10 Top Interview Tips for Your Favorite Coworker Who Is Trying to Leave

by Mr. Sheehy

Have a trusted co-worker who is interviewing somewhere else? Are you afraid they’ll nail the interview get the job? Here are 10 tips that will surely bring about the best thing (for you).

  1. Be fashionably late. If necessary, hang out outside the door for a couple minutes to make sure all your interviewers have a chance to get settled before you make your big arrival.
  2. Wing it. Researching the company and the position’s qualifications are really not as important as showing them who you are despite what they want.
  3. Relaxing is for sissies. If you’re too relaxed during the interview, they’re likely to think you’ll be relaxed on the job—like naps-when-they’re-not-looking and shopping-for-St.-Patrick’s-Day-relaxed. Be tense. It’ll show them you mean business.
  4. Put your game face on. Everyone smiles during interviews, but look around a typical workplace. Are they all smiling? Are they friendly? It’s not really what the place wants. Want they want is victory. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan didn’t win championships smiling nice. Put your game face on, and they’ll know you’re a winner.
  5. Don’t look them in the eye. Don’t look an angry dog directly in the eye, or he might attack. You look your interviewer directly in the eye, and the next thing you know, you could find yourself in the bathroom with scotch tape trying to repair your pretty dress.
  6. Leave your philosophy at home. They know you have an approach to the job and some sort of experience. You wrote it on the application. Why should you repeat it now? Nobody wants to hire that guy who retells all the same stories all the time.
  7. Look different. Dressing nice is fine, but what about making yourself stand out? What about looking so memorable they’re talking about you before they even get to your name in the pile of interviewees?
  8. Don’t ask questions. People say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but are you willing to risk your future job on such a maxim?
  9. Come Empty Handed. Paper, pen, and the ability to take notes? This interview is not a time for jotting love notes and admitting you can’t remember anything. They see you jotting a note, they’ll automatically think: “This is the kind of person who will go to the bathroom and forget why they got up from their desk.”
  10. Don’t say thank you. Saying thank you implies that you owe them something. Your thinking they owe you something means your confidence is too low. You deserve this. You own this. This job is yours, and this interview is simply a formality you have to go through before you take over that interviewer’s corner office with the window. Saying thank you is simply admitting weakness.
  • Mother on Flickr by: Mick and Wout