Believe it or not, he may have been on to something.
No, I'm not advocating trashing your prospective boss in a job interview - nor am I suggesting a head-case like George would actually make a sound role model for life, let alone the job search - but a recent experience taught me that commonly-accepted wisdom may not necessarily be the best course for seeking a job in today's market. I recently went on a job interview without doing much preparation of any kind.
It was one of the best exchanges I ever had.
Stick with me here. Normally, I do what all the advice books and seminars tell us to do before a job interview. I check the Web site to learn all I can about the company, and I reach out to contacts to learn what their experiences with the firm have been. I read press releases, business publications, and blogs to find out as much as I can about the good and bad of the place. I look up my interviewers on Linked In to see what kinds of tidbits I can learn about their backgrounds, what things we may have in common or what interests we may share, etc.
Guess what? After a year of doing this, I'm still just as unemployed. Even worse, I can't begin to count the number of times this preparation turned out to be a colossal waste of time for interviews that were for jobs that either didn't exist or which were frozen.
So, when I landed a job interview last week with a branch of the federal government, I decided George's approach might be worth emulating, albeit to a lesser extent. Instead of my usual informational-overload of preparation and research, I decided I would simply look up the organization's Web site on the day of the interview, check the interviewer's name on Linked In, and just bring an extra copy of my resume and a few samples of my earlier work. I would not do an exhaustive search about the organization's history and mission, I would not print out multiple copies of my portfolio to leave with the interviewer, and I would not memorize complex talking points to recite when I got the usual "tell me about..." behavioral questions. I wouldn't do any additional checking or researching on anything related to the organization, and I would not reach out to a single person to learn about his or her experiences. (If nothing else, I figured this would give me an interesting posting for this blog.)
Now admittedly, I didn't undertake this particular initiative without some trepidation. One frequently-repeated scenario in my head had the following exchange taking place:
Interviewer: "Tell me what you know about our organization."
Me: "Just what I know on the Web site...ABC...XYZ..."
Interviewer (clearly put off): "I see."
Me (clearing throat): "Well, after the last five or six jobs I interviewed for all got canceled or filled from within, I've learned it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do too much advance preparation until I know for sure that the company is serious about filling a position and looking to hire externally. So why don't we put our cards on the table? Tell me if this interview is for an actual position, and if so, why are you looking at outside candidates?"
Now, most interview guides and advice books will tell you this blunt approach would be suicidal. But I doubt many seekers in today's job market who have been misled about positions - or worse, openly lied to about offers that never came or jobs that didn't even exist to begin with - would see it that way. Most, I suspect, would love to have this sort of direct exchange but are understandably too frightened to have it.
After twelve months of frustration, however, I was looking forward to it. Much like another "Seinfeld" episode where Elaine decides she only wants to attend a wedding in India to spite the bride - who, it turns out, only invites Elaine at the last moment because she does not expect her to actually attend - I decided that for just this once, I would go into an interview with almost no preparation and just see what happened. If it went south? Well, it wasn't as if all the hours of preparation, effort, and "doing the right thing" had paid that many dividends anyway.
What happened? Well, for starters, it actually turned out to be one of the best interviews I've had in a long time. Why? Because like a lot of searchers, I lowered my expectations. Once upon a time, you prepared for interviews and hoped they would lead to a job. Not so much any more. Nowadays, chances are the interview is for a position that may or may not be filled because the company offering it may - or may not, depending on whom you talk with and when you talk with them - be in a hiring freeze. I didn't walk in expecting a job; I went in expecting the usual song and dance about getting to know you and then deciding whether to keep in touch in the near future, etc.
And that's exactly what the interview was.
The interviewer - a very polite and likable guy - wanted to see what skills I had and talk about some "possible openings" in the future. More to the point, since I had figured there would not be an actual position behind the interview, I was far more relaxed than I normally might have been. During our conversation, I even suggested a couple of Web sites that I thought would be helpful in dealing with some work issues he was wrestling with. By the time we were done, instead of feeling I had to go that extra mile somehow to show my interest in any job he had that might fit me, I simply thanked him for his time; and we exchanged business cards. That was all. I walked out relieved that I had not wasted countless hours preparing for the interview, and while it hadn't led to a job, I had at least managed to get out of the house on a sunny afternoon. Best of all, I hopefully made a contact that would help me expand my network. If nothing else, it was another step toward something down the line if things do go well.
And there, in fact, is the irony in all of this. In today's job market, you may actually have to go into an interview not expecting a job but to simply build a connection instead. All those instructions to meticulously research a company and learn as much as you can before going in may still be valid; but when actual unemployment hovers near 16-17 percent (9.6 percent officially as of this writing; but it's actually closer to 16-17 percent when people who have given up the search are counted) and companies are extremely reluctant to hire anybody, perhaps doing the opposite can actually pay more emotional dividends than conventional wisdom.
Or to put it another way, maybe like the proverbial stuck clock that's still right twice a day, George wasn't always off target with some of his ideas...
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