During the Interview

Things to Never Do In an Interview

• Never call, answer, or text. Turn off your phone and don't turn it on again until you leave the company location!
• Never smoke, even if they do.
• Never use profanity, even if they do.
• Do not accept any offering of food, coffee, sodas, or other refreshments.

You are there for a business purpose, to build a business relationship. It's not yet time to act like this is a social event.

Ask for a business card from everyone who interviews you, and verify that the card has that person's correct phone number, e-mail address, and surface mail address. You will need this information for your follow-up after the interview.

Ask the Interviewer(s) Some Questions

A relationship cannot begin without interest in both directions, so show them that you have already learned about their company as well as having an interest in a possible job. Visit the company’s website beforehand to learn what the company does, the products or services it provides, and the different lines of business the company pursues. Identify anything that is unique or notable. For instance, Zappos (www.zappos.com) is not just a shoe company. It has a business model built around extreme customer service, free shipping, and free return shipping. Netflix (www.netflix.com) started by mailing DVDs to customers rather than expecting customers to come to a brick and mortar store. Now Netflix is leading in on-line delivery of movies directly to your TV or compatible device. When you show interviewers you care enough to learn about their business, you cannot help but impress them.

What They Can, and Cannot, Ask during the Interview

Federal laws place numerous constraints on what an interviewer can ask in a job interview. Basically, the interviewer is not allowed to ask questions that do not apply to your prospective job or your performance of that job.

A detailed list of "30 Questions You Can't Ask", and 30 ways an interviewer can try to get around these, is in an excellent article published at http://www.hrworld.com/features/30-interview-questions-111507/. HR World is a website devoted to human resources issues. Here is a list of categories the 30 Questions fall into, and representative questions interviewers should not ask you:

• Nationality (Are you a U.S. citizen? What is your native tongue?)
• Religion (What religion do you practice? What holidays do you observe?)
• Age (How old are you? How long do you plan to work before you retire?)
• Marital and family status (Are you married? Do you have children?)
• Gender issues (How do you feel about supervising men, or women?)
• Health and physical abilities (Do you smoke? Drink? Take drugs?)
• Questions about "residence, legal troubles, and military service" (Have you ever been arrested? Were you honorably discharged from the military?)

This website article also describes "Sneaky, Legal Alternatives to Get the Same Info," so be aware that what sounds like an innocent question might be an attempt by the interviewer to get disqualifying information about you. Unfortunately, this happens all too often.

If you have the misfortune to run into an interviewer who tries to ask questions in the categories above, politely reply that your nationality or age or family status are not factors for your performing your work for them, and you do want to learn as much as you can about the job position and their company. This will satisfy any reputable human resources person, but some hiring managers are not versed in the 30 Questions.

Regardless, if you suspect an interviewer is pursuing potentially disqualifying information about you, you may have a hard decision to make. You can

• Give them the information that they should not be asking for, or
• Tell them the question is not relevant to the job position, and accept that this may result in ill-will toward you, or
• Recognize that this is a company whose ethics and morality are already suspect. You might do better to accept that this interview is not going in the right direction, and that you do not want to pursue a deeper, long-term, and financially-dependent relationship with them.

Canned Questions from the Interviewer

I have been on a lot of interviews with a lot of companies. I have been both amused and appalled at some of the spectacularly lame questions that some interviewers ask. I sometimes wonder if there is a cheat-sheet of interview questions that these persons are given to read. Here is a short list of some of these questions that I have been asked:

• Tell me about yourself.
• What really makes <fill-in your name> tick?
• How would you handle a co-worker who is difficult to work with?
• What are your 3 biggest weaknesses?
• What is the #1 area of your life that you want to improve?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
• How would you feel if your manager asked you to work on a weekend?

Whatever the source of questions like these, you may hear some of them on an interview. They have no right answer, and obviously your responses are supposed to give the interviewer some insight into who you really are. Not only are these probably not specific to the job you would be working in, but they may allow the interviewer to indulge grave interpretive biases. Just be aware and answer these as best you can without being disrespectful or flippant. I recommend you try to keep all of your answers focused to be job-related, or school-related if you do not have much work history.

The strategy I eventually found that worked best for me when I was asked a very open-ended question like "Tell me about yourself," or "What are your 3 biggest weaknesses?" was to reply saying, "That's a pretty broad topic area. Can you narrow it down a bit for me?" This can buy you a little time to think about what they really might be asking, and puts them in the position of actually limiting the scope so you can provide a more specific, and less interpretation-prone, answer.

Pinning Down a Decision

Before you leave the interview you should ask the interviewer when you can expect to receive a decision on your candidacy. This time frame is important not only for your own continuing job-search schedule, but also to know when you can appropriately contact them if you do not hear from them.