I saw an article the other day on Boston.com about some feckless slob out in Ohio who was nabbed for shoplifting because he filled in a job application before he left with the T-shirts and pants he'd just light-fingered stuffed under his shirt. When he was arrested, "he was ironing a pair of jeans he was accused of stealing."
He's now in jail awaiting trial, and I'm assuming there won't be a job in retail waiting for him when he gets sprung.
I suppose he just wanted to look his best, or that he was signaling that he was truly into the store: I not only want to work here, I want to let you know that your clothing is absolutely worth going to jail for.
The guy was 49, so you'd think he might have known better than to combine the shoplifting with applying for work, but perhaps he wanted to demonstrate his ability to do parallel processing. This is an undervalued skill, seemingly absent in retail, where most clerks appear capable of doing only one thing at a time, especially when that one thing is yakking with a fellow clerk while avoiding all and any eye contact with the shopper who's actually interested in buying something. (Okay, I guess that technically carrying on a conversation while avoiding eye contact could be considered doing two things simultaneously....All I can say is most retail clerks are past masters of the art.)
Another thing that suggests he might have been a pretty good candidate for retail work was that he was ironing those jeans. Neatness counts, and I'm sure any retail establishment would be delighted to have someone who'd pay real attention to niceties like straightening up the sweater shelves.
On balance, however, weighing the ability to parallel process, and a certain retail-friendly fussiness, against the likelihood that the guy would have his hand in the till, will likely doom any possibility of a career in retail.
There are, of course, many things that you can do to guarantee that you don't get the job.
One is letting the person interviewing know that what you really want is their job, and not the job that is under discussion. Of course, you may think that you're smart enough to get it, but if you were really smart, you'd wait until you started working there before mounting your campaign to take your manager's job. Yes, the truly savvy candidate for the job conducts himself/herself in a very different fashion during the interview, brown-nosing just a teensy bit about everything he or she can learn from you, oh master/mistress of the universe. Then, once the hiring manager succumbs to your charms and makes you the offer, you are free to start plotting away. (And yes, all these years later, dear A., I am revealing for the first time why you didn't get the job. I am, of course, not above googling, so I see from your LinkedIn profile that you have not yet attained the lofty position of director, let alone VP of marketing. So don't hold your breath waiting for me to suggest that we link up.)
Another way to guarantee that you won't get the job is to enter the interview on the attack. Yes, that's you, the guy who applied for the job of VP of Development - the one whose name I can't recall but who looked an awful lot like Mr. Bean - and who may be wondering who blackballed him, since he did seem to think he aced every interview. But you didn't ace mine, buddy boy.
See, the way to the Marketing VP's heart is not to start the interview out by telling her, point by point, how crappy the new company website is. Not that I'm so thin-skinned about criticism, but there are ways to get your point across, and then there are ways not to. Ways not to include launching into a rant about how silly you think the approach was. Ways to might have been saying something like, 'your website certainly has some novel aspects to it; what made you decide to go that route.' Then I would have known that you thought it was dumb, and you would have known that I knew that you thought it was dumb, but I might have said to myself, 'this guy has an interesting point of view, and he might be good to work with', rather than my deciding that you were a true, insensate cretin.
An opinion that was reinforced when you segued from a critique of the website into a critique of our collateral.
You know, pal, these are my products, not yours, so when you make some pointed pronouncement about how we left out some key pieces of data on the data sheet, I'm thinking "what the hell are you talking about." Especially when, as it turns out, you were looking at last year's collateral set, you schnook.
None of this would have been fatal to your candidacy, however, if you hadn't had a nifty little section at the top of your résumé that noted that one of your prime attributes was the diplomatic way you had about you, that little something that put you at the heart of resolving work conflicts, your uncanny knack for bringing all sides to a nirvana-like state of blissed-out agreement.
That's what did it for me.
So, let me tell you, you hadn't even finished up your interviews when I went down to the president's office and told him "over my dead body."
And that's why the wonderful, nice and truly diplomatic Bob got the job, rather than you, Mr.-Bean-look-alike.
Ah, there are so many ways not to apply for a job, aren't there?
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