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1、How to Take a Job Interview Kirby W. Stanat To succeed in campus job interviews, you have to know where that recruiter is coming from. The simple answer is that he is coming from corporate headquarters. That may sound obvious, but it is a significant point that too many students do not consider. The
2、 recruiter is not a free spirit as he flies from Berkeley to New Haven, from Chapel Hill to Boulder. Hes on an invisible leash to the office, and if he is worth his salary, he is mentally in corporate headquarters all the time hes on the road. If you can fix that in your mindthat when you walk into
3、that bare-walled cubicle in the placement center you are walking into a branch office of Sears, Bendix or General Motorsyou can avoid a lot of little mistakes and maybe some big ones. If, for example, you assume that because the interview is on campus the recruiter expects you to look and act like a
4、 student, youre in for a shock. A student is somebody who drinks beer, wears blue jeans and throws a Frisbee. No recruiter has jobs for student Frisbee whizzes. A cool spring day in late March, Sam Davis, a good recruiter who has been on the college circuit for years, is on my campus talking to cand
5、idates. He comes out to the waiting area to meet the student who signed up for an 11 oclock interview. Im standing in the doorway of my office taking in the scene. Sam calls the candidate: “Sidney Student.” There sits Sidney. Hes at a 45 degree angle, his feet are in the aisle, and hes almost lying
6、down. Hes wearing well-polished brown shoes, a tasteful pair of brown pants, a light brown shirt, and a good looking tie. Unfortunately, he tops off this well-coordinated outfit with his Joes Tavern Class A Softball Championship jacket, which has a big woven emblem over the heart. If that isnt bad e
7、nough, in his left hand is a cigarette and in his right hand is a half-eaten apple. When Sam calls his name, the kid is caught off guard. He ditches the cigarette in an ashtray, struggles to his feet, and transfers the apple from the right to the left hand. Apple juice is everywhere, so Sid wipes hi
8、s hand on the seat of his pants and shakes hands with Sam. Sam, who by now is close to having a stroke, gives me that what-do-I-have-here look and has the young man follow him into the interviewing room. The situation deteriorates even furtherinto pure Laurel and Hardy. The kid is stuck with the hal
9、f-eaten apple, doesnt know what to do with it, and obviously is suffering some discomfort. He carries the apple into the interviewing room with him and places it in the ashtray on the deskright on top of Sams freshly lit cigarette. The interview lasts five minutes. Let us move in for a closer look a
10、t how the campus recruiter operates. Lets say you have a 10 oc lock appointment with the recruiter from the XYZ Corporation. The recruiter gets rid of the candidate in front of you at about 5 minutes to 10, jots down a few notes about what he is going to do with him or her, then picks up your resume
11、 or data sheet (which you have submitted in advance). Although the recruiter is still in the interview room and you are still in the lobby, your interview is under way. Youre on. The recruiter will look over your sheet pretty carefully before he goes out to call you. He develops a mental picture of
12、you. He thinks, “Im going to enjoy talking with this kid,” or “This ones going to be a turkey.” The recruiter has already begun to make a screening decision about you. His first impression of you, from reading the sheet, could come from your grade point. It could come from misspelled words. It could
13、 come from poor erasures or from the fact that necessary information is missing. By the time the recruiter has finished reading your sheet, youve already hit the plus or minus column. Lets assume the recruiter got a fairly good impression from your sheet. Now the recruiter goes out to the lobby to m
14、eet you. He almost shuffles along, and his mind is somewhere else. Then he calls your name, and at that instant he visibly clicks into gear. He just went to work. As he calls your name he looks quickly around the room, waiting for somebody to move. If you are sitting on the middle of your back, with
15、 a book open and a cigarette going, and if you have to rebuild yourself to stand up, the interest will run right out of the recruiters face. You, not the recruiter, made the appointment for 10 oclock, and the recruiter expects to see a young professional come popping out of that chair like today is
16、a good day and youre anxious to meet him. At this point, the recruiter does something rude. He doesnt walk across the room to meet you halfway. He waits for you to come to him. Something very important is happening. He wants to see you move. He wants to get an impression about your posture, your str
17、ide, and your briskness. If you slouch over him, sidewinder-like, he is not going to be impressed. Hell figure you would probably slouch your way through your workdays. He wants you to come at him with lots of good things going for you. If you watch the recruiters eyes, you can see the inspection. H
18、e glances quickly at shoes, pants, coat, shirt; dress, blouse, hose the whole works. After introducing himself, the recruiter will probably say, “Okay, please follow me,” and hell lead you into his interviewing room. When you get to the room, you may find that the recruiter will open the door and ge
19、sture you inwith him blocking part of the doorway. Theres enough room for you to get past him, but its a near thing. As you scrape past, he gives you a close-up inspection. He looks at your hair; if its greasy, that will bother him. He looks at your collar; if its dirty, that will bother him. He loo
20、ks at your shoulders; if theyre covered with dandruff, that will bother him. If youre a man, he looks at your chin. If you didnt get a close shave, that will irritate him. If youre a woman, he checks your makeup. If its too heavy, he wont like it. Then he smells you. An amazing number of people smel
21、l bad. Occasionally a recruiter meets a student who smells like a canal horse. That student can expect an interview of about four or five minutes. Next the recruiter inspects the back side of you. He checks your hair (is it combed in front but not in back?), he checks your heels (are they run down?)
22、, your pants (are they baggy?), your slip (is it showing?), your stockings (do they have runs?). Then he invites you to sit down. At this point, I submit, the recruiters decision on you is 75 to 80 percent made. Think about it. The recruiter has read your resume. He knows who you are and where youre
23、 from. He knows your marital status, your major and your grade point. And he knows what you have done with your summers. He has inspected you, exchanged greetings with you and smelled you. There is very little additional hard information that he must gather on you. From now on its mostly body chemis
24、try. Many recruiters have argued strenuously with me that they dont make such hasty decisions. So I tried an experiment. I told several recruiters that I would hang around in the hall outside the interview room when they took candidates in. I told them that as soon as they had definitely decided not
25、 to recommend (to department managers in their companies) the candidate they were interviewing, they should snap their fingers loud enough for me to hear. It went like this. First candidate: 38 seconds after the candidate sat down: Snap! Second candidate: 1 minute, 42 seconds: Snap! Third candidate:
26、 45 seconds: Snap! One recruiter was particularly adamant, insisting that he didnt rush to judgment on candidates. I asked him to participate in the snapping experiment. He went out in the lobby, picked up his first candidate of the day, and headed for an interview room. As he passed me in the hall, he glared at me. And his fingers went “Snap!” (Reprinted from Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition, by Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz, eds. New York: St. Martins Press, 1989.)
