why i fail interviews

i’ve had about 20 jobs. i’m not sure how many job interviews i’ve had: about half a dozen for permanent posts, i think, and perhaps as many for temp jobs; of these i’ve passed three:

1. Temporary tour coordinator at a local theatre company, my first temp job when i was 26. i had initially applied for a low-level permanent post, paying £10,000. The HR manager said i was overqualified but that if i insisted, i could come for an interview. i was rejected for the interview, then a few days later they said they were in urgent need of temps for the summer, and if i was willing to come back to another interview, they would consider me. Grimly amused, and wondering if i would be rejected again, only to be offered a job as toilet cleaner or human punchbag or crash test dummy, i went for a second interview. This was 9 months after leaving university with my MA Distinction (not easy to get), and i had been rejected for, i’d guess, about 100 jobs. i was not in a good mood.

A girl with a pretty nose – let’s call her Polly – introduced herself as being responsible for the tour coordination. She looked at me rather bluntly and said: “Tell me about yourself”.

i gave her a wondering look, prompting her to be more specific. She looked back in wondering silence. So i launched into one of my deadpan monologues: “i really like pies. They give me purpose. i’m always looking for really good pies but they’re hard to find. Factory-made pies are usually pretty bad but i can’t cook…” i discoursed on pies for a couple of minutes. i got the job. It turned out she had a sense of humour as well as a pretty nose. Later, i wrote a novel about her and her nose.

2. Minimum wage grunt at a credit reference company in Bradford. They were obviously desperate (3 temps were hired, including myself: one left after a week saying it was ‘too boring’; the other faked a car accident so he could leave). i assumed i wouldn’t get the job – i’d only applied because the JobCentre had sent me the job ad just before one of my ‘reviews’ and i thought they might check on it. i’d just finished my novel, about a week earlier, and out of a Hitler-like sense of destiny believed i would be scooped up to literary acclaim, and thus be spared the indignities of pointless and savage jobs. Somehow my rather distant courtesy presented the right impression – perhaps they mistook my indifference for evidence of a total lack of character or imagination, which, it transpired, were prized qualities in this workplace.

3. My present job. No one else turned up for the interviews and i’d already been doing the job as a temp for 6 or so months, so they gave it to me.

i’ve tried various tactics at interviews and have come to no clear conclusions. i’ve tried to be fairly honest, with disastrous consequences; then i tried to lie, to no avail (i’m a bad liar); i’ve tried to make friends with the interviewers, which is fairly easy when they’re nice, but again has never resulted in acceptance; in the end i settled on a vaguely horrified stare, monosyllabic replies, weary shrugs, and a generally downbeat and morose air – while this is hardly a winning tactic, it somehow doesn’t seem as disastrously bad as my others.

i’ve given the matter of interviews some thought. My problem is an inability to say things like “I’m really enthusiastic about working for such a prestigious company. I am dynamic and forward-thinking. I’m a problem-solver and a team player. I make moves on the street. I hustle. You see this watch? This watch cost more than your car” without a strongly sarcastic tone. If i try to say them straight my throat chokes up and i find myself simply unable to speak; i had the same problem with my Literary Theory exam at university, an inability to knowingly misuse language.

i tried to be honest(ish) at some interviews because i thought, “surely they can’t expect someone to be wildly enthusiastic about a £12,000/year job in London which consists chiefly of menial office tasks?” So i would say that i looked forward to learning more about the industry through the job, implying that the job was itself a necessity, since everyone has to start somewhere. From the looks on the interviewers’ faces, i saw this was astonishingly foolish. They obviously wanted me to bounce up and down on my chair saying: “Oh, this is my DREAM job! I’ve always fantasised about surviving in London on £12,000 year and doing photocopying for 8 hours a day! I could do this job forever! I’ll do it for free!”

How could intelligentish people expect such a reply? Surely you would question the sanity of anyone who seemed genuinely enthusiastic about a low-paying, boring job? Then i realised – it wasn’t so much that they were looking for someone who was eager to do a crap job, since such people don’t exist; they were looking for people who were willing to lie, who were able to parrot the mantra of the successful interviewee with convincingly feigned enthusiasm. The point was to filter the applicants, to see who was malleable, who, lacking a spine, would be able to bend over backwards. Those who could convincingly feign enthusiasm for a manifestly tedious job were the same people who would work unpaid overtime, who would suck up to the boss, the Bud Foxes of the world who are willing to put their boss’ dictates above ethics or the law. As Theodore Dalrymple put it:

A long interest in the political propaganda of dictatorships has convinced me that the purpose of such propaganda is not to describe, much less to persuade or change people, but to humiliate them. The more at variance with reality the slogans are, the better: nothing is more destructive of people’s ability to resist than forced acquiescence to what they know is tripe.

People who are willing to unironically describe themselves as pro-active team-players (etc.), who can break language away from any truth value, who can use words with a Blairlike irresponsibility, describing black as white, are ideal employees. The point of interviews is not to see who is enthusiastic to do a crap job; it’s to see who’s able to dissimulate enthusiasim, who is corrupt.