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How Not To Get A Job!

On Being Gross, Tacky, Charmless, and Dumb

By  Samuel Hargadine

Mon Oct 25 2010

BusinessBecause
A friend of mine, no – a friend of a friend of mine once had an interview. He woke up twenty minutes before the scheduled time [hung-over], schlepped on a wrinkled suit and just walked out the door towards his best, and at the time, only opportunity for gainful employment.

He didn’t get the job.

Unfortunately this type of behavior isn’t as uncommon, nor as shocking, to interviewers as it is to us at BusinessBecause.com. In a recent Huffington Post article, they highlight the fact that more and more, hygiene, above all things, is becoming a concern to employers.

Apparently Columbia Business School even had to go so far as to send a warning email to its first years that they should remember to brush their teeth and get regular hair cuts.

Hygiene, while an immediate concern, is not the only matter worrying employers. Ruthlessness towards fellow applicants is also a turnoff. While I’m having trouble picturing a foul breathed, sharp elbowed applicant giving me the slip outside an interview room – I’m sure that some poor soul has come across this person, somewhere.

MeyerWeb.com has a list of things not to do during an interview and it’s amazing what comes out of people’s mouths. Even people with fantastic graduate degrees seem to sometimes ask questions like, “Does your health insurance cover pets?” or, “Will the company move my rock collection form California to Maryland?”

Now, I’ve been dumbfounded before from my own stupid comments, but hopefully we can all learn from the mistakes of others and think about our responses prior to our interviews.

The important thing to remember is that interviewers are just like the rest of us. If you’ve ever spent a Sunday sitting at Starbucks people watching (or better yet, at a Wal-Mart McDonalds) then you know, being ‘That Guy,’ is rarely a positive.

While my ‘friend’ did eventually get a job, it was only after he cleaned himself up and saw his student loan running out. To be sure, a lesson better learned through other people’s experiences rather than my own.

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