You can make fun of the common interview mistakes we all do, you can remain grumpy over those silly basic mistakes for sometime if you want to. However, please pay attention to the exact mistakes that you have made, and remember that not repeat them again, you’ll possibly need to tweak a few basic things in your character and in that way, interview mistakes are serious, far from being funny. Most sociologists would tell you that these mistakes are actually encoded in the way you were raised; the mistakes are there at the very basics of the educational system we have to pass through. From an employer’s perspective, a wasted interview actually means wastage of money and effort, and that too having a cumulative effect on the entire business, for not finding the right people at the right position means more loss to be incurred by the entire business.
The common interview mistakes are often listed in the manner, in order of priority, so that not being punctual, not conforming to the decorum, not being honest and transparent, and not being assertive and approachable enough always top the list. There are also other nagging disqualifying traits in the candidates, and studies show that most HR managers in the big corporate are often turned off by the excessive name-dropping, pointless nagging, and string-pulling attitude of the incumbents. In case one agrees to look closely, all these traits are actually some hardcoded traits in the personality of the interviewee, and hence the same interview mistakes keep repeating themselves.
We learn to compete and not cooperate with our colleagues and batch-mates, right there in the school. The parents too, in some cases, encourage the tooth and nail fight for an ample improvement in Grades, or simply for getting admission in the school. In his school days one learns to believe that the ends are there to be achieved, whatever are the means. One can’t blame such a student if he exaggerates his qualification, or tries to take refuge in all sorts of unethical, if not illegal, means while facing the interview board. On the other hand, there are also students, who despite being meritorious in their own fields, and being poorly handled and wrongly channelized, kept losing the competitions where there actually was none. One can’t blame them if they over-react and turn overtly casual, non-conformist and peculiar. Fortunately, most of them do not appear before the employers’ panels, and hence they don’t make the interview mistakes. But then, there are always some who are halfway between a career-oriented regular guy and a rebel. These dwellers of the gray area populate the most interviews, they know they would fail and we know they would try again and make the same interview mistakes.
The sociologists’ advice for the both extremes remains the same, ‘Go get a Life’. For the performers, qualifying in an interview or reaching a particularly enviable position in a corporate house cannot be the sole objective of your life, and if you think so, you are actually devaluating yourself as a human being, and soon you deserve to be replaced by a robot appropriately trained for the job. A robot will always be a better performer. Similarly, for the unsure people, the message can be the same, that world doesn’t end here if you don’t get your mullah in that particular interview. There is always a second chance, or even a third, fourth, but please don’t let the joyful human being in you die. It dies only once, and sorry, there is no undo button in life. Losing the charm of the Life is always a bigger mistake, nay a crime, than all interview mistakes taken together.
