If you’ve been for an interview recently and had post-interview feedback, consider yourself lucky.  It’s not right and it’s certainly not fair but it’s the way it is these days.  Fewer and fewer companies take the time and effort to give feedback to unsuccessful candidates.

Quite often, the feedback is usually to do with your skills and experience not being the best fit for the role.  Or often you’ll be told that there were other candidates more suited to the role than you. 

“Of course your bum doesn’t look big in that”.  “I didn’t know the telly sold to me by that bloke in the pub was stolen goods your Honour”.  “The cheque’s in the post”. 

People lie. They do it all the time.  Sometimes there’s a good reason for it and sometimes there isn’t.  The point is that you cannot take everything at face value and if you do, without checking the facts for yourself, you really only have yourself to blame. 

People lie in every aspect of their lives – some more so than others, I agree.  This applies in the world of recruitment just as much as anywhere else.  You may think that this is stating the obvious but it bears repeating.  If you do not check the basic information provided to you by a candidate, it is no one’s fault but yours if it turns out that they were lying. 

I always loved playing “let’s pretend”.  Work with me here.  Let’s pretend that I’m an employer who’s recruiting.  I have a pile of CVs on my desk and I’ve read through them.  I’ve even shortlisted the ones I want to interview based on how well they match the specified criteria for the job.  So far, so good.

Otherwise entitled "How not to be the best person for the job."

Continuing on the subject of interviews, here are my top 10 stupid things for interviewees to do. See if you can guess how many of these situations I’ve dealt with as an interviewer.

Otherwise entitled "How not to find the best person for the job"

We've all had them.  Those awkward interviews where you wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole.  And you're the interviewer!  For those of you who regularly interview, here are the top 10 stupid things you can do in an interview.  I wonder how many of these you would 'fess up to?