Tim was the head of a lighting crew for a local television news sta- tion in Salt Lake City, Utah. After 4 years of working on the crew and ?nally becoming the chief lighting designer, he ?gured he had paid his dues and was ready to move to Los Angeles to get a job in the ?lm industry.
With no binding family ties or other obligations, he packed up his pickup truck and headed for Hollywood. It was 4 months before he landed his ?rst interview, a meeting with the director of photography for a network movie-of-the-week. He was willing to start at the bottom, but unfortunately, the interview failed to yield the chance to do even that.
"It was like an interrogation," he protested when he called me. "I never expected to have to tell my life story just to get a job on a movie! Their questions were impossible. I'm not a brain surgeon."
"I don't know what happened," he re?ected. "When they asked those questions about my weaknesses and my failures, my mouth went dry, and it was like my jaw couldn't move. I just sat there and totally froze! They must have thought I was a moron! I walked out of there shaking inside, feeling like I was a total idiot. There's no way I'm ever going to go through anything like that again!"
You're certainly not alone if you have some negative feelings about interviewing. Most people consider interviews to be some- where between mildly unpleasant and absolutely terrifying. This book will give you speci?c strategies for conquering that anxiety and quieting those negative voices.
The Most Common Interview Fears
The 11 most common fears that people have voiced to me about interviewing are contained in the following checklist. Check the box next to any of these fears you have right now. Be sure to use
a pencil! You're going to go back over this list at the end of read- ing this book, and I can safely predict that many of the fears you have now will most certainly have been "erased" by then.
I fear they will ask me a question I don't know the answer to. Chapters 2 through 5, plus the sample interviews at the end of the book, will leave you with no doubt about how to strategically answer any of the four types of interview questions.
I'm afraid I'll sound like I'm bragging. Many of us learned in childhood or later that "blowing your own horn" is a sign of being on an ego trip. But providing information about the nature of work you have done is not doing that. In Chapter 3, you'll see the difference between bragging and simply stating the facts.
Do I have to say I was ?red from my last job? Can they ?nd out? There are laws that protect you from potential employers' prying into your past in ways that are inap- propriate. We'll discuss those laws as well as how best to deal with questions that pertain to past employment situations.
Everyone says I am under/overquali?ed. What should I do? Usually the employer who says he or she is worried about either of these issues actually has a hidden agen- da. We'll ?nd out exactly how to address and defuse that agenda in Chapter 5 when we talk about "questions behind questions."
Do I have to submit to drug testing, credit checks, or personality tests? Drug testing, credit checks, and personality tests are a reality of today's workplace and hard to avoid. You may simply decide you don't want to work at a place with such restrictive entrance procedures.
What should I do if an interviewer asks me an intrusive or ille- gal question? Some topics, such as disabilities, marital sta- tus, or sexual orientation, are off-limits during an inter- view. We'll talk about how to avoid these incriminating and illegal questions.
I don't know what to do with my hands during an interview. This is a very common worry. Once you know the one most potent secret of nonverbal behavior in an inter- view, you'll ?nd your hands will just fall into place, and you won't even have to think about them!
I fear I will just "freeze up" in the interview. You'll learn the technique of "stalling and accessing," which is a convinc- ing and comfortable way out of this one. It will seem very natural, once you learn it.