Stop being a stupid interviewer, please!

The web is full of articles about the job interview process. These articles range from "10 things not to do in an interview" to "the five dumbest answers given in interviews."

Notice how all the emphasis is on the interviewee. The person desperate to get the job they've been "lucky" enough to get called in to talk about. As someone who goes through job interviews at least once a week for the past six months, I've become something of an expert on the interview process. I have to say, your performance is lacking, interviewers.

So, in the ever-tried-and-true list form, here's a top five mistakes to avoid that I've seen over the months.

1.       If you interview someone, whether over the phone or in person, do them the favor of telling them they didn't get the job.

                About half of the interviews I go on, send thank you letters for, and contact a week later to check on their progress - all perfectly reasonable things recommended by experts - I never hear from again. I took the time to thank you for taking the time to meet with me and discuss how I could best help your organization, but the fact is, I drove to your office, changed my schedule, and put on my best suit for you, sometimes taking 3 hours worth of writing tests. You show up in the same old thing you wear every day, talk to me for 30 minutes, and move on. I feel like we slept together and you didn't have the decency to call the next day.

2.       Please put the questions away!

                I now have a good idea what press junkets are like. I go to interviews, handle the same questions with a rehearsed ease of "spontaneity," and feel like we learned nothing about each other by the end of our time. Look, I interview people for a living as a reporter, let me tell you something - the best stuff you'll get is when you LISTEN to the other person, and ask questions about what they are saying. It's called a conversation. It's awesome! All too often, I get sat in a room with 2-5 other people, who read pre-written questions that come from the Dummies Guide to Conducting Job Interviews. "What interested you about this job?" "How do you handle change?" "What do you do when you have competing priorities?" I can only spin so much gold for such questions. I promise you, you will never get to know someone in this way. Don't get me wrong, pre-written questions can be a useful tool, but only if you ask follow up questions.

3.       More than the act of sticking to your scripted questions, some of the questions themselves need to go!

                You know what interested me in this job? You pay money. For services I can provide and have been doing well for years. I'm sorry that I don't have a born and bred loyalty to your company that I just applied to along with 30 others last week. I'm unemployed and am not choosy. That being said, if you hire me, I will kick so much ass and be so loyal, you'll be begging me to take it down a notch. But right now, the only thing that interested me was that you need a writer, and you pay. Period. But you ask this question and expect an "honest" response. I guarantee you all you will get is bull crap. 

4.       Telling me about your company is all good, but edit your shit.

                Maybe one in three interviews, but enough to be annoying, is the interviewer who spends 20-30 minutes of our brief time together talking about the company, their position, and the job details. This can be done in 5 minutes, tops. Any more time, and you are wasting a lot of time in our interview telling me about your company that I will not be working for because you haven’t taken a second to stop proselytizing to have a real conversation.

5.       Be honest.

                You ask honesty of people in interviews. Honesty and integrity screwed me out of a job last week, actually, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the things you say after the interview. If you are already set on someone else, let me know. Don't lead me on for a week or two, saying "we are still having internal discussions about the position" only to tell me later that I didn't get it. If I'm not in the running, let me know, and let me know what I can do better. I ask for feedback, but rarely get it. If I never hear what I did wrong, how can I do better? Constructive criticism would be good.

So, there's your top five. Not that I expect you to do them. After all, there's "so much going on around here" that you don't have time to put effort into finding the right person to fill a position at your business. You make that clear in the first two minutes. Every time.