This is graduation season — which means that the job interviewing season has already begun.
I regret that I don’t have much helpful advice for that. What I can say is — no matter how badly it goes, you are not alone. Also, it isn’t fatal.
For example: if you’re going to carry copies of your resume around, make sure you keep them separate from your doodle pad. I learned that early on, asking an author to sign his book after his lecture at the 92nd Street Y.
As soon as I gave him the book, he burst out laughing.
When I looked puzzled, he showed me what was so funny: my own resume folded into a bookmark, covered with dozens of doodles of the word “Boring!”
“I’m afraid you’re right about my talk,” he said to me, still chuckling, “but here’s some career advice. Don’t try being a spy. Or a diplomat. You’re just not spy material.”
Asking for a specific salary can be tricky, so I was grateful when someone told me his rule of thumb: always mention a number that’s “double whatever you’re making now.”
I soon had a chance to use my new knowledge. I was being interviewed, over the phone, for a new job and found myself being asked that very question — so that’s what I did.
The next sound I heard was laughter. That was pretty much the end of that interview.
In hindsight, my very first interview held some clues as to where I’d be going.
Still in college, but prospect-less and panicky in my senior year, I signed up for every interview I could — including one with the team who had come recruiting for the (then-behemoth) computer company IBM.
Everyone knew that if you landed a job at IBM, you were set for life — as long as you could stomach the gray-flannel-suit-and-white-shirt culture they demanded of you.
With no set plans for after my graduation, I thought I’d better give them a try.
The great day came. After climbing three flights of stone stairs, in my brand-new suit, stockings and echoing heels, I reached a floor I’d never known existed, above the rotunda of one of the campus landmarks.
This, apparently, was where IBM was interviewing prospects.
I came through a wooden door, only to become a little disoriented, because there were no windows — just one continuous scene of Roman-ruins-wallpaper running completely around the circular room.
Two gray-suited men were in different parts of the room. I spotted one sitting alone, waiting for me, and went over to him.
After a very brief glance at my resume, he looked up. “So — you’re a philosophy major, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t get a lot of that. What kind of philosophy?”
“Oh, Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel — the usual.”
“Mm-hmm. And why, might I ask, do you think you’d be a good fit for IBM?”
“I’m glad you asked that, because — if you think about it, Hegel was the first ‘systems thinker’.”
Then I took a deep breath.
I was all set to explain how I’d come by this insight — how Hegel was famous for his method of deducing the existence of the whole world and everything in it, from nothing more than the simple opposition of Being and Nothingness — or, in terms IBM might understand, getting to infinity from 1 and 0.
But before I could do more than inhale, I was startled to hear laughter. Not from my interviewer — not at first — but from the other one, who had finished all of his interviews and crept up be-hind me to listen.
Red-faced, I leaped up and made for the door. Or tried to — except I couldn’t find it!
On this side, it was covered in that same crazy wall-paper — so that after it had swung shut, there was nothing to indicate where the door actually was! Especially if you were in a hurry to get away.
After watching me blunder around the room for what felt like hours, one of the men finally got up and opened the doorknob, allowing me to escape.
I could still hear them laughing as I clattered, in my brand-new shoes, down all three flights of stairs.
In short, I have had people laughing at me for years… until finally, I realized that it might be my greatest skill.
At least now, with A Look On The Lighter Side, it is mostly on purpose.
