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Job Interviews for Dummies by Joyce Lain Kennedy
Published by Wiley Publishing
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
People consistently identify the interview as one of the most stressful parts of the job hunting process. Many people find job interviews so emotionally draining that they are willing to stay for years in an unhappy or unpleasant job simply to avoid having to go through the interviewing process again. And it's hardly surprising when one considers the way in which the interviewee is put on the spot and examined during a job interview.
But in these hard economic times, it may not be possible to avoid changing jobs. If your job has suddenly evaporated under your feet, you have to replace it, and that means confronting your fears and getting through a successful interview. Even jobs that normally are secure are no longer a guarantee of continued employment, particularly if employers think they can replace senior personnel with younger (and therefore cheaper) new hires from the hordes of people madly pounding the pavement.
Joyce Lain Kennedy is a well-known careers writer whose column "Careers Now" is syndicated in newspapers across the country. Her four decades of experience advising readers and answering letters have given her the experience to write with authority. Although the current edition (the third) was written in 2008, shortly before the financial meltdown began, she has included plenty of timeless information that will help anyone face -- and beat -- the monster that is the job interview. She accomplishes it with grace and humor, using a metaphor of stage performance which is actually quite apt.
Like all For Dummies books, this volume follows the predictable format in the arrangement of information. There is the Cheat Sheet just inside the front cover, perforated so you can tear it out and take it with you to review as you're waiting for the interview to begin. It contains four major parts: "Fired? Seven Ways to Sell It" "Ten Tips to Take Home the Interview Oscar" "Five Tips for Shy People" and "What Interviewers Hear in Your Words." Each of these sections has a bullet list of important points to remember which cut straight to the real issues that interviewees face, helping avoid the "forest for the trees" problem of information overload that often is exacerbated by the emotional overload job seekers face (when you've just had the rug yanked out from under your feet, you're scared and it's really hard to concentrate on a lot of involved information).
Similarly, there are two presentations of the table of contents -- first, there is the Contents at a Glance, which just gives the chapter titles, allowing the reader to get a quick overview of the book. Second, there is a full table of contents which gives not only chapter titles, but all the subheadings within each chapter. This arrangement enables readers who are looking for specific information on a particular job interviewing situation (dealing with personality tests, interviewing for older job seekers or people with disabilities, etc.) can zero in on the most relevant information and find it quickly.
The text itself is arranged clearly and readably, with plenty of white space around the text blocks in which the reader can make notes. The liberal use of bullet lists helps the reader identify important ideas, as do the icons such as "remember," "tip," "thumbs down" and "show stopper" which are placed beside paragraphs with various kinds of information that doesn't lend itself to the bullet-list approach but really needs to stand out.
For instance, what do you do when you realize that you don't have experience that matches with one of the major requirements in the job description? Although it's tempting to simply give up and admit to the lack, you may not actually be defeated. Chapter 2 has a very important tip, marked with the arrow on target symbol of a tip, for how you can present the experience you do have as relevant to the job requirement, even if it is not technically a match.
Or take the chapter on personality tests -- a lot of books give advice on how to answer them -- but how many give much of a look to the reasoning behind the questions, or the methods by which companies put them together (would you believe you don't need any kind of certification to construct a personality test that will be used by thousands of employers to determine whether millions of job-seekers will have any chance at being hired?) Ms. Kennedy also gives some attention to the question of the legality of their use, including both the civil-rights and privacy issues involved in them.
And Ms. Kennedy isn't afraid to give air time to people who flatly contradict her advice. For instance, in the chapter about the dreaded "tell me about yourself" question, she includes a sidebar from Neil P. McNulty, who sees the "tell me about yourself" question not as an important opportunity to showcase oneself, but primarily as a placeholder, a question that gives an ill-prepared interviewer an opportunity to think through his or her next question while you talk. Rather than stressing out about the perfect self-presentation, he suggests having a two-minute rundown of one's major accomplishments, and closing it by asking the interviewer what he or she is looking for in the ideal candidate.
She also tackles the really tough issues. If job interviewing is scary enough for the average person, imagine doing it when you already have major challenges in your life. How can you get the doors open when you have to deal with workplace bias against your gender, orientation, or disability? Or when you have a major blot on your copybook such as substance abuse or prison time? And no matter who you are and what your situation in life may be, there's always the possibility that you will be faced with an inappropriate question, whether it be one that would push you to disclose potentially discriminatory information or simply one that has nothing whatsoever to do with the job for which you are applying ("how would you go about making a pizza" would be appropriate to someone interviewing in the hospitality field, but when someone interviewing for a position at a bank or a bookstore gets asked it, it seems primarily intended to fluster). Ms. Kennedy offers strategies to deal with all of these potential problems gracefully and convince a potential employer that you are worth taking a chance on.
Of course no For Dummies book would ever be complete without the Parts of Ten, and Ms. Kennedy gives us three sets. The first, "Ten Tips to Avoid Wretched Reviews," plays on the show business theme of the book with humorous advice for ways to avoid typical interviewing blunders such as looking desperate or talking too much. The next, "Tens of Lines on the Cutting Room Floor," is an even funnier one, presenting a number of historical and fictional figures as interviewees. The final one, "Ten Interviewer Personality Types," brings us back to more serious territory to give us some tools to evaluate the person sitting on the other side of the desk and shape our responses to best fit his or her expectations.
Review posted May 14, 2010.
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