Humour
How to mess up your interview

By Jawwad Ahmed

Disclaimer: This account is based on the writer's college admission interviews. The writer was rejected from all but one of the 16 colleges which he applied to. Trust him!

As we gradually age, interviews become more and more frequent; from high school admission interviews to internship ones; professional college admission ones to job interviews. 

So what is that we need to get the interview right? Speaking skills? Charisma? An American accent? Presence of mind? Perhaps, a mélange of these and more. Perhaps each and every social interaction skill is dexterously required, for it is quite easy to mess up an interview. Here is how:

1. Arrive late

That's the first wrong thing you can do. I actually turned up fifteen minutes late for an interview scheduled for half an hour. As a result, I had to begin all shaky, something that doesn't go well altogether. What's more, since the interviewer had a clogged up schedule, the next interviewee actually sat half-way across mine!

2. Concentrate…

…on everything but the interview! How does that vase look? What did I get for homework? Pakistan's score in the ongoing match… Keep your mind wandering from one thing to another. Next thing you would know is that you would be stuttering all along, with a profusion of 'errs' and 'umms', which obviously doesn't give a good impression.

3. Be ready for the obvious…

…and not for the not-so-obvious questions. A clichéd question goes 'what is your aim in life?' Something to which I had an even more clichéd reply ready: I wanted to do something good for humanity. Instead, I got asked, 'what would you do if you had unlimited money?' I ended up telling the interviewer that I would buy pizzas! Unlimited money. Unlimited pizzas!

4. Think out-of-the-box

The interviewer is a really dumb creature. If you do not explain minute things, do not expect him/her to reach conclusions. For example, in the question about having unlimited money, I actually planned (in my mind) to donate everything to charity, but I figured out that so much money in general hands would mean that the money would lose its value and so it would cause gigantic levels of inflation. I guess I would have got good marks in an Economics paper for this reasoning, but none whatsoever in the interview!

5. Be yourself

That's what they all say. I tried this out by telling my interviewer of Yale University that I wanted to do jihad! Against whom? USA! Of course, it doesn't help when the interviewer's got his/her concepts wrong and you don't have the time to explain, but it's easy not to succeed that way anyway. So, say things that you fantasize about instead of saying things that you actually want to do.! 

6. Chill out

Interviews…suck! Don't even give a second thought to things you have said halfway through (until the interviewer asks, of course), otherwise, you would panic all the more, and ruin the rest of it. Don't let the interviewer walk all over you by showing nerves. The best thing to do is to enjoy it.