Interview Failure: When you know you've blown it

The way of the job-seeker requires devotion, dedication, and discipline, along with a good helping of mental and physical fortitude. It is not for the timid, the faint of heart, or the inexperienced, which is why there are so many spriritual masters out there offering counsel, advice, and testimony to those who would follow the path.

The advice many of these masters offer is strikingly similar in tone and content. Indeed, this is so because many of the errors seekers make are common, frequent, and in most cases easily avoided with proper thought and preparation.

And yet even the advanced seeker who has gone through the rituals required of those dedicated to the path many times over occasionally wanders off it. One of the places where many go astray is in the job interview or its followup.

If you are like me, fellow seeker, you have probably strayed from the path yourself, unaware you are doing so at the time. It's only in hindsight, after you replay the encounter or incident, that you come to the realization that you just talked yourself out of consideration.

One of the more common missteps people make is to bring up money too soon. I recall one interview some time back for a communications position at a local university. Given my professional background, I was an excellent match for the position. There was also a staff member in the office who knew me from an organization we both belonged to, respected my work there, and put in a good word for me.

So I walked into the interview with the planets all aligned. Then, when it came my turn to ask the questions, I knocked them out of line by asking, "So what does this job pay?"

While there is a time and place to talk salary in the interview process, the initial in-person interview is usually not it. Seekers who do this get branded as money-hungry and are dropped from further consideration. As I was, it turned out.

Of course, the realization that I had just blown my interview didn't come until a few days later, when the euphoria had worn off. But I'm much more careful now never to act as though I have a job in the bag going in, even if I have reason to believe I might.

There are second chances after an interview failure. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go get another helping of job postings from PhillyJobs.com.

By Sandy Smith

Sandy Smith has been blogging for PhillyJobs.com since 2010. In addition to launching award-winning newspapers and newsletters at the University of Pennsylvania and Widener University, Sandy is a veteran writer whose articles and essays have appeared in several local and regional media outlets, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia CityPaper, and PGN, and on several Web sites. He is also an active participant on several discussion boards, including PhiladelphiaSpeaks.com, where he posts as “MarketStEl.” He has been supporting himself through a combination of freelance and part-time work and unemployment compensation since early 2009 and is himself an active job-seeker. Read more of his posts on PhillyJobsBlog.com and follow him to Beyond.com for more job opportunities.