Interview Tip #1 – Don’t Answer Phone During Interview!

At Carrington College California we do everything we can to prepare our students for a smooth transition to the working world. Our Career Services Department offers support in areas such as resume writing, interviewing techniques, and provides guidance and support throughout your job search.

If you didn’t think those services were valuable – read this and think again.

A recent article in USA Today highlighted the interview difficulties that many recruiters are having with interviewees from the so-called ‘Millennial Generation’. If you’re aged around 18 to 30, you’re classified as a ‘Millennial’.

Human resource professionals quoted in the article report that they’ve had recent college graduates text or take calls in interviews, dress inappropriately, use slang or casual language, and exhibit other odd behaviors that are totally inappropriate in a formal interview situation.

These HR professionals report that this kind of quirky behavior has become far more common in recent years, with as many as one in five recent grads displaying inappropriate interview behavior.

The problem for both the interviewer and the graduate is that such quirks are prompting recruiters to rule out otherwise qualified candidates for entry-level positions, which delays hiring decisions and costs organizations money.

The problem for recruiters doesn’t seem to stop at the interview. A recent survey suggested that about half of HR executives say most recent graduates are not professional their first year on the job, up from 40% of executives who had that view in 2012.

Taken from the USA Today article ¹, here are some true stories from HR executives about why some job candidates flunked their interviews:

• Don’t use your phone – A graduate student seeking a managerial position took a call on his smart phone about 15 minutes into the interview. The call, which lasted about a minute and wasn’t an emergency, ruined his near-certain chance for a job offer.

• Don’t involve your parents – A man in his late 20s brought his father into a job interview for a job. In another instance, the father of a recent graduate who had actually received a job offer called to negotiate a higher salary.

• Leave your pet at home! An interviewee brought her cat into an interview. She set the crate-housed cat on the interviewer’s desk and periodically played with it; it was even for a veterinary technician position!

We hope that Carrington students and graduates would not make basic errors of judgment like these; but that’s why we have a career services team to coach you on interview techniques. Think of an interview as a ‘sales event’. It’s your one opportunity to make a great first impression. Don’t chew gum, don’t slouch, don’t use your phone, and please don’t bring your parents or your pets!

For comprehensive consumer information on our programs, please visit carrington.edu

Additional Sources:

¹ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/04/28/…job…/2113505/