I read somewhere that an interview is where two people lie to each other about what they have to offer. I would say that’s pretty close to the truth. But then lying doesn’t come easily to many people and that is why interviews are certainly very stressful to us. The easiest interviews are definitely the ones in which the interviewer smiles and welcomes you. A reassuring smile in the midst of anxiety is one of the most uplifting gestures.
I remember one of the rounds of interview with my current employer where the interviewer got scared on seeing my fingers shaking. Now i’ve got this strange condition where my fingers tremble a little when i suspend them freely. No it is not weird and normally is not very pronounced. But with all the ambient stress around in an interview that trembling often gets magnified and this particular interviewer was afraid that he had totally psyched me out even before the interview! He was like ‘Dude, stop shaking! Its only an interview!’. Of course i did explain things and everything went smoothly after that to the point that the interviewer became really friendly. In-fact so friendly that he even told me during the course of the interview that he had previously worked for a lingerie company before moving to this bank. Instantly i was like ‘dude.. that’s murder! Thats definitely the worst decision anyone has ever made. How does anyone even considering leaving a company where you would get paid for ogling at huge posters of super models in lingerie and then call it insight generation!! And then to add to injury how do you move to a bank - a place where you see money moving all around you but never can lay your hands on any!’ This guy is my big boss now so i shall not say further.
Now coming to the point of this post - which is definitely not to educate anyone on how to go about an interview. You could learn the do-not’s of giving an interview but then you must read this very intently in that case. Over the period of my life i have given many interviews and even had the misfortune of judging people from the other side of the desk a few times. Having worked in 3 companies, almost all of these exclusively were job interviews. But a few days back there was this other kind of interview i had to undergo - an admission interview for getting into those damn IIM’s.
The venue was some hotel in Bangalore and i reached there well in time dressed up in formals. However the tie which i had borrowed had been discarded to my bag because of a general lack of confidence that i could carry off a tie. I was already jittery because in the last interview i had forgotten to get a photo and screwed the interview in general so i could not afford to screw up anymore. As soon as i entered the waiting room and glanced around i noticed that half the people were dressed in suits and the other half had at least ties. I was the only one without even a tie and that was the trigger for the panic to set in. After a few minutes of brainstorming with myself about the futility of the tie, i decided it wasn’t worth the ordeal so i just gave up on the tie.
Someone called me in for my interview and in i went. It started well and 15 minutes into it i was giving out liberal doses of gyan on Analytics, CRM, Marketing and all those buzz words. I was even debating the difference between consumers and customers with the best marketing professors in the country. It was growing better and better till the point where i was actually cracking jokes with the interviewers. To their question of ‘what will you be doing after 40 years?’ i replied tongue in cheek, ‘Hopefully be alive!’. In fact any kind of self depreciating joke is quite funny but joking about your death is not quite there.
At this point of time one of the interviewers asked me to give them the second completed form. Now that came as a surprise because i was under the impression that i wasn’t needed to fill the 2nd form. When i told him i didn’t fill it because i assumed that i wasn’t supposed to fill the form. The guy actually picked up the instruction page and showed me the line where it said - Please fill in both the forms. I believe i almost let out a ‘ooho’ sigh and then i heard a swooshing sound as luck and opportunity deserted me instantly. The problem with reaching atmospheric levels is that when you fall, you fall a really long way down and it hurts like hell all through the fall.
During the next 5 minutes the guys ripped me apart for being irresponsible, careless, not interested and even hopeless. The expressions on my face changed from a beaming 
to a hmmm 
to a oopsie 
to a depressed 
to an anguished 
That was how my last interview went and everyone can learn a few things out of this. So folks the next time you go to an interview fill all the forms and in case you forgot to fill a form, apologize and don’t claim that you assumed things. Its a valuable lesson which i was taught all through school and college but which i learned the hard way out now.
If you notice an extra sprinkling of ‘dude’ in this post its probably because i’ve been watching ‘The Big Lebowski‘ too many times lately. Thanks Yogi for forcing me to see it. The dude abides.
