By Terreece M. Clarke
Hot on the blog today is Deb’s post on “Eight Reasons Why You’re Not Getting The High Paying Freelance” Jobs of which #5 is about your reputation and James Chartrand’s “Are You Creating Your Own Bad Reputation?” So I thought I’d round it out with how your reputation matters in interviews.
Imagine the worst interview you’ve given. You were late, you hadn’t really researched the person or subject, you fumbled around for a pen, you asked pretty lame questions and followed it up with injecting personal info into the conversation. Scary huh?
Now imagine the interview subject told a bunch of folks about it. What do you think is going to happen when you ask that expert or any of his or her colleagues for another interview? You’ve soiled your reputation. Now it’s a stinky, sad mess.
No one likes a bad interview and most of the time you only hear about bad interview subjects. Well, sitting through a bad interview on the other end is no picnic either. No one likes to answer a stupid question. I remember one article on interviewing talked about how you wouldn’t ask Harrison Ford what his first big break into movies was – duh Star Wars, thought he did get big recognition in American Graffitti. Get the reputation as a bad interviewer and no one will waste their time subjecting themselves to the torture.
To add a little more weight to it for you, what do you think it does to the publication, site, etc. if word gets around about your stinky interviews? That’s right, you can taint an entire publication. So, it’s simple. Do your research, be prepared and gain a reputation for being a great interviewer, a tough interviewer, anything but a lame interviewer!
Have any interview horror stories? What about interviewing “no-no’s?”
