I dressed in my suit. I wore my best shoes — uncomfortable, but stylish. The interview was for a sales and marketing position, no prior experience necessary. I arrived early and sat in my car for a moment and gathered my thoughts. Months had passed since my college graduation, and I hadn’t been able to find a job. The dot-com bubble had burst and sent the new-millennium economy into a “correction,” but all my friends (who graduated with business majors) had found jobs. Apparently, there wasn’t much I could do with my sociology major, aside from social work and graduate school, and neither of those appealed to me.
I stepped from my car with high hopes, and toward a door in a one-story office building between shuttered warehouses. I saw no exterior signage, and thought that was odd, but I put a genuine smile on my face and swung open the door. Ten other interviewees looked in my direction from chairs that ringed a tiny area between the door and a reception desk. The receptionist advised me to take a seat. She saw me look behind her at the haphazard arrangement of office furniture and moving boxes, and she smiled and explained that they were just moving in from a smaller office.
When the receptionist called my name, she also called another name. A middle-aged woman in a floral-print dress stood up from a chair. A two-person interview? We sized each other up, and my adrenaline levels rose. Given our age difference, “Betty” probably had more work experience. Was the interview meant to be a competition? Was there more than one position available?
A gray-haired man in a white-collared shirt and dark slacks welcomed us into his sparsely-furnished office, and gestured for Betty and I to sit side by side before his desk. The interviewer then picked up a piece of paper and held it between his hands. “Do you like to work with people? Or do you prefer to work independently?”
The questions that followed were the most generic interview questions that I could have imagined. Betty and I took turns answering first. Betty answered each question as though she had studied the list beforehand: “I like working with a team, but I also do well with tasks that require self-direction.” By the end of the interview, I thought Betty should go into politics. I answered each question as honestly and quickly as I could, while I imagined what a typical day for a salesperson and marketer would entail.
The interviewer took no notes. After he reached the end of the questions and listened to our final responses, he said, “Okay, we’ve arranged for each of you to accompany one of our sales reps on their route today. They’ll meet you outside.” He stood up from his desk and gestured toward the door.
Here’s where I should have listened to my instincts, which were telling me that something wasn’t right. Once outside, a girl about my age or younger, dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and comfortable shoes, approached me and introduced herself as Maria. We, she explained, would be driven to her “route,” dropped off, and picked up at the end of the day. Maria gestured for me to follow her to a two-door worn-in Honda with a young, average-looking guy behind the wheel. I wondered if he was her boyfriend. I looked around for any other interviewee who, thinking that the situation was too odd, decided to leave. But at a glance, all the other interviewees were allowing themselves to be guided into waiting cars. I didn’t see what Betty chose to do.
I squeezed into the backseat of the car. The momentum of the event and the motivation to get a job were too strong for me to resist. En route, I had a lot of questions. Where are we going? To an area with a lot of residential neighborhoods. What will we do there? Walk from house to house, selling pages of coupons for discounts on pizza deliveries. Maria got paid per page of coupons sold. My stomach sank with a feeling of betrayal. The job’s advert said nothing about door-to-door sales or the need to wear comfortable shoes if invited to an interview.
At the end of the day, I sat on a large rock in someone’s front yard, as Maria huffed up the last cul de sac on a hill. My feet ached and I was sure I had blisters. My suit was damp with sweat. When I told Maria I would wait for her there, at the bottom of the hill, she turned up her nose with a hmph. I no longer cared what she thought. We’d had 50 doors shut in our faces that day, and rightly so. I didn’t want this job.
I should have seen that the man behind the desk had zero respect for my, or any other interviewee’s, time and energy. Also, I never should have gotten into the car. I was among complete strangers and none of my friends or family knew where I was. From that day on, I resolved to have the courage to leave an interview, if I ever again felt uncertain about the situation. Today, job applicants face the same and tougher challenges. This list of tips from California State Polytechnic University on how to stay safe while looking for a job, encourages new grads to avoid job postings that sound too good to be true and emphasizes the importance of pre-interview research. The list applies to job-seekers of any age.
My second interview blunder occurred years later, and I only had myself to blame. I moved home from Las Vegas during the 2007–2008 financial crisis, and jobs were scarce. When I finally gained an interview for a dynamic-sounding position with a good company, I was more nervous than excited, and as the day approached I went from nervous to near-panicked. An hour before the interview, I took an anti-anxiety pill. It worked, but too well.
For me, the pill worked like a truth serum. I felt so at ease that I could not stop myself from saying the first thing that came to my mind. At the end of the interview, I looked across the conference table at my three interviewers, and said, “You must be really nervous. It is so difficult to judge if someone is the right fit for your company by just a few interviews, isn’t it? I guess it ends up being a gamble, huh?” I received slight nods in response. They did not call me back.
If you haven’t already heard, anti-anxiety medication is among the most-commonly prescribed medications in the U.S. The numbers are staggering: according to this article on CNBC, 40 million American adults suffer from anxiety, and the expanding use, and overuse, of anti-anxiety medications should be a national concern. What gives Americans so much anxiety that we feel like we can’t manage it on our own? Per Jaime Ducharme for Time, our families’ safety and health, and our finances, are our top concerns.
Now I believe that it’s okay to be a little outwardly nervous during a job interview. Your nervous energy communicates how much the opportunity means to you, and makes you appear more authentic. In addition, whether the interviewer attempts to put you at ease may indicate something significant about the organization’s culture. Also, if you are ever asked to take part in something during an interview that makes you uncomfortable, have the courage to politely decline, and to leave. From my perspective, your priorities while looking for a job should be your health and safety, followed by maintaining your self-respect.