Ways To Blow A Job Interview – You’re Rusty
It’s November 2008 and we just elected a new President Elect – Barack Obama. All that is well and good, but let’s bring it home to your house. You are out of work, your friends, neighbors, family members, even people you don’t like are all out of work. Every day you are looking for a position only to realize that everyone else is looking for the same position. This is one way to blow a job interview, if you don’t acknowledge and take action.
Maybe you’ve had several interviews without success. After all you have been employed by the same company, doing the same job for 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years. Now as you were planning head off into the sunset of retirement, someone had the nerve to hit you over the head with the unemployment hammer. Your company has relocated, or closed or just down sized. Anyway you are now trying to figure out what to do. You can’t, it’s just too much to take in all at once.
In the Interviewers Lockerroom, we would say you are, “RUSTY”. I don’t mean your skin is dry, or you are old in age. One of the formal definitions for “Rusty” is lacking recent experience, out of practice, especially with respect to a skill or activity. Does that sound like you? So get over it. You haven’t had to compete for a position, and now it’s coming at you too fast.
- You will be viewed as rusty if you have no computer skills, regardless of the position. Having computer skills, gives an employer some options to think of how they may be able to use you (your skills) in different areas.
- You will be viewed as rusty, if you go in with a bunch of out of date quibbles and wibbles, or whining. Pay attention, so what if you are rusty, you can shine yourself up again. You are out of touch with what the job market is asking and expecting. Here are a few things you must do to not blow a job interview.
- Take the mental position that the interviewer doesn’t want to hear that you are rusty because you’ve been doing the same job for 20 years. The interviewer doesn’t want to hear that, nor do they care.
- Take the mental position, that you have skills you’ve developed and have used that could be of benefit to an employer. Tell the interviewer how what you did kept someone from getting hurt, or saved the company money. Look for ways in which your prior job skills connect with new skill requirements.
- Be who you are within the requirements of the position.
- Take advantage of local resources available for Displaced/Dislocated Workers or Adult Program. Don’t be ashamed, because you are rusty and need the help.
Use all the resources available to you so you don’t blow a job interview, because you are rusty. Treat your job search as you are working a job, your interview as your chance for a promotion within your job, and scrape off that rust.
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