Welcome to the real world, new graduates
Acting — the secret to acing your first job interview
Congratulations to all the graduates out there. Whether you’re graduating from high school, university or sex addiction rehab, it’s important to acknowledge your hard work.
Enjoy the grad ceremony, but remember: The next day you’re just another unemployed person with a crap-load of debt. I learned this early on. The day after I graduated from law school, I was sitting on my parents’ couch. Well, not sitting so much as melding into the cushions with a reserve-sized bag of chips perched on my chest to minimize distance from bag to mouth.
I had no immediate plans for my future other than wresting control of the TV from my dad and maybe eating another bag of chips (but something fancy, like hot barbecue). Then, in walked the chief of my reserve (and also my aunt.) She looked me up and down with an expression of open disgust, so it was kind of redundant when she said, “Shouldn’t you have a job?”
When my parents were young, getting a job was as easy as showing up at a place of business with pants, hands and a face. Maybe not even all of those things if the company was in a busy period. But things have changed and now you have to nail the interview as well.
A job interview is a lot like a first date, and not just because you’re lying your face off. It’s important that you are clean, neat and moderately sober. No matter how crappy life has been to you up to this point, you gotta put all that aside and stride forward with the optimistic bearing of a Trudeau.
A job interview is a lot like a first date, and not just because you’re lying your face off.
Preparation for a job interview is essential — like find out where the company is located and what they do.
It’s also important to polish up your acting skills. There are people in this world with cheerful demeanours and basic manners, but the rest of us have to fake it. One technique to fake a personality is called “mirroring.” Basically, you do whatever your interviewer does, like a subtle game of Simon Says. If they sit forward, you sit forward. If they lean back, you lean back. If they walk to their car, you walk to their car.
Eventually you’ll creep them out to the point where they will hire you in hopes of not ticking you off.
Interview questions are minefields. One of the most dangerous questions is “What is your greatest weakness?” Obviously, don’t tell the truth. No one needs to know that you have the attention span of a dumb toddler or the typing skills of Shridhar Chillal (the current Guinness World Record holder for longest fingernails). And don’t go the suck-up route and say something like, “I work too hard” or “I’m a perfectionist.” You’ll sound slimier than a boxing promoter. Better to identify a trait that doesn’t have anything to do with work at all, like “My greatest weakness is ... trains.”
During the interview, you may be asked about technical skills. Don’t freak out if you have none. Just repeat the name of the thing and add something vague and oddly sexual like, “I’ve played around with it.” If someone asks, “What kind of experience do you have with Dreamweaver?” then you answer, “Dreamweaver — yes, great program, I’ve taken it for a ride around the block.” If you do it right, the interviewer will feel uncomfortable and will drop the subject.
It’s a really good sign if the interviewer asks you, “How soon can you start?” Here’s where I suggest replying, “I already have.”
That’s a baller move and only slightly alarming to HR.
Basically, if you don’t walk out of that job interview feeling like a total and complete fraud, then you have failed, my friend, and are totally undeserving of potato chips.
Dawn Dumont is author of Rose’s Run and Nobody Cries at Bingo. She has a law degree from Queen’s University and an English degree from the University of Saskatchewan.