Craig’s Friday Countdown: how to get hired (1 – 13), or not (14 – 25)

How To Get Hired, Or Not

25. Don’t Apply

24.  Don’t Respond To Questionnaire

23.  Continually Mention You’re Best Friends With An Elected Official – Try Chicago, instead

22.  Show Up Late For Interview – Unless you stopped to save someone’s life on the way in

21.  Have A Ten Minute Answer To The Opening Question – It’s the easiest question on the list.  One minute, tops.

20.  Be Distracted By Snow – Every snowflake is, indeed, different.  Trust us, the snow will be there when the interview is over and you can take some back to the hotel with you.

19.  Tell Us How You’re Unappreciated At Your Present Job – Anyone want to hire the complainer?  Me neither.

18.  Read Your Powerpoint – We can read.

17.  Pull Out A Flask.

[yes, reading a powerpoint is worse than pulling out a flask]

16.  Draw A Blank When We Ask About A Mistake You’ve Made – You get zero points for being perfect.  You get bonus points for trying something difficult, and learning something.

15.  Be The Same As Us – We’re just not that impressed with ourselves.  Diversity of experience and perspective is far more important to the team.

14.  Don’t Ask Questions – We like curious people.

13.  (tie) Write Well.

13.  (tie) Demonstrate Competency – It starts here (after writing well).

11.  Have a Story – Why you’re in your line of work.  Why this job makes sense in your career plan.  How you’ve changed organizations for the better.

10.  Have Some Facts – Work them into your stories.

9.  Make Us Laugh – We like to laugh.  Especially at ourselves.

8.  Be Concise.

7.  Demonstrate Energetic Leadership – Be the first, or the best, at something.

6.  Challenge Us – Push back at a question.  We get better by bringing smarter people onto the team.

5.  Be Happy.

4.  Solve a Problem We Have

3.  Humbly Convey Resilience – All things equal, the person who has overcome the most challenges, with the best spirit of grace, wins.   All things are never equal.

2.  Solve A Problem We Didn’t Know We Have

1.  Show Us Some Creativity – Then, show us some more.

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