How To Tank a Job Interview: A Recipe

How To Tank A Job Interviews: A Recipe

Hello readers! I bring you a perfect recipe to tank a job interview, in case you have ever wondered how to make a cake out of that.

I created this recipe by myself, as it was not passed on to me by my mother or my grandmother, as none of the women in the previous generations of my family have had to get jobs outside the home. The men have, but as we all know, men do not pass on their Recipe’s for Professional Success and Failure to their daughters, so I had to come up with one with my own spin to it.

It took me years of crappy job interviews to perfect this dish. For the longest time, I tried really hard to create the How To Land a Job Interview recipe, but eventually gave up and realised I was actually good at the opposite, so I’ve stuck to what I know.

Since it was created through trial-and-error, I can’t guarantee that it’ll be suited to every palate. You may have to play around with the ingredients, or even add some new ones yourself. It’s a creative process. As long as you manage to pull a steaming hot Letter of Rejection addressed to you out of the oven, you know you did it right!

And now, onto the ingredients. For this recipe you will need:

Ingredients

•           25+ years of no real sense of self-worth

•           2lbs of existential crisis, where you question every professional choice that has led you up to this point

•           Between 1L and 1.5L (33 to 50 floz) of panic sweat (add slowly)

•           2 cups of fidgety nervousness

•           A cup of spaced-out incompetence

•           3 teaspoons of self-respect (reserve for icing)

Step 1: Batter up!

The first thing you want to do is go ahead and mix those ingredients well. There is no specific order or right way to stir them in, but I’ll describe my classic approach:

Walk into the interview room and give the interviewer a clammy and nervous handshake. Look around awkwardly for where to sit; it really brings out the flavours in this recipe if you flounder around helplessly if there is more than one sitting option. For added zest, drop one or more of your belongings during the process – remember to blush awkwardly!

Clear your throat loudly and fidget, making sure to whisk your lack of self-confidence all the way to the top of the mix. If you really want to bring out the Lack of Self-Worth taste, it helps if you falter and mumble out your answers, suddenly acting as if you are perplexed by your own academic background and the duties and responsibilities you had at your previous job.

Chef’s tip: a secret ingredient that works wonders for this recipe, but not everyone knows they have in their pantry, is the Impostor Syndrome Baking Powder. Believing you are not qualified for a job you are probably overqualified for is one of those superfood ingredients that will not only make this a mouthwatering treat for interviewers, but a nutritious one too. It really fattens up their profits if you think you are worth less than you deserve.

What to avoid: During this stage you really want to avoid having any Confidence slip into your mix inadvertently. This sometimes happens when you start to relax and forget who you’re cooking for, but try not to, because it curdles the mix and might even land you the job. I’ve heard from friends that the Confidence of a Mediocre White Male brand is especially unsuited for this recipe.

Step 2: Preheating the Oven to 350ºF

This stage is crucial; but don’t worry, because the interviewer will do most of the work here. Remember, at this point, you’re still busy mixing in all your Worthlessness, Fidgety Nervousness and Existential Doubt ingredients; the interviewer will take charge of the oven and start cranking up the heat.

The oven will slowly preheat with questions that are designed to put you on the spot and, apparently, give the interviewer some insight into your psyche and why you even want the job in the first place.

The interviewer will slowly turn up the temperature dial with questions such as where you see yourself in 5 years, as if anybody knows that. Why You Want To Leave Your Current job may follow, and one known to really heat things up is Why Did You Leave Your Past Job in the event that you were fired.

Chef’s tip: If you really want to the Tank the Interview, you can speed up the process by simply telling the truth: “I want this job because I need to get paid, and if there is a company that offers me more money I will leave this job and go to the higher-paying job because, truthfully, I don’t know who invented jobs in the first place, but I know they were a complete psycho.”

Step 3: Cook for 1o minutes

Now, the magic begins. You have stirred everything in well to make a soft, doughy mess; the preheating stage has you sweating in your seat. It’s time to cook it.

Cooking will last about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how far the interviewer went in the previous Step. During this stage, the real hard-hitting questions will be asked, the ones you will ideally come utterly unprepared for, and psychologically unable to answer if you added the Impostor Syndrome powder during Step 1.

Cooking will consist of some of the following questions being asked:

• What are your salary expectations for the job?

• Would you be prepared to work weekends?

• How did you handle overtime at your last job, because this job is very demanding and overtime may be required from time to time? (the fact that it is unpaid is implied)

• Are you prepared to be reachable outside office hours?

• Are you expecting to start a family soon? (specific to female cooks)

In some cases, you may also have to answer ridiculously complex questions about the job you will be doing should you land the job, sometimes even submit documents where you solve an issue, like a school test.

The best thing you can do to help go straight to Step 4 is ask for your desired salary. Often, this will overcook the batter so fast you can skip right to holding your Letter of Rejection in your proud hands.

If you want to draw out the process, you don’t need a Slow Cooker or any other fancy gadgets. You just need to ask reasonable questions such as whether there is a limit to how many weekends you will be working, will this be factored into your compensation, and state that overtime should be paid and that asking about your plans to expand a family is actually illegal and a discriminating question.

To give your Tank the Interview cake a golden-brown crunchy exterior, you can also babble on about how you are excited to find a job that helps you create work-life balance, because life can’t just be about the job.

Chef’s tip: you can add some icing to your cake by inquiring whether the company has a policy on compensation review, to let them know you will be expecting a raise as you gather more experience on the job and add more value to the company. Remember to mix the 3 teaspoons of self-respect in with some of the wet ingredients (Panic Sweat), if you still have any left, to get the desired results.

Step 4: Swallow the Result

After all your hard work, it’s time to chow down on your hard-earned outcome! If you followed Steps 1, 2 & 3 correctly, you should be left with a fluffy textured, half-baked Letter of Rejection. With our modern kitchens and shiny electrical appliances, it usually comes out as an Email of Rejection, but it tastes the same: bitter with a hint of sour.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Baking too many of these cakes in a short span of time may result in complications such as depressive states and anxiety, as well as financial strain. Please cook responsibly.