in the city and finally, just when it seems like your meals for the next year will be limited to boxes of Kraft Dinner and cans of beans, you hear the sound you've been waiting for: the ring of a phone, and a voice on the other end asking you to come in for an interview. With the final stretch in sight, you'll either cross the finish line with your arms held high in triumph, or trip over your feet and fall flat on your face while someone worse runs past you.

It's scary enough meeting a new person in any situation, but when that person is going to be asking you questions about your personality, your strengths, and your weaknesses — and deciding whether or not you get a job based on your answers — it can be even harder to sit there and not sound like a complete and total idiot. Your mind races as you try to formulate the perfect answer that your potential new employer wants to hear, you deliver a glowing review of yourself and walk out satisfied, yet the second phone call — the really important one — never comes.

The worst part about failing in a job interview is that it is extremely rare for you to hear back from anyone related to the company, and therefore it's unlikely that you'll ever find out exactly why you were not hired. You were assessed and found unworthy, but there is no professor to grade you, leaving you to wonder what went wrong, and why you're still eating beans.

“I wouldn't say there is any one mistake that is commonly made when people are interviewing. Everyone is different,” said Erika Faust, editor of Interrobang (the newspaper you're reading right now!). She interviews and supervises contributing writers and summer reporters for the newspaper, and is on the hiring committee for the full-time staff writer position. She did note that there are some patterns of behaviour in poor interviewees. Having interviewed dozens of applicants for various positions over the past two years, she had a few examples of candidates making it to the interview stage but not land the job.

“I have had a few interviews where the person either did not seem to know what job they were applying for, or didn't seem to take it seriously,” she said, describing one applicant who “laughed at my questions, and not a nervous laugh, more a derisive one.” While she was unable to say whether this person was truly dismissive of the position based on the first meeting alone, the example speaks volumes toward the importance of that first impression.

While the interview process for hiring a writer may be different from that of a store or a restaurant, there is a set of principles that is consistent across any industry. The entire purpose of the interview is to convince a stranger that you are the best candidate to fill their job opening, and it is necessary that you always look and sound your best.

Dressing for a job interview can pose a bit of a challenge; dressing like a slob will obviously give off the impression that you don't care about your appearance, you legitimately do not know how to dress yourself like an adult, or you have mistaken your place of potential employment for some sort of farm. When selecting attire for a job interview, the best course of action is to dress the same way you would if you were already working there, but slightly nicer — this shows that you have a grasp on the standards that the company would expect of its employees, yet you also realize that for the purposes of a job interview, you should be attempting to exceed the minimum expectations of the company in order to stand out of a crowd.

Never is visually standing out of a crowd so important than in the situation of a group interview — a situation that is, if possible, even more uncomfortable than a regular one, due to the fact that you now have to make yourself look like the best choice among a group of people that are physically present and competing to answer the exact same set of questions that you are. As someone who has assisted in the conduction of a group interview for my former employer (a retail chain), I know the difference that a little bit of attention to detail can make, especially when the group of interviewees have a similar level of competency for the position. In the group of seven people (four female, three male), that made it to the final stage of interviews, all of them were wearing clothing that would have been perfect for a shift at the store, and had all proven that they would have made good employees. Unable to make a final decision based on the quality of their answers, the final decision to hire came down to the way that they had dressed for the interview, causing the girl in the dress to beat out the three that had shown up in tank tops and shorts, as well as the guy in the collared shirt over his T-shirted companions.

Another factor that help when attending a job interview is a prior knowledge of the company that you are attempting to find employment with, regardless of whether or not you are expecting to be asked about it or not. Employers like to hear that you have had prior positive experiences with the company as a customer or consumer, and that it may have been a factor in you seeking work there, and that you have an understanding of what the company is trying to achieve. Something as simple as taking a few minutes to look up the company's mission statement can go a long way toward impressing your interviewer and increasing your chances of success.