Preparing For The Interview: Indy-Goth-Grunge-Punk Style

Ready to rock, but at the interview, not.

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. True enough. When it comes to hair, makeup and physical adornments at interviews, there seems to be a theme running through much of the literature on the shelves and online: WATCH IT. There is a definite prejudice towards contemporary styled, neat hair, and  clean, hairless faces. For many of us that translates into these kinds of admonitions:

Keep the haircut conservative.

Keep the pink coiffed, bed head, and emo-black hair for the weekend–and don’t have any pictures of it on Facebook. Some ethnic hairstyles in the eyes of some executives still denote a rebellious attitude, so it pays to understand the corporate culture before showing up in dreads or twists. The grunge-y stubble that looks so great on George Michael might not be a good idea at the interview. Beards, van-dykes and other facial hair styles should be neatly trimmed. Women should not wear beards. Generally, arts industry professionals have much more leeway to express personal style in comparison with, say, bankers or Wall Street stock traders.

Keep jewelry near the face conservative.

Many interview advice comments I have heard from recruiters are along the line of small, non-pendulous earrings for women and no earrings for men. A woman with more than one piercing in her ears should decide which two to wear a small stud in. Generally, ear jewelry should not make noise or be a distraction. Believe it or not, large hoop earrings still have a negative connotation.

Hands should look neat and cared for; conservatively adorned.

Clean and clear. A man’s hands should be clean with neatly trimmed nails–all of them. Having a longer nail on the pinky finger used to mean a certain social status, but it does not translate well at the interview today. Likewise, a woman’s hands should be clean with neatly trimmed nails. Trade the robin’s egg blues and safety orange for closer to natural tones for the interview. For men and women, dial down the finger bling. That means Diamond Jim should wear one or two rings on each hand instead of the usual fistful. The same goes for Sophisticated Lady. One or two rings will do. Neither should be sporting noisy wrist wear.

I put on the single strand of pearls (good fakes that do not show wear) and ear studs with my suit. My artsy stone pendants  and talismans stay at home when interviewing for the corporate office. Never a sell-out in any sense, it is merely one more classic move in “the game” of getting the job.

Preparing For the Interview: The Sweet Smell of Excess?

My mother’s perfume

I love perfume. So did my mom. It must be genetic.

As a child, my merchant seaman father would come home with gifts of fragrance from around the world and I used to love rummaging through mom’s dressing table testing for treasures of scent. There in that alchemist’s collection of  mysterious bottles  lived the captured souls of romance  with names like “My Sin”, “Tabu” and my favorite, “Shalimar“. To this day whenever I can find it, I enjoy daubing on a little of the classic Avon fragrances. Perfume is the most affordable of luxuries and the essence of womanliness.

Most times, job loss  means shedding things to save money, so there is a sad, gradual loss or downgrade of items like hairdresser appointments, salon shampoo, new clothes, new shoes,  makeup, and finally perfume. If I am rendering the research correctly, the human sense of smell is the most powerfully evocative of  all the senses. One whiff of warm granny apples with cinnamon and suddenly there is a desire to run up the front steps of the “old house” two at a time. Caught downwind from “Old Spice“, tears well up as it conjures warm memories because that was “his” scent.

On an emotional level, I get it. One never knows what dreams or nightmares will be called forth in an interviewer by an applicant’s wearing a certain scent. Know, however, that scent is part of  image strategy. Beware. The choice of scent must be contemporary, tasteful, complementary to business wear/hairstyles and light. Wearing some scents that were popular a generation ago actually say, “frumpy and old-timer-ish”;carries peppermints in the bottom of her hand bag. Scent could give your age away in that case.

Dangerous drink, intoxicating perfume?

Then again, interviews  held in tiny, ventless inner  rooms dictate that neither recruiter nor applicant wear highly scented cosmetic products to avoid triggering allergies or the gag reflex. I have stopped thinking that the often given advice against wearing my incense woods-heavy signature  fragrance in interviews as another shameful loss of freedom in the USA and started thinking of it as a courtesy; like graciously not sharing  information too intimate for that venue. It might just be best to keep this emotionally loaded potion bottled up on the dresser until the ink on the new-hire papers is dry.

Gleanings on wearing scent in an interview or at work

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/recipe-for-conflict-perfume-v-bo-20120501-1xwv8.html

http://www.volt.com/Blog/Should_you_wear_perfume_or_cologne_to_an_interview_.aspx

http://www.examiner.com/article/is-wearing-perfume-or-cologne-on-a-job-interview-a-bad-decision

Related articles

• What’s Your Signature Scent? (bryonysbrain.wordpress.com)
• Definition: Drydown (bellasugar.com)

Preparing For The Interview

Ready to meet the queen

In thinking about the reasoning behind preparing well for the interview, I have to pass by part of the tale of Cinderella…

If you remember, Cinderella lived in a household headed by her widowed stepmother and shared the place with two step sisters. The king and queen of the realm where this little family lived had a prince who stubbornly remained unmarried which exasperated his royal parents. Invitations went out to all the eligible ladies in the kingdom to a ball where the prince would find and select a suitable bride (the royal couple hoped!). When the invitations arrived at Cinderella’s house, all the ladies began preparing for the ball.

In another narrative from the Bible, a certain king exiled his queen when she embarrassed him by refusing to appear at a party one day. To cure his equally embarrassing lack of a queen, this king decided to have eligible ladies brought to the palace for a contest to choose from them a new queen. The contestants were prepared to meet the king with beauty treatments given over an entire year.

Again, a prospective bride will starve herself into a smaller size, take up residence in the spa and spend thousands to make sure she looks her best on her wedding day.

One year to prepare for one night

How important is it and how serious a matter is it to consciously prepare for an interview? I am not saying it compares to the extreme conditions of contests to be a king’s bride or a fairy tale princess or even a wedding day, but preparing for the interview is no less a matter of deliberate preparation. Many people miss this point and show up at one of the most important events in life in almost laughable conditions. So, the first rule of the “corporate mating ritual”, or, the interview is, PREPARE.

The Ritual of The Interview:Before The Dance

Male peacock's mating display

In the last post, our discussion about interviewing parsed naturally into general segments  centered either around  “applicant states of being”, “gathered from the resume” or “don’t tell, don’t reveal”.  I have said in earlier posts that the job search is a game and games have rules. If the search is a game, the interview is its object and the best at the interview wins the game.  If the search for work is a hunt, the interview is its quarry and getting the job is the ultimate victory. The victorious hunter gets to “hang it on the wall”.

Everything a job seeker does points to the interview and once the interview is gained, another dynamic comes into play. This is the next phase. This is level two of the game. The quarry runs out into open field. In theory, interviews resemble theatrical auditions or panning for gold. The company is the panner and the applicant is the gold. The company is the art director and the applicant is the chorus girl. Applicants are the gold river and the company uses progressively finer sieves–many interviews– until the best two nuggets remain.

Again, for the applicant, the interview is the field for an intricate  mating dance ritual where several rival suitor-applicants vie with brilliant displays to attract the attention of the mate-company. The contender the company chooses becomes the new hire, the accepted  mate.

The ultimate object of the courtship is a marriage

Interview Red Flags

The Interview (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Danger, Will Robinson! This could be a bad employee!

It’s time to hop back into the discussion about the interview. It is a given that the seeker is at the place where candidates are in process of being chosen to compete in the great arena–the interview(s) and the seeker is one of the chosen.  After all, this is what all the hub-bub is about, bub: being one of those too big to pass through the “coarse sieves” of the “first cattle call selections” . Now the finer sieves come out.

Company and independent  recruiters give the thumbs down on the following  ”red flag” parade of behaviors–things that make a candidate look like a potential bad hire–in interviews. This list is a compilation of all the red flag behaviors I have learned to avoid. This wisdom is  collected from seminars, recruiters, online articles and many job searches. Of course, lack of contact information on the resume or an email address like, “honeylocust.com” reduces the chances of being called into the arena to zero!

Applicant States of Being

Did I really say THAT

• currently unemployed
• Mature worker
• Worker of different gender, race, color or weight than expected
• arriving for interview late
• disorganized
•  inappropriate attire
• out-of date appearance
• smoke/alcohol on breath
• perfume/cologne
• Lack of preparation
• nervousness
• over confidence/over familiarity
• desperation
•  negative attitude
• low energy

From a Quick Look At the Resume

• Out of date resume
• Mature candidate
• Pure functional resume
• long gaps between jobs termination(s)
• unstable job history -  “job hopping”
• social media reputation
• overqualified (setting your bar too low)

hauling emotional baggage into the interview

Don’t Ask, Don’t Reveal?

• Prison terms
• mental illness hospitalization
• “Monk”-isms
• conditions and health issues
• Child/Adult care issues

Yes, it might take a few posts to get through all of these, but I feel it well worth the time.

Related articles

• Do You Really Want To Know What My Real Weaknesses Are? (victoree.wordpress.com)
• 7 Steps to Finding & Hiring the Best Employees for Your Company (grasshopper.com)
• Not Being Offered a Job is Not a Personal Rejection (hiringlibrarians.com)
• Recruiters Look at Resumes for 6 Seconds; Here’s How to Impress Them (bostinno.com)
• The Horror of the Resume (jamkib.wordpress.com)

Do You Really Want To Know What My Real Weaknesses Are?

Nooooo!

In a word, no…

especially if the weakness is one that will  in any way negatively impact the company or the potential employee’s ability to do the job being interviewed for. Again, there are some things an applicant should never admit in an interview. Re-read that last sentence. I did not say, lie in an interview. I said, never present any weakness in an interview that will speak of the lack of an ability essential to performing the job. Why set up for failure? Interviewers ask applicants about their weaknesses to tease out several things, according to the headhunters and human capital experts I have met in my travels. When they ask this abominable question interviewers really want to know:

• Are you humble or do you take yourself more seriously than  you ought?
• How well do you understand yourself? Are you self-aware?
• Are you honest? Can you admit making mistakes and able to own up to it?
• Can you really do this job or is your resume a crock?
• Are your intentions honorable or is this just  a “one night stand’?

The next few posts will be a casual but serious discussion of the interview including dealing with the mystery of what to tell potential employers about things like Swiss cheese resumes, a stretch in the slammer, family care issues, and other “red flags” that give applicants and recruiters alike nightmares.

In one article I read entitled, “How To Answer the Question, What Is Your Greatest Weakness?”, featured below,I found one intriguing statement: “The questions you hear in an interview will reveal a lot about the mindset of the organization…”  It immediately sets up questions in my mind:

• Exactly what kind of weaknesses pose the biggest threat to that company?
• How is my kind of weakness going to bless or curse the company?
• Is there already a full complement of my kind of nut in the tree?
• is one of those nuts going to end up being my supervisor?

They hired my brother!

This suggests to me that if job seekers empower themselves they can take the body of questions corporations ask in interviews together and read them like tea leaves to find things out about the company what should be known before saying yes to a potentially toxic or abusive work relationship. 

• Candidate Tool Kit, Part 1: Interview Do’s and Don’ts (govigseniorcare.wordpress.com)
• Ten Things Not To Say During An Interview (therantingrecruiter.wordpress.com)
• Your Achilles’ Heel(s) (caitlindurkin.wordpress.com)
• What Questions Should I Be Ready to Answer at Just About Any Job Interview? [Ask Lifehacker] (lifehacker.com)
• 5 Things Not to Say in a Job Interview (money.usnews.com)
• Feb 16, 8:27pm “Good Interview, but unwanted job” (ilovemycrazyboss.wordpress.com)
• How to answer “What is your greatest weakness?” (patchspace.co.uk)
• 21 Things Hiring Managers Wish You Knew (sweetbriarcareerservices.wordpress.com)
• The Mystery Of The Interview (dougnewmanpro.wordpress.com)
• 15 Biggest Job Seeker Mistakes (frankcrumstaffing.wordpress.com)
• Interview Rules to Break (cmcacorner.com)
• Candidate Tool Kit, Part 1: Interview Do’s and Don’ts (govigseniorcare.wordpress.com)
• The Trick To Answering ‘Trick’ Interview Questions (personalbrandingblog.com)

The Terror On Both Sides Of The Table

Image via Wikipedia

It's not rocket science, it's magic

October is “the scary month”, so, let’s talk about scary things in the job search. Fear. So much about why people fail in the search for work is laid squarely at the door of fear. Question: is this justified?

Guess what I found out? Potential employers are scared. Scared crapless that they’ll make a bad decision and hire the wrong person.

Let the Job Gypsy lady tell you a tale: I took a data entry job once and in that class of newbie processors was a Superstar Processor. She was my main competition.  We both had lightning fingers on a keyboard, but she did the work even quicker and more accurately than I. Finally, after a series of elimination rounds, there was a choice between us. They hired The Star. I got the gate and continued my search elsewhere. A week or two later, I met the Star in the streets and asked her how the new job was going. She said, “Oh, I quit that job last week. It was boring”. The moral of this story? Employers always take a chance when they hire a star. This is why “overqualified applicants” scare them. However, to live means to take risks and taking risks means facing the reality of the odd loss or two.

What lies behind the mask?

Go here to see an article from the potential employer side of the hiring process –

How to Guarantee You Won’t Make A Bad Hire

In a certain way, this knowledge makes both sides of the table equal. On both sides of the table, there is a fear the match will be wrong. The hiring process could sure use the services of a matchmaker or a connector –someone gifted in brokering relationships, huh? In some places this is the core of what recruiters do. I’m saying companies should have a person strongly possessed of the strength of connection–a relationship broker– on their hiring team in Human Resources departments. It might just take the “scary” out of the hiring process.

Related articles

• A Recruiter’s Nightmare Applicant (victoree.wordpress.com)
• Hire the Job, Don’t Let It Hire You (craigormiston.com)

Resume: An Invitation To The Ball

According to research, the most valuable real estate on a resume is “above the fold”. That term comes from the newspaper business. I was one of the last graduating classes of old-school trained journalists. In those days we all dreamed of landing jobs and retiring from newspapers the likes of  The Washington Post and The New York Times because we thought the “big papers” would live forever.

Righteous, full-sized newspapers, as opposed to “Tabloids” (we were taught to disdain), were presented for sale horizontally folded in half  on news stands. We were taught in Journalism school that  busy people read the headlines above that middle fold first, so the most serious news and most memorable pictures are always located there.

However, “above the fold” on a resume refers to the top part of a standard 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of letterhead business paper folded in half horizontally like an old-school newspaper. The last recruiter panel I attended pegged the average time a recruiter will look at a resume is 30 seconds. Imagine! 30 seconds to impress a potential employer with such stellar quality accomplishments that it will draw  an invitation to an in-person interview.  A resume, you see,  is a bid for an eyeball to eyeball meeting–the interview. The real purpose of a resume is to get that “invitation to the royal ball” the job seeker is looking for. This feat must be done through a 30-second read of the information on the top half of the page.

Interview And Style: Queen Boadicea Need Not Apply

Boadicea Queen of the Iceni ; program cover City of St. Albans pagent 1907

We have been discussing personal image for a couple of weeks. We continue with a dive into the subject of projecting the best image through physical presentation including personal style.  As has been said before, it takes more than brilliance to succeed  in these “revolving door” job times. We speak without a word with physical presentation–”packaging”. How an applicant presents physically can project an image that will draw a negative response or a positive response from a potential employer.

But, why in 2011 is the “first impression” thing so important? …because it is a vital part of professional image. Projecting confidence, competence and integrity puts an applicant on a firm footing to engender all-important trust based on truthfulness.

One more time with feeling: the present society pays lip service to the proverb, “never judge a book by its cover”. Prospective employers make judgements within seconds of meeting an applicant on the battlefield of the interview. The interview can be viewed as a battle as well as a game, you know. Image matters; appearance counts; this is a highly visual society; make the most of the outer, physical package to mollify any negative features/challenges.

How much does “packaging” count? Let us put it this way: If Queen Boadicea applied for a job today she would scare the dickens out of her interviewer. She was a fierce, natural leader distinguished for her mane of red hair. So was this lady spoken of in a blog by professional image expert Diana Pemberton-Sikes. This obviously highly competent, intelligent woman had some of the same queenly physical characteristics Boadicea did and had the very same effect on people attending her presentations.

Elizabeth I "the virgin queen"

Powerful women throughout history were not dismissive of the effect of physical presentation and some of them even traded on it.  My sisters, we are all queens in our own realms. Appropriate to the position, we are obligated to act accordingly and dress the part.

Here is the doggy bag to take home from this feast:

• Master the parts of your professional image in your direct control and make them your vassals
• Listen to Merlin (your image consultant/best friend who cares about your success) and your other “queen’s chamber advisors”–your “kitchen cabinet”  while you prepare to present in an interview.

For your a bit of diversion, I found this  movie clip depicting Boadicea’s most decisive battle against the Roman army.  I will not tell you who  won. History buffs will, of course, research to find out.  Music backing the silent flick is a hauntingly beautiful composition by Enya called “Boadicea”.

Here we will end of both Celtic heritage month and our talk about “packaging” and image for women.

Image: The Principle of Mollifying Effects Of Negative Stereotyping

 

Image of Womanhood

Last week we talked about things a job seeker cannot change about herself/himself– age, race, skin color, sex, height, and natural attractiveness (socially desirable traits of face and form said to be “beautiful”)–things generally counted against her/him because of negative stereotyping. Some of these “factory issue” human features can be surface-changed, but not totally changed.

A man remains a man at the DNA level. Flesh lightened or darkened with various products eventually reverts to its natural color if left alone as does hair.  No human being can  make the effect of having a certain number of birthdays disappear permanently. Height is genetically determined. Original eye color can only be temporarily changed with contact lenses. That 75 pounds over the Met Life table cannot be lost the night before the interview. The duty of the job seeker is to deal in the real about what she/he looks like compared with what is accepted as a positive for appearance. A potential employer upon seeing an overweight applicant may still think “lazy”, “poor worker”, and “not motivated”.

I have noticed in my travels that many image management experts recommend acknowledgment of  any possible negative stereotype–challenge–and to devise a way to make it less damaging to presenting a professional image.

Truthfully, some stereotypes stubbornly remain like ghosts of a spaghetti dinner past on a white shirt. Mighty efforts over years to change or eradicate some negative stereotypes have made only the slightest dent. Consider pre-election concerns about Mrs. Obama’s public image. You see, beneath the veneer of social equity in the USA there is an embedded social Darwinist principle still in operation that encourages  society to expect less from, consider as ugly and think less of some of us believed to really belong to another species closer to animals than people–devaluation.

Living in a nation very averse to talking about death and mortality except in clinical whispers sometimes makes it feel as if living in a  scene from “Logan’s Run”. Making old people the butt of jokes or keeping them out of sight  seems to be the only way this society can handle the reality of aging. We fear old women. We laugh at old men.

Women still see a fun house mirror image of themselves. We use products and knives to starve and carve ourselves into the perfect image of beauty and youth. All these realities and more is why there are still advice sections pointed at specific populations whenever the discussion turns to job hunting–especially presentation for the interview.

…And my classmates are still asking things like, “shall I dye my gray?”

…And some employers are telling female employees, “if you do dye make sure you keep that dye job done…”

We must all be aware that a potential employer makes a judgment about a “contestant’ within the first 30 seconds of an interview. Remember Susan Boyle, the plain-looking Scottish woman with the heavenly voice? At first derided and laughed at, nobody was laughing by the last note of her song.

There is an ideal of beauty in this society and entire industries–you know who you are–dedicate themselves to making people feel dissatisfied with themselves more out of concern for the bottom line than public health. My studied interest is rooted partly in the reality of being a “Baby Boom era” professional woman of color, of queenly stature, and in the autumn of life. My log entry about the experience of becoming “invisible” as I entered midlife is in an article entitled, “The Autumn of Life”, written for Waverly Fitzgerald’s Living In Season.

Brothers and sisters I have to tell you: few potential employers  are going to wait to “hear your song”. The stereotypes attached to certain aspects of appearance  cannot always be mollified. We have to “stack the deck” in our favor by presenting the best image possible.