You have a job interview! Now what?
Well for one thing, you need to dress the part. You also need to be prepared to answer the dreaded salary question. And of course, you have to get ready to negotiate for your life.
But you’re not done yet. Don’t you dare go into that interview without first doing your goddamn homework. Here are your assignments.
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I don’t fancy myself a hypocrite. And yet I haven’t been practicing what I preach.
We talk a lot about career advancement as a path to financial independence here. You’ve got to angle for promotions and ask for raises and, most importantly, switch jobs on the regular.
And yet I’ve felt stuck at the same company for almost eight years.
And I hate my job.
In that time, I’ve received three promotions and multiple raises. But it’s a small publishing house on a metaphorically small, remote island within the broader publishing industry.
And unless angry maenads tear my boss apart sometime soon, I’ve literally reached the top of the ladder here. There’s nowhere else to go within my company, and very few options for other publishing jobs in the area.
I feel trapped. I feel like a failure. I’m bored, directionless, and frustrated. I want to enjoy going to work again. I want to feel challenged and get paid more. And above all, I wish I didn’t hate my job.
So because I’m feeling rather… fragile and truthsome right now, I want to dissect my current career stagnation. I want to confess my failures and seek absolution. People of the internet, be gentle with me.
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They say first impressions are important. What they don’t say is that they’re also not fucking fair. Like, not at all.
When you go in for a job interview, the first impression you make on your potential employer could determine the outcome of the hiring process. In fact, 30% of hiring decisions are made within the first five minutes of an interview. That’s why what you wear and how you present yourself are so important. So make it count.
Appearance-based discrimination happens all the time in the hiring process. And while you can’t help the color of your skin, your body size, or your gender, you can do something about what you wear and how you wear it to give yourself a fighting chance.
I interview job candidates all the time. I’m my company’s internship coordinator, and I also visit one of the local universities every year to practice mock interviews with their students and recent graduates.
So I’ve seen it all. Including the girl who dressed like Professor Trelawney on a bad hair day… the guy I smelled before I saw… the girl who looked like she was dressed for our first date rather than an interview… and all the motherfuckers who dared to wear flip-flops to a goddamn job interview.
Guys, we Bitches can’t thank you enough for stepping up and volunteering your salary histories for our recent article on job hopping. If you haven’t read it yet, go check it out. And feel free to skip straight down to those juicy, delicious, nutritious comments.
We discovered some really interesting trends, and we’re going to break them down for you now!
Overall, commenters were big fans of a hybrid approach. Job hopping was universally endorsed as an essential move, regardless of career path, even by serial job monogamists. But occasionally stopping to rest once you’ve landed in a good position was also extremely popular.
Here are some of the factors that made people stay… and go.
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Recently a little conversation sprang up on Twitter on the topic of changing jobs frequently as a strategy to increase your salary, i.e. job hopping. Respondents tended to fall into one of two camps on the subject.
One camp is the job hoppers. Desirae over at Half Banked had three jobs within her first five years out of school. Not to be outdone, Cameron at Save Splurge Deny Debt has had four career changes since graduation. Both gave a thumbs-up to the strategy.
The other camp is career loyalists. Included are Felicity at Fetching Financial Freedom and both Mrs. And Mr. Adventure Rich, who’ve held steady for six, five, and ten years respectively. As one user put it: “Lots of opportunities at my current job. For now, little reason to look elsewhere.”
This boggles my mind.
And kinda makes me want to do… this:
I’m a hardcore job hopper, and there’s a perfect cliché to describe why: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. It doesn’t matter how many opportunities are available at your workplace if none of those opportunities are yours in writing.
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Some people are told there is no Santa Claus. Their dick cousin tells them as vengeance for a lost game of Monopoly Junior. Or they saw Gremlins.
Others figure it out on their own. I was one of these. It took me eight years of cognitive development to get there. The physical impossibility and the logistical improbability pressed at my young mind, but my biggest question was one of motivation.
At eight years old, I had recently begun to understand money. I’d come to understand that one Breyer Horse was equal to approximately one thousand years of untouched allowance. I’d also begun my education in the concept of Stranger Danger. I had a newly honed ability to scrutinize adults for their intentions.
And I found myself wondering, “If this old man has such limitless wealth and power, what is his angle in using it to buy presents for children he’ll never meet?”
So I asked my parents, and they confirmed. “Yeah, that’s a thing adults made up to incentivize kids to conform to behavioral expectations,” they said, in so many words.
The thing is, Santa Claus is not an isolated incident. False or greatly exaggerated incentives exist everywhere to compel you to behave yourself. I’d like to talk about one of those false incentives today. The merit-based promotion is a comforting myth that took me thirty years to unravel. Much like with Santa, it was a rude awakening, but I’m much happier knowing the truth.
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