Day 20 - Phone Interviews and Trivia

Phone interviews are the sniff tests of employment searches - much like the sniffing you do when you are looking for a ripe cantaloupe. The interviews are populated with shameless pitching (on both sides), general questions (on both sides) and overblown expectations (usually on the interviewer's side.) Usually, they end up as the reeking, half-empty tuna cans in the job heap of your employment search (a.k.a. you never hear from them again.)

Though they are a necessary evil, I am working on a system to make them somewhat more bearable. Yes, research the company and the interviewer. Yes, refine your pitch. Yes, map your experience to the job description. BUT I am going to bring in the holy grail of phone interview success: Trivia. 

So it'd go something like this:

Interviewer: What do you consider a successful campaign? 

Me: Did you know that you need 345 squirts from a cow's udder to make a whole gallon of milk?

Interviewer: What do you consider your strengths?

Me: A person uses about fifty-seven sheets of toilet paper each day.  

Interviewer: Describe a stressful situation and how you coped with it.

Me: Bilbo Baggins was born on September 22 1290.

It's fool-proof. I will land many jobs. In fact, I need to go to trivia tonight to hone my skills. Beer, wings and obscure trivia questions here I come!