Posts Tagged ‘comedy’

Excerpt from “What Color is Your Straitjacket?” coming soon — Illegal, Ridiculous and Just Plain Stupid Interview Questions

Posted: 11/14/2010 in Interviewing
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Here is an excerpt from What Color is Your Straitjacket? A Pocket Guide to Getting and Keeping a Job Without Going Wacko, soon to be available as an e-book. The artist is my talented friend Glenn Davis.

You’ve done your research about the company. You know how long they’ve been in business, their history, what their current goals are (beyond not going belly-up), and how you can help them achieve their corporate fantasies. You’re prepared to tell them how  you’re their fairy godmother.

You’ve also prepared your answers to questions typically asked in interviews, and thought of (short) stories that show your accomplishments. You have your questions  for them all ready. So how do you field those questions thrown at you by those exhaustingly perky H.R. pod people? How do you respond to queries  such as,

  • If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?

Hint: the specific answer to this question is largely irrelevant, as long as you don’t come back with “three-toed sloth, because I’d love to just lie around all day,” “anteater, because I could do amazing things with that tongue,” or “elephant, because they must have huge schlongs.”

  • If you were soda, would you be Coke or Pepsi, and why?

Hint: if you say, “Neither, I prefer whiskey,” you could either be perceived as “thinking outside the box” or “lush.” It’s a toss-up.

  • Who’s your favorite Marx Brother?

Hint: “Harpo, because he didn’t have to talk to anyone,” probably wouldn’t be a good answer.

  • What’s your favorite shape?

Hint: I’d refrain from giving an obvious answer such as, “Brad Pitt in his prime.”

  • Are you pregnant?

Hint: Even if you waddled into the interviewing room looking like you’re about to pop like a 175-pound balloon, the employer can’t legally even hint that your advanced gestational state even entered his consciousness. And of course, even if it weren’t illegal it’s a pretty rude question, especially if you’re not actually preggers but just really bloated that day.

Interview Haiku

Posted: 11/07/2010 in Interviewing
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Preparing is key
Think accomplishment stories
Don’t forget breath mints

A group interview
Look everyone in the eye
Or at least the nose

Speak confidently
Don’t jiggle your leg non-stop
They’ll think you’re crazy

Well, that one’s over
Send thank-yous to everyone
On to the next one!

Guest post on igrad.com

Posted: 10/29/2010 in Interviewing
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Guest post on igrad.com (great site for recent grads): Interview Fashion Police – What Not to Wear – http://www.igrad.com/articles/?interview-wear-job-interview-fashion

Don’t Do a Phone Interview Naked

Posted: 10/20/2010 in Interviewing
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Phone interviews can be tricky. You may think they’re easier than interviewing in person and you can just lounge on the couch in your jockstrap and read off your resume, but guess what? You can’t. Not if you want to get a job.

Here are some tips for phone interviewing:

  • Dress in at least business casual attire. Yeah, I know they can’t see you, but that doesn’t matter. You’re likely to feel — and consequently, interact — less professionally if you’re talking to a recruiter in your jammies.
  • Make sure you’re in a quiet place; turn the TV and music off. If you have a noisy co-habitor, chase them out. If that’s not possible, gag them. Unless it’s a child, in which case you could have Child Services after you.
  • Bullet key accomplishments in each recent position relevant to what the employer needs, as talking points. Keep these notes and a copy of your resume, with these key accomplishments and skills highlighted, handy during the interview. And don’t use your resume as a coaster for your latte.
  • Prepare as you would for a face-to-face interview. Remember this is a screening interview, so if you don’t pass the screen (or they don’t; remember it’s a mutual thing), the face-to-face interview won’t happen, and you’ll be forever plagued by curiosity as to the physical attributes of the forever-faceless recruiter. Or not.
  • Smile. You really can tell over the phone. Don’t smile for the entire interview without stopping, as this might make you sound crazy. But smile when you normally would in an in-person conversation.
  • Move around if you want to. You don’t have to sit motionless the whole time. But be careful if you have an old phone with a cord. A deafening crash could be disconcerting to both you and the interviewer.
  • It sounds obvious, but make sure you know if you’re supposed to call them, or they’re supposed to call you. If it’s you, call on time; if it’s them, be ready and answer the call promptly (not on the first ring, of course).
  • Make sure you get the correct contact info, including accurate spelling of the name, for the person (or persons, if it’s a conference call) who’s interviewing you, and email thank you letters to them within a day or two just as you would for a face-to-face interview.
  • And last but not least, never do a phone interview in the bathroom, for reasons that should really be obvious to everyone, but apparently aren’t. And yes, I have been in a ladies’ room and actually heard someone clearly talking to an employer. I confess I flushed.

Excerpt from, “What Color is Your Straitjacket?” coming soon: Work Snippets

Posted: 10/11/2010 in Humor
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I’ve had many unusual jobs in the course of my career.

I was once an unofficial elf (sans pointy ears) at the Enchanted Village in City Hall Plaza during the holidays. The job consisted mostly of being a security guard in a Santa hat, though I occasionally was stationed at the exit, where I sold ornaments and was forced to listen to an endlessly repeating recording that suggested a rather disturbing relationship between Santa and his reindeer. “Oh, Dancer. Oh, Prancer. Oh, hohohohohohohohooho!”

One of my more interesting jobs was a singing messenger for Eastern Onion Telegrams in Miami. In this role, I wore one of several rather exploitative outfits (hey, it was the early ‘80s), including a kind of modified Playboy Bunny complete with fishnets, high heels and bunny tail, a French Maid costume (yeah, you can use your imagination on that one) and, of course, Wonder Woman. The job wasn’t without its perks, not the least of which was getting paid to work with a hot male stripper named Alfredo.

One night, I was on my way to a gig for a man’s 80th surprise birthday party when I realized that I was totally lost. Since this was before cell phones, I had to drive back to the Holiday Inn on Route One and walk through the bar dressed as Wonder Woman to use the phone for directions. As I was waiting in the parking lot for the 80-year-old’s sonto find me so I could follow him, the security guard approached me. Instead of asking me why I was dressed as Wonder Woman, though, he just chatted me up for a bit and invited me to use the pool. I politely declined.

When I finally arrived at Birthday Boy’s condo, he panicked at the sight of me, apparently assuming I was a hooker. Since Viagra hadn’t been invented yet, I suppose he had a reason for anxiety. I had to reassure him that my only intention was to sing to him, and proceeded to do my little birthday number, complete with stuffed monkey and a tambourine, and set his mind and his loins at ease.

Excerpt from, “What Color Is Your Straitjacket?” coming soon: Can I Make a Living Bungee-Jumping While Eating an Ice Cream Cone?

Posted: 10/03/2010 in Humor
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Probably not, unless of course, you’re a circus clown. But you can often find creative ways to combine your talents. Or you may leave one of your passions as a part-time endeavor, while pursuing something else as your “day job.” Love ice cream? There are actually jobs as ice-cream testers. Of course, if the ice cream has in fact been poisoned by a sociopathic factory worker, you’re out of luck. And you will probably become morbidly obese and keel over from a heart attack in a few years. But hey, go to town.

If you can’t think of any careers offhand that connect with your passions, make a list of them. After you have the Passion List, then write down all the skills used in partaking of your passions. When that’s done, find a few job search sites and plug those skills into the “keywords” search function, and see what comes up. A lot of stuff will likely be vomited up that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything you’re interested in, but just ignore that and focus on careers that sound exciting. Look at the Occupational Outlook Handbook and other resources such as the aforementioned informational interviewing to do a reality check on those careers, and off you go!

You can also check out some online career interest assessments, such as:  free-career-test.com, the Personal-Style Indicator at crgleader.com, the Myers-Briggs and the Strong Interest Inventory at discoveryourpersonality.com, the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey at profiler.com, or careerpath.com, to name a few. Some of these assessments are free, some are not. Some include consultations with certified career counselors, which is always a good idea, especially if you’re floundering around like a spastic fish.

The assessments are mostly about interests, but some also include self-identified skills (yeah, we talked about this earlier) and work values. Work values refers to the most important stuff you have to have in your work to, you know, make you feel whole and all that crap. Like, do you know you need to be creative in a job? Do you know you need structure, so that you don’t panic and wander off into another dimension, never to be heard from again? Do you know that you couldn’t do a job that would require you to write materials that referred to “kill fields?” Do you know that you would feel in constant need of a shower if you were part of advertising products that claimed to make elderly men sexually attractive to twenty-year-old models? You get the idea.

Bad Interviewing Answers

Posted: 09/24/2010 in Interviewing
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To some extent, you want to be yourself in an interview (unless you’re totally bonkers. If you are, good luck). And even though it’s not particularly effective to just give answers you think the interviewer wants, and there isn’t usually one right answer to a question you’re asked, there are some answers that are just plain wrong. Here are some:

  • If asked, “What do you know about us?” don’t answer “I read on my buddy Mike’s Facebook page that your CEO’s a total perv.” Best to relay positive info about the company.
  • When asked, “How does this position fit with your future goals?” don’t respond with “I have no idea. I just go where the wind takes me.” Now, it’s not always a bad idea to follow your instincts, unless your instincts tell you to hop up on the interviewer’s desk, piss on his keyboard and shout “I’m freeeeeeeee!” However, an employer wants to get a general idea of whether or not the position for which you’re interviewing makes sense in terms of where you want to go professionally. Also, being goal-oriented is generally seen as more desirable than subscribing to the Wind Approach to Career Planning.
  • When asked, “What’s your understanding of the position?” don’t say, “Not much – the job description on your site was pretty confusing.” First of all, this answer wouldn’t make you sound very bright. Second, you don’t want to criticize the employer’s job description-writing ability or anything else in an interview. Third, if you haven’t been able to figure out what the job is, and you have no idea whether or not it’s a good fit with your talents and desires, why are you even there?
  • When asked, “Why did you leave your last job?” don’t say, “They canned me for ogling my boss’s boobs.” Even if you were fired for embezzlement, you don’t need to give specific details about what it was like to be led out of the office in handcuffs. “It wasn’t a good fit” is a better answer – think of a reason why it wasn’t a good fit that sounds positive in terms of your strengths and preferred environment. Only give  contact info for references you know will say good stuff about you.
  • If asked, “What would you say are your primary strengths?” don’t respond with “TV wrestling trivia.” Think about what you’re strong in that will make you a success in the position.
  • When asked, “What salary are you looking for?” don’t say “Whatever you think – I’m easy.” Even in a tight job market, you have value; don’t undersell yourself. It’s best to ask what the range is, then say it’s in your range. Don’t give a specific number before you have an offer, ‘cuz that would be like pulling out a condom when you first meet your blind date.
  • If asked, “Can you give me an example of a time when you handled a conflict with a colleague?” don’t answer “There were so many of those, I’ll need a couple of minutes to pick one.” Even if it’s true and it wasn’t you (yeah, we know – it was them, all them), that’s not going to sound too good. The employer’ll either think that you’re an irritating asshole who can’t get along with anyone, or that you’re an irritating asshole who makes snide remarks about his former co-workers. Think of an example that focuses on a problem that needed to be solved, rather than a personal kind of conflict. And of course, how you resolved it successfully.

Coming Soon — “What Color is Your Straitjacket?”

Posted: 09/17/2010 in Resumes
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Here is an excerpt from What Color is Your Straitjacket? A Pocket Guide to Getting and Keeping a Job Without Going Wacko, soon to be available as an e-book.

Resumes — The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous

Your resume needs to demonstrate your skills and how they can assist an organization in achieving their wet dreams. Here is a sample:

BEELZEBUB SATANOSKY
145 Fire Avenue, Underworld Village, TX
666-666-6666     reallyreallybad@aol.com

SKILLS

·    Branding
·    Speaking in tongues
·    Recruiting politicians
·    Creating and using torture devices
·    Stoking fires
·    Turning into a black pillar of smoke and killing people

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

·    Initiated red and black as a fashion statement
·    Generated fear in otherwise rational humans
·    Developed torture management system, resulting in 95% torture rate
·    Successfully bargained with former U.S. leaders to f*ck up the country

PROFESSIONAL HISTORY

President, Washington, D.C.                            2000-2008
·    Almost singlehandedly flushed an entire nation down the toilet
·    Pretended to look for bad-ass weapons
·    Vacationed
·    Developed strategy for invading all countries starting with “I”
·    Successfully maintained focus on golf game during national crises
·    Delegated intellectually challenging tasks
·    Mangled the English language, causing linguists throughout the world
to cringe in horror
·    Waited for retroactive popularity to kick in

Senator, Washington, D.C.                            1947-1957
·    Created lists of thinking people and arrested them
·    Encouraged grownups to tattle on each other to get out of trouble
·    Caused massive unemployment among aforementioned thinking people
·    Threw liberals in jail

EDUCATION

B.S. in Pitchfork Probing, University of Torture

Workplace Don’ts — Are You the Office Skank?

Posted: 09/11/2010 in Workplace Behavior
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So you have a job — woo-hoo! You want to do your best to keep it. Here are some things not to do if you don’t want to skate too close to the edge of the unemployment line:

  • Wear clothing in the office that suggests you’re going straight from work to an audition for Sex and the City 3. While you don’t have to dress like a refugee from a convent, if you want to be taken seriously at work, keep the girls tucked in and save the nip action for a hot date. Not to mention the Sharon Stone-in-Basic-Instinct thigh cleavage.
  • Spread nasty gossip about your co-workers. It’ll come back to you, and not in a good way.
  • Be a clock-watcher. “Is it five o’clock yet?” Even if you stand all day on an assembly line with a hairnet on your head putting the caps on beer bottles, it’s not a good idea to imply that you think of your job as a prison that you can’t wait to be released from. If you do, I’m sure your boss will be happy to release you. Besides, if you feel that way, why the hell are you still there?
  • Scoff at the recordkeeping stuff. Hey, so you’re the creative type. We know you don’t care about all that boring data entry. Regrettably for you, though, that stuff almost always determines whether the organization makes or loses money, or keeps its funding if it’s a nonprofit. So if you screw that up, you not only screw yourself, you could screw the entire organization, which isn’t as much fun as it sounds.
  • Make racist, sexist or ageist comments. I’m going to assume you don’t work in an environment where ignorance is actively encouraged. Assuming it isn’t, any of the above could get you tossed out so fast your head would spin around like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.”
  • Spend a lot of time texting your friends or shmoozing on Facebook. At this point in human evolution, employers don’t reasonably expect their employees not to touch their iPhones or look at non-work-related sites during work hours at all, but if you’re spending more time during the workday getting your friends’ opinions on your match.com photo than actually working, don’t expect to be promoted any time soon.
  • Blatantly flirting with your boss, your staff, your co-workers, or your customers. Most of us flirt a little bit, without even realizing it. And co-workers do often date, even though a lot of companies frown on it, and it can certainly complicate your work life, especially if you break up and at least one of you doesn’t act like a grown-up (of course, if one of you turns out to be a psycho-stalker, that makes it even more difficult, but let’s leave potential restraining orders out of it for now). The thing is, if you sidle up to a colleague and whisper in her ear or grab your boss’s crotch under the table at a meeting, you can get yourself in pretty big trouble. Not only that, but you’d be perceived as ridiculously ignorant, since all you need to do these days to hear about sexual harassment is turn on Lifetime TV.

Job Search Freakout — Five Ways to Avoid Letting Fear Rule Your Job Hunt

Posted: 09/03/2010 in Job Search
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Job search can be scary. Especially when your last unemployment extension is running out, you just used your last bit of savings to buy underwear because you don’t want to be picking your jockey shorts up off the floor when the elastic breaks in the middle of a job interview, and your Plan B has been blown to hell.

But no matter what your situation, it doesn’t work to operate from a place of fear, and let it make your decisions. The only time fear-based decision-making is a good idea is if a psycho starts shooting in the food court in the mall, and you make the decision to dive under the table instead of continuing to sit there and eat your mushroom omelette. Otherwise, letting fear rule your job search isn’t going to help you. Here are a few ways to avoid it:

  • Focus on the goals you’re shooting for. When you focus on your anxieties, they’re going to loom bigger and bigger until they crush you like a Brazil nut. Instead, dwell on what you want, where you want your career to go, and what you want to accomplish along the way, and allow yourself to believe it’s all attainable — because it is. Well, unless you want to be a Victoria’s Secret model and you look like Danny DeVito.
  • Brainstorm alternatives. If Plan B is dead in the water, then get creative. Without allowing yourself to analyze or censor your ideas, jot down a slew of options. I bet you’ll surprise yourself.
  • Be aware of when you’re scaring yourself. You know, all that negative stuff you say in your head that keeps the fear alive, like “No one is hiring now,” “If I don’t take just any crappy job, I’ll be unemployed forever,” “If I try to get what I want, I’ll end up homeless,” etc. Instead of collecting shopping carts and picking out your street corner …
  • … Replace your fear-based thoughts with power-based ones. Like, “I am in charge of my career,” “I have a lot of skills and experience that the right employer (for me) will value,” “I have the tools to succeed, and I will.” Come on, you can think of some more.
  • Practice visualization. Visualization is very powerful. As often as possible without crashing your car, picture yourself moving through your day in the job you want, doing the stuff you want to spend your time doing, interacting with terrific people, etc. Fill in as many details as you can — what specific projects you’d be working on, what your office or cube would look like, what you’d be wearing, the smell of fish on your co-worker’s breath after lunch — wait, maybe that’s a little too much detail. But you know what I’m saying. Allow yourself to feel the excitement and satisfaction you’ll feel when you’re in that job, and you’ll get there.
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