Ten Great Ways to Sabotage Your Chances of Getting the Job

Note: This is a mild rewrite of a piece which appeared a couple months ago. Enjoy!

Here are ten methods I’ve witnessed candidates – first-hand – employ to ensure that they do everything in their power to sabotage their chances to snag that dream job in the application and interview process.  It’s so easy to throw a wrench in the works!

1. Arrive late for the interview. Don’t bother to call. Then act like nothing happened.

2. Learn nothing about the company in advance of your interview. Then, when asked by your interviewer “What do you know about us,” make something up.

3. Ask how much the job pays. Even after you’ve already had this discussion with the corporate recruiter. Ask everybody with whom you interview.

4. Tell the recruiter you are close friends with the CEO, when you and she met once in passing. Maybe.

5. Be friendly to everybody you meet in the company. Except to the recruiter. In that case, be a total ass.

6. Bring extra copies of your resume. Folded up into a compact square in your pocket.

7. Send a nice, thoughtful thank you note after the interviews to people you’ve met.  Generously sprinkle in typos and misspellings.

8. Guess at your prior dates of employment on the job application. Go ahead, just guess. That way, when the company gets ready to hire you and runs the pre-employment background check, nothing adds up and you get disqualified for dishonesty.

9. Leave your cell phone on. When your phone rings during the middle of the interview, casually take the call.

10. Use your referral network to do everything possible to get in the door with the company. Make sure you ask an executive to sponsor you and they use every bit of their personal equity to push you through and get you an offer in another department. Then, AFTER you’ve received and accepted the offer, make your resume live and searchable on the job boards the company subscribes to, like Monster, so that the recruiter can stumble across it and inform the executive about it.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.