It's been years since I've posted on the topic of Stupid Interview Tricks. From interviews I've done in the past few weeks- interviewing candidates for jobs at my company- I've got a few new ones. Two are related and one is not.

First, the unrelated one: Not including teammates in interviews. This is a stupid trick on the part of the hiring ( Read more... )

Here's another Stupid Interview Trick I've seen: disrespect the interviewer. This one happened to me several times at a job years ago when we were interviewing candidates for the position of regional sales team director. There was one candidate in particular who copped bored look and kept asking, "Anything else? ...Anything else?" Well, yes, I did ( Read more... )

After my phone interview Thursday with "The Braggart" I heard from the recruiter on Friday: the company decided not to move foward with my candidacy ( Read more... )

As I'm interviewing for jobs once again it's time to bring back a tag from the past: Stupid Interview Tricks.

This past Thursday I had a phone interview with another of the principals at a company I've been talking to for a few weeks now. It's the company that I expressed concerns about the commute over. I'm warming to the idea of making the ( Read more... )

Today I told off a guy who wanted to discuss a job opportunity in my field with me. He said he founded a successful, multimillion dollar software company in the financial sector and wanted to hire me. I called him a fraud. Here's why ( Read more... )

Continuing my series on Stupid Interview Tricks I'll describe a series of interviews I had late last year with a prospective boss I'll call Topper.

That nickname comes from a minor recurring character in Scott Adams' Dilbert comic strip. Topper is a guy who has to one-up everyone. Whatever they say, he'll go one further. Whatever they do, he's ( Read more... )

In the past I've written a few journals about stupid interview tricks: dumb things interviewers have done or said in front of me, how I responded in the moment, and how I wish I had responded. Today LinkedIn pointed me to an article, "Smart Answers to Stupid Interview Questions", by Liz Ryan. In her article Ryan lists three "stupid" interview ( Read more... )

One of the standard questions I ask as a job candidate is, "What are the main competitors in selling your product, and how do you win deals vs. them?" There are lots of different ways I phrase it but they all boil down to the same thing.

Note that I am not asking this question naively. I already know from doing research prior to the interview at ( Read more... )

This stupid interview trick is actually a two-fer: Waste my time (a) because you insist to (b) Ask me illegal questions.

Mr. VP Sales has my resume in hand as we sit down in his office. "You don't have any dates on your college degrees," he notes as soon as we finish exchanging pleasantries, which-- I should note-- occurred only after he stopped ( Read more... )

As I think about job interviews I recall some of the more memorably bad moments I've experienced. Though I was a hiring manager for several years and weeded through lots of unqualified candidates in that time, most of these "Stupid interview tricks" as I'll call them came when I was sitting on the other side of the desk, as a job seeker ( Read more... )