Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joyce Lain Kennedy is America’s first nationally syndicated careers columnist. Her two-times-weekly column, CAREERS NOW, appears in newspapers and on Web sites across the land. In her four decades of advising readers — newbies, prime-timers, and those in-between — Joyce has received millions of letters inquiring about career moves and job search and has answered countless numbers of them in print.
Joyce is the author of seven career books, including Joyce Lain Kennedy’s Career Book (McGraw-Hill), Electronic Job Search Revolution, Electronic Resume Revolution, and Hook Up, Get Hired! The Internet Job Search Revolution (the last three published by Wiley). Job Interviews For Dummies is one of a trio of job market books published under Wiley’s wildly popular For Dummies branded imprint. The others are Resumes For Dummies and Cover Letters For Dummies.
Writing from Carlsbad, California, a San Diego suburb, the country’s bestknown careers columnist is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. Contact Joyce at jlk@sunfeatures.com.

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The latest and greatest on the changing interview scene

The fun and easy way® to give a show-stopping interview and land the job you want

Whether you're fresh from the classroom, a prime-timer over 50 — or somewhere in between — this friendly, authoritative guide helps you outprepare the competition, overcome your fear of interviewing, and outrageously improve your interviewing success. You meet Internet video interviewing techniques and learn how to present yourself on a global scale. You get new advice on giving targeted responses, pinpointing the critical part of questions, and following up after the interview in this outstanding handbook of contemporary interview arts.

Discover how to:

• Give the best answers tomake-or-break questions

• Fit your qualifications to a job's requirements

• Dress like an insider

• Negotiate a better salary

• Survive personality tests

• Interview across cultures

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Job Interviews For Dummies

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

In This Chapter

* Why job interviewing is showbiz

* Presenting your best self in an interview

* Looking at what's new in interviewing

* Ten concepts to make you a star

* More ideas that win Oscars

Are you on edge about that big job interview in your future? Try putting unnamed fears to rest by anticipating the worst thing that can happen to you. Among unappealing scenes are these possibilities:

A. Blowing the interview and feeling like a total loser for days after stumbling and mumbling your way through the ordeal. B. Feeling glued to a hot seat as they beat the answers out of you and realizing that you're going to be sick if you don't leave immediately. C. Slip-sliding as you come through the door, physically falling on your good intentions (hey, this is a PG-rated guidebook), and losing all hope of leaving behind a professional impression.

Situations A and B are common. Even C isn't unheard of. Perhaps you saw the video of Miss USA taking a tumble and bottoming-out as she made her grand entrance in a recent Miss Universe competition. It happens to the loveliest of us.

Still worried? Exhale. You've come to the right book. Take the suggestions to heart that I offer within these pages and horror situations A and B won't happen to you. As for your odds on situation C, that's between you and your inner-ear balance.

This work is dedicated to making sure that nothing you can control goes wrong. I offer proven tips on how to take the duck tape off your mouth, dry off your sweaty palms, and step out into interview spotlights with a quality of confidence you never thought could be yours. Dim the lights and raise the curtain on your quest for a new gig.

Interviewing Is Theater

Job interviewing is major furniture in the employment drama. Because it's the do-or-die step in the difficult process of getting hired, leading career coaches spend the majority of client-coaching time on interviewing drills.

Once you're inside an office and engaged in an interview, your entire future may rest on how successful you are in presenting yourself to a stranger across a desk in 15, 30, or 60 minutes.

These self-presentations have been described as everything from school final exams to mating rituals, but here's the real secret:

SHOW STOPPER

Job interviews are show biz. Like reality shows on TV, interviews are based on reality but in fact are staged. And, as in reality shows, only one survivor beats out the competition to win the prize.

APPLAUSE

The most successful interviews require solid preparation to learn your lines. At each meeting, your goal is to deliver a flawless performance that rolls off your tongue and gets the employer applauding - and remembering - you.

And because interviewing is show biz, you're allowed to have some fun learning your stagecraft.

Why "Be Yourself" Can Be Poor Advice

A scene in the movie Children of a Lesser God reveals a speech teacher (William Hurt) and a deaf janitor (Marlee Matlin) duking it out in a jolting battle of wits.

In a climactic verbal battle, the janitor signs to the speech teacher, "Let me be me," to which the speech teacher replies, "Well, who the hell are you?" There is no answer.

The troubled janitor isn't the only one who has trouble with that question. The bromide - "Be yourself" - is very difficult to articulate with consistency. Be yourself? Which self? Who is the real you? Our roles change at various times.

Your role: Job seeker

Jerry is a father, an engineer, a marathon runner, a public speaker, a law student at night, and a writer of professional papers. Will the real Jerry please stand up?

Jennifer is a loving daughter, the best salesperson in her company, a pilot, a tennis player, and a football fan. Will the real Jennifer please stand up?

Jerry or Jennifer could duck the which-self question by asserting unchangeable inborn traits: I am the same as my feelings. If I suppress or alter my urges I am being untrue to myself. I am not being authentic.

Wrong! Shuck the superficial thinking. If you enjoy improving yourself, isn't that a form of "being yourself"? Remember too that each of us has all kinds of urges, some of which are lofty and admirable while others are base and unattractive.

Don't make the mistake of pretending you're stuck with one identity - that's not who you are.

Who you are at this particular time is a person playing the role of job seeker. The stranger across an interviewing desk is playing the role of interviewer.

Playing the role most appropriate to you at a given time, and playing it effectively enough to get you the job you deserve, isn't dishonest. To do less courts unemployment - or underemployment.

SHOW STOPPER

When you give a ShowStopping interview performance, you aren't being phony. You're simply standing back from the situation and looking at it with dispassionate eyes, seeing which type of information and behavior is likely to result in a job offer and which is likely to leave you out in the cold. You can't do so if you are too busy staying true to your most easily assumed self-identity.

Outtake: Forget about being "natural"

What about being natural? Isn't natural better than artificial? Not always. Is combed hair natural? Shaved legs? Trimmed beard? Polished shoes? How about covering a cough in public? Or not scratching where you itch?

Being natural in a job interview is fine as long as you don't use your desire to be natural as an excuse to display or blurt out negative characteristics.

REMEMBER

Never treat a job interview as a confessional in which you're charged with disclosing imperfections and indiscretions that don't relate to your future job performance.

Nor should you treat a job interview as social dialogue in which you share cultural, sociological, political, sexual, or other viewpoints. Don't download your personal beliefs on interviewers in the name of "being yourself" or "being natural" - or, for that matter, "being honest."

Society cannot survive totally natural behavior. Neither can your unrefined behavior survive at job interviews. To really know someone in a brief encounter of 15, 30, or 60 minutes is simply impossible - even when you repeat that encounter multiple times. How can you compress a lifetime into 15 to 60 minutes? You can't, unless you present your biography with the same 30-seconds-per-story speed that television news uses to cover the state of the world.

Instead of real life, each participant in an interview sees what the other participant(s) wants seen. If you doubt that, think back: How long did you need to really get to know your roommate, spouse, or significant other?

If you insist on being natural, an employer may pass you over because of your unkempt beard, unshined shoes, or because you don't feel like smiling that day.

The price for ignoring self-improvement is too high. All the things you've done to date - your identification of your competencies and skills, your job-lead management, your resume, your cover letter - are pointless if you fail to deliver a job interview that delivers a job offer.

New Faces, New Factors in...