Interveiws., c/o : Ally Chisholm

Interviews:
A woman rushes to her job interview with a high street bank. She’s late. That’s not a good start. She arrives looking flustered but gives herself a moment or two to compose herself before going into the branch. She announces herself and is told to take a seat and wait.
Behind the scenes no one in personnel can find the woman’s application or scheduled interview time. It is assumed that amongst the masses of other applications and scheduled interviews it’s been lost and in haste an interviewer is sent out to greet the applicant. The interview took place and all the expected questions were asked and good, well rehearsed answers were given. A pleasant professional manner was demonstrated and the woman felt pretty good about her prospects. On her arrival back home she checked her answering machine where there was a message from the bank she was supposed to have her interview in. As she had missed the interview would she like to reschedule?
That’s weird. Had she not been there today? Had they left the wrong message for the wrong applicant? Before she could call the bank she played the message again and suddenly realised she’d gone to the wrong branch. There was nothing she could do. If she called to say she had been to an interview that day but at the wrong branch there’s no way she gets the job. If she called the branch she had shown up at what would they say? All that was left to do, the only sensible option, was to do nothing. A week later she received a call from the branch that she had wrongly shown up at and interviewed with and was offered a job.
I’ve never found that story particularly inspiring but it does make me smile every time I go for an interview. A couple of months ago I had a job and was keen to leave it as I’d been in it for far too long. I’d applied to a few jobs, similar types. It wasn’t as if I needed or wanted the job but I’d applied and when I was offered an interview I didn’t know how to say no. It felt like asking a girl out on a date and when she said yes it felt too weird to tell her that you weren’t sure how serious you were about it and were thinking about backing out. You may as well go on the date.
I went about it the standard way, inclusive of all the lying. Later I really won’t. I did this because I wanted the job. More accurately I wanted out of my current job and to get out you needed to get in somewhere else. Or so I thought. I could tell people that I was applying for the job because I wanted change and a new challenge and a fresh perspective and a better benefit package. I wasn’t sure I was supposed to add that I really hated the last job or that it probably didn’t matter much to me what job I did.
Using the standard tactic of putting on a suit and lying, everything went well. I looked the part, was not nervous, shook hands with non-sweaty hands and got on really well, answered the questions and was not caught out once. I had to conjure up an answer or two to standard questions that I haven’t thought about. Think of three words that best describe you.
The interviewer looked at me as though the question had never been asked before in all his years of interviewing. This is also sometimes phrased as: If I were to ask your current colleagues to describe you how would they do so? Or: If I were to ask your best friend to describe you which words would he choose? It’s a bullshit question and all you ever do is lie and give them words you think they would want to employ. If you could employ any words which words in the English dictionary would you employ? Dependable. Courageous. Punctual. Bullet-proof?
But I jump through all the right hoops and get along and chat. I am qualified to do the job. I have experience and I am educated. In regard to every question asked I have a good answer and on hearing my answers the interviewer tells me; “Good answer. Good answer.”
I demonstrate knowledge of the job and the right attitude. My interview is a moderate success. There is no way it can be judged otherwise. Of course, how obvious, I don’t get the job.
It makes you wonder what people are looking for. Given enough time I’ll get a job and then want to leave that one. But I have no idea how they decide who gets that job. I don’t take it personally. I am qualified and educated and none of these jobs are rocket science. None of them are beyond my grasp and all of them I have the right experience for. But if everyone has the same qualities how does anyone choose a successful candidate? If everyone is equal, equally skilled, equally knowledgeable, equally likeable, equally suitable, equally equal, then who gets the job? Is it then a popularity competition? A flip of a coin? Your success rides on a flip of a coin. Go and flip one now. I call tails. How successful was I? How successful am I? How successful do you feel? This is how you might be judged. Does it bother you?
A couple of weeks later I’m bored at work and apply for a couple of jobs online. Maybe desperate for someone to employ I get two calls back that same day asking me for interviews. This is how you accidentally go from job to job if you’re not careful. In the job market there is no such thing as flirting. You’re interested or you’re not and if you’re applying they take you seriously and you have to start pretending in a hurry.
This interview goes even better than the last. This of course is no guarantee of anything. It was scary the way my interviewer liked me the minute he met me. We’d talked on the phone but never met. He walked towards me as though we knew one another, as though we’d worked together before. I did little but shake hands and smile. This part I was playing, what I purport to be, the whole act, he liked and liked from the hand shake onwards. He told me he’d be with me in a moment or two and turned to talk to a small gathering. Before interview’s end I felt adopted, taken under his wing. I’d never experienced an interview where my prospective manager took such a shine to me. It’s hard to say what the situation was and maybe I was the best candidate to walk through the door in some time. I’ll never know. I’ll never know what instigated the friendly wink and a smile from the man as he turned my way, away from his clients, as I waited. There was something in it, something good. This is what you could call a successful interview and the acceptance felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket. This makes it harder to do what is burning in me to do, to walk away and not want this. A few days later when I turn down the position I felt like I’d broken a heart.
The other interview that week seemed exceedingly dull in comparison. I was interviewed by a robot who asked questions from a list and once my answers were given no conversation was to be had and a new question asked. How could I make this android woman warm to me as the man had warmed to me only a few days before?
A few days later I find myself drawing up pros and cons of different jobs on spreadsheets and I know I have too much free time on my hands and at that point I realise that regardless of the outcome I don’t want either job that I’ve interviewed for. A week later I don’t even want my own and quit.
This seemed to have some shock value as no one saw it coming. I hadn’t left any clues and had always done a good job of pretending to care. Ah, my greatest weakness. I don’t care that much or at all. It’s a little horrible fact I try to hide from employers. I dig out reasons, to make everyone feel better. I tell them that it’s time to move on and that I’m looking for a change. I burn no bridges. There is nothing that management can offer me. There is nothing I want but out. Whilst I work my notice I go to interviews and in that time everyone asks me what I’m going to do. I mysteriously tell them I have things lined up. This is half true. I had lined up a dozen applications in preparation and then sent them out and would wait for the interviews to trickle in.
Waiting for the post, checking for emails, waiting for my invite to interviews I didn’t care about but desperately needed to go to was the future I was heading for. That is what I was ditching my job for. This is what I couldn’t tell people. That standard way of doing things, the way people want you to do them, for the reasons that make sense to them, what people thought I should be doing, is what I wasn’t doing. You never quit one job without having another lined up. I told no one my truth because I didn’t want to hear their advice. Life feels too chaotic for such specific advice. I wanted out so much and didn’t care where I went. The only advice I wanted was vindication, for someone to tell me to go.
Tamar was the first person I ever met who got a job by writing the most ludicrous application. The girl went all out on silly answers for a company who had advertised that they wanted applicants to be confident and outgoing.
What do you look out for in a job?
Obviously you are an idiot in this application if you answer anything other than: Objects falling on me from a great height that might kill me. They hired the girl with the daftest answers. Not one question was taken seriously and they laughed at every dumb answer and gave her the job because she would be fun to work with.
When I tried this approach for a so-called fun job, that had advertised for applicants with character, in a cinema, I received a reply in the post that informed me that my application was the most unprofessional that had ever come by their office. Was this a joke? We take our work very seriously and do not appreciate such a flippant approach. We are insulted by your application.
Wow, I fancy that was a bit much. I asked Tamar what she’d have done differently. She checked out my application and said it was better than hers, but for the fact that when asked to supply a photo she had attached a photo of herself dressed as Batgirl. That, I do think, is creative. That is not the standard accepted way of things.
I tried a couple of interviews in the standard way. It was midway through the second bog standard interview that I got bored and snapped. It’s amazing the amount of confidence you can exude if you don’t care. I have answers to questions I know I am going to be asked. If I don’t have the answers, if they surprise me, I can think up answers and the worst thing that can happen is you admit you don’t know the answer.
I was sitting in an interview watching the big old Irish woman flipping through my covering letter which I know is typo-ed to hell. I was surprised to get to the interview stage as I had rushed off the application and it was littered with spelling mistakes and errors. I’d even managed to finish off the covering letter informing them how great it would be to work for their company. Only, I’d written the wrong company name. Damn you Microsoft and your cut and paste facility. I’d taken an old application, chopped it up a bit and forgot to change the name of the company at the end. My head fills with flashbacks to my manager of years gone by telling me that he never bothers reading a covering letter, that he gets a paragraph in and can’t get past the waffle. Anything that wasn’t succinct and to the point was shredded. Your application had to get past my boss’s attention deficit disorder if it had any chance. Surely we should put that in the advert for the job. Please send your application via email and take into account it will be read by someone with A.D.D. Long beautiful crafted paragraphs will be disposed of appropriately. My typo inflicted application was not proof read but it was succinct. By interview’s end I had done such a good job that I almost convinced myself I wanted the job, but remembered that I had another interview later that afternoon. Of course I did.
I had a second interview that day because I needed a job. Due to a long trek to the interview I’m sure I don’t want the job before I even get there. I try to put myself in my future self’s place and see myself taking the long ride out of town to where this job is and I can’t envision it at all. I’ll go through the motions and play out the interview and never want the job. Should I try to fail? Am I wasting everyone’s time if I don’t want the job?
Then I think back to the interview where I had to deal with the robot woman with her list of questions and no conversational ability. God, was that ever a waste of time? I’m tired of trying to impress and impress those that don’t ever impress me. I want to burst into an interview and tell everyone to try to prove to me that I would want their job. I can’t. But I can pick and choose. Why so desperate? I’m qualified and even if I wasn’t I could make myself so. I’ll go to this interview and they will have to show me that I want to work with them.
Scott had once told me of an interview he went to in which he had ended up taking over the interview so much so that at the end of it all he showed the interviewer to the door. As he held the door to shepherd the woman out he realised that she should be thanking him for coming not the other way around. I had no plans to replicate this but there is something freeing about this process when you get rid of consequence.
I go through the motions of greeting, smiling, small talking. In a café, over a cup of coffee, I’m being double teamed by Annie and Gary. Annie tells me early on that she’s as deaf as a post. I reply quietly that this is understood and she hears me. Gary is dressed as though he’s going to a concert. I’m suited and appropriately smart for the part. They take it in turns to ask questions and I give answers but before I do, having played this game a little now, I see the questions before they come and I tell them that the question was expected.
“Where do I see myself in five years time? Well, you always get asked that and my answer is that you really don’t know. I have no idea what I’m doing tomorrow. But if in five years time I’m here in this job I’d like to be established in a position and knowing what I’m doing so that work is easy and I don’t have to fear or hate going to work. I think that question is always asked to gage if you have any ambition and I can’t answer that until I know how much I like the job and I might not know that for some while yet.”
I think the right answer was: I want to be in management.
I have no idea how that went down. If I wanted the position I might have lied and given the right answer. All the usual suspects are present. What can you bring to the job? Why did you leave your last job? Describe a problem you had and how you resolved it? What motivates you? What are your strengths and weaknesses?
I can’t answer the last one and you know why. My greatest weakness excludes me from all work and is my trump card if I’m looking for the escape exit.
At one point, at the time it feels like the apex of all my interviews, as things are going so well, I ask Gary and Annie if they’ve heard of a certain dead American comedian. Gary has. So, I launch into five minutes of a comedy routine that best answers a question. We laugh. I actually don’t know if I have a chance now.
On my way home, in my head, I go back to my last job and try to explain what I’m doing now. I no longer needed interviews and I want everyone to know that I quit my last job because I went to a couple of interviews and was enjoying the process so much and wanted to do it more. I want to be able to say that my job would only get in the way of my interview schedule. I want to skirt the edges and play as a tease until my money runs out in my account and then I’ll have to dive in and take a job. Until then I was on a break from work and indulging my new hobby of attending interviews.
A week later my lucid morning dreams are interrupted by a ringing phone. I’d been busy with applications recently. Applications lead to more phone calls. The phone is by the bed and I go from sleep to talking in a hurry. Somehow I sound awake. After the initial confusion and introductions the voice coming from the phone asks me if I mind if she conducts a phone interview. In the week gone by I’ve found my honest streak growing and now I don’t do phone interviews.
“Do you mind if we conduct a quick interview?”
“Do you mind that I’m lying here naked?”
I really wanted to break my rules that one time and go ahead with the interview but she didn’t. There’s a reason I don’t do phone interviews. If there is anything worse than the interview procedure it’s the surprise interview. I have no problem with anyone calling me to tell me to come to an interview but to conduct one over the phone seems lazy to me.
I had picked up the phone earlier in the week, putting the DVD I was watching on pause, to be confronted by a freaking interview. They’ve invaded my home. One minute your head is in a mindless action romp and the next you’re supposed to be making up lies to answer what motivates you or what word you would choose to best describe yourself.
Caught off guard, I try to go through with it. It’s a new experience.
After a few standard questions to which I fire off well rehearsed answers I’m faced with one I haven’t thought of and the answer simply isn’t in me.
“We’re going to do some role playing now.”
We’re going to do some fucking what?
I toy with the DVD remote. This is over now. I should turn the film back on. What’s next? Surprise acting classes showing up on my door?
“I’m going to mention two objects and you have to pick one and try to sell it to me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hose pipe or pineapple?”
It’s at this point that I realise sales probably isn’t my thing. The fact that I can’t turn on my sales self and sell pineapples at the drop of a hat seems to be a way of determining if I can sell airline flights for this company.
It’s big and juicy and I can use lots of words to describe it in an evocative way but my heart is not in this pineapple sale. I try and I hate myself for trying. I don’t hate myself for failing. I hate myself for not telling the truth.
Do you want a pineapple or not? If you want a pineapple buy one. If you don’t then I am not forcing this one you. If you can get it cheaper elsewhere then buy it elsewhere. This is my pineapple if you want it then buy it.
The phone call ends with a lie. She says to me, “Thanks for your time. We’ll let you know.”
As I slump back to bed I find my dream is still intact and I lie there remembering.
In my dream I was on my way to an interview. In my waking life I had talked to a friend about working at her office. Jill had told me that her workplace is a little mad. Usually being a little mad isn’t as extreme or as much fun as advertised. Even Tamar quit her job at the Fun Factory Space Rides only a few months after her wacky application had all but secured her that job. I asked Jill what was so mad in her place. What kind of madness could I expect?
In dream world I am wearing Bermuda shorts and a shirt and tie. I think this might be the serial interviewee’s twist on the recurring nightmare where you realise you aren’t wearing any trousers or pants. I get to the reception desk and announce myself. The next thing I know I’m sitting down in an office, cold hard metallic seats, and a school desk are all I’m aware of, that and a sign on the desk that reads: We’re all a little mad here. My eyes go from the sign to the large man who has appeared out of nowhere. We look like we’ve already done the introductions. He is wearing a hat, a baseball cap, with a small yellow rubber bath duck on it. There are strings attached to the duck that lead to the hands of the big man. When he pulls the strings the duck moves, if only so slightly.
I don’t want to start the interview because it’s not my place to do so but something doesn’t feel right. You can feel, in this dream place, the weirdness is building and the longer I keep quiet the worse the feeling gets. I open my mouth to talk but as soon as I do the big man shakes his head.
“Talk to the duck. Ask your questions to the duck,” he says, almost drooling out the words.
I look at the duck.
“I have three years of experience in this type of work.”
The man pulls the strings and the duck bobs about on his head. I smile, largely out of politeness and decide at that moment to break the weirdness.
“Jill told me this is a bit of a crazy place to work but as I was saying, I’ve worked for three years in……”
“The duck, not me, talk to the fucking duck.”
I look up at the duck as the man pulls the strings and the inanimate rubber has now become a living plastic creature with scaly feathers that move as the creature’s strings are pulled. Quirkiness has evolved into strange perverse horror. The duck squawks a horrible sound of squawk words and I can make out the words; Talk to the fucking duck.
A few days later I attend the real interview at Jill’s quirky work place, where the interviewer has placed on a desk a sing reading: You don’t have to be crazy to work here but it helps. Nothing about it is even remotely crazy. The whole thing is a boring washout.
All I have is the truth, or a perversion of it. I’m arrogant enough to think that I have the answers to the questions I know are coming. They are the best that are remotely true to me but they are true. I’m freed by not lying. Is that my addiction?
The climax of my truth telling interview life, the last one I give before I quit the game, before retirement and before my money runs out and I go back to lying my way into a job that I need to take, is beautiful.
I’m suited up for this one. People go to this type of interview with a career plan in mind. A man and a woman are sitting behind a desk wearing expensive suits. I have dug from the closet my funeral and wedding going outfit, the one you wear when you want to look good, the one with the higher price tag. Tom and Marlene can probably tell the make and year of the ensemble I am wearing. They sniff suits like wines.
I had worked on the application but was still surprised to get to the interview stage. I’d worked to get here and should probably want this job if I wanted any. The only obstacle was a lie laced interview or two. But, I blow it from the first question. I’m happy I made my mind up so soon, that there was no wrestling with it.
Bang. Straight in. What is the reason for leaving your last job?
And take a deep breath.
“The reason I left my last job is. They were assholes.”
The shock. Do they want to stop the interview immediately? Do they want to play? What’s that sound, that horrible needle scratching the record sound? Has the record screeched to a halt? Would someone kick the jukebox please?
“Really, I didn’t like the people there. I used to but they replaced all the good people with lesser quality ones who didn’t know their jobs and I didn’t want to work with anyone of such quality who had no interest in how I could train and help them. They were assholes, shitheads. If you don’t mind me saying so. ”
No one ever tells this truth.
No one ever says they were bored or hated the job or all the doubtlessly negative reasons they left or that they woke up one morning and just simply didn’t want to go to their job anymore. Maybe a mad happy whim was their reason. It is impossible to believe that everyone has left a job to further themselves and be better. I wouldn’t believe a word of it, not a word of interview cliché speak.
If you could imagine it, I try to speak as though I’m still playing the interview game, in a way that seems to tread carefully. Everything about my demeanour says interview, poker faced, poised correctly, as shown in diagrams and promotional video footage, interview. They in turn play along accordingly and move to the next question only stopping to remark with a smile that my answer is very frank.
“You’ve probably heard this question before.”
Uh-huh, there’s a website dedicated to the questions you might get asked.
“If you could pick one word to best describe you what would it be?”
Breathe.
“I can’t.”
Tom puts on his sympathy. “I know it’s a bit tricky as questions go but…”
“No, I just mean I can’t do it. If I had to pick one word it would probably be, complex. But that doesn’t really help you. I’m complex with lots of flaws. I’m also really funny and smart and loyal. If you want me to pick a word that describes to you how suitable I am for the job I can’t do that either. I can tell you my ideas for the job and how it should be done. I have spreadsheets and diagrams for that. I can assure you I know what I’m doing but I don’t have one word to win me this job. I don’t know if I have lots of words to do it. I really don’t know what you’re looking for, unless of course you tell me. All I can tell you is a bunch of things you want to hear and so will everyone else.”

I may as well quit now. There goes my interview event horizon. I can’t top it and should stop right there. I’m not particularly proud of myself. I am satisfied and fulfilled in a way I never imagined. Tom and Marlene carried on until the end and remained professional. I don’t really remember much after that. If I get any of the jobs, and there were some I was in with a shout for, don’t congratulate me too hard or berate me either. I need a job to pay the rent. I will go back to work because the last I checked I was still in the real world. And when I do go back to work it will be as a result of lying as best I could, showing little bits of me and working out what my employer wants to hear.
After that interview I’m sitting in a coffee shop with Tamar and I tell her the story. I’m buzzing just a little. She tells me I should call them up in a couple of weeks and ask them why I didn’t get the job.
“Have you ever done that? Some people do call up after interviews to ask for feedback so that they could improve for the next time.”
It had never occurred to me that people do this or could do this.
“Wouldn’t the advice given to you by the last interviewer be useless by the time you get to the next because the next job will have their own idea of what they want? Be more assertive, be less, sit up straighter, relax.”
“And what happens when they tell you they chose the position by a flip of a coin?”
Tamar mooches through the classifieds and finds a job for me. She flips me the advert. The paper is brand new but I’ve seen this job advertised for ages and I wonder who they are waiting for, what they are looking for or if they even know.

A.C.