I totally agree with "not paying attention" as a reason people don't get hired. I actually interviewed someone who stared out the window (really!) during the entire interview including when I was asking her direct questions.

Needless to say, she did not get hired.

I just had to point out #9 about using "I" too much because this is the toughest one. You want to show companies you are there to help them, but it's a balance because you are talking about yourself and what you have to offer. Oddly enough, this is a point they teach you in English classes. It all goes back to WIIFM--what's in it for me? Thanks for this post, Rachel, this is really good stuff. Why wouldn't you want your candidates to ask you questions? Wouldn't you rather have an interested and engaged candidate instead of a bored one?

So much of this stuff is relative to the hiring manager, it shouldn't be listed as a hard rule of thumb. It's just like some recruiters say a resume should be 1 page and others say it should vary depending on your experience. I've never seen a person walk into an interview in business casual dress. I'd never do it. I'm not trying to look like the employees, I'm trying to look like a candidate and set myself apart. It shows respect, IMO, to dress in traditional interview attire. If a hiring manager rejects me only because I show up wearing a tie, then that's a red flag and I would likely run into other silly, trivial issues with him/her once hired anyway. Maybe they'd fire me if I failed to post a Dilbert cartoon on my cube wall...

How did I miss this post last week?

Agreed, the CB list is fairly weak. But where I differ from you, Rachel, is the "want too much money" part. How do the candidates know how much the position is for? Salary calculators are horrendous, and most job descriptions say "competitive compensation". That's purposely vague. My brother made $50K his first job out of college in 2000--and that's customary these days. $35K was a benchmark in the 90s.

The reality is that it costs companies more to put someone in an interview chair than it does to give a strong candidate the extra money requested. Ding a few too many people on money and you lost that great candidate for being cheap. Managers seem to forget that a little too often. But what do they care? The candidate acquisition dollars come out of someone else's budget. Forget you all work for the same company. Again, short-sighted and expensive.

One of the goals of springraise.com is to eliminate the opaque nature of salary negotiations and give candidates the information they need to justify salary requests. In my hiring, I've found that getting the right candidate saves the company more money than getting the less expensive candidate.

Rachel, do you think your approach may be a bit old school?

More and more, prospective employers are vetting candidates using social networking sites and other internet posts. If the candidate is not spit spot they can be removed from the running and never know the reasons why. Employers can say not qualified, or any other excuse when the real reason is they don't hire people who engage in drunken orgies or other activities in which the hiring authority does not approve. Or maybe it is because of rants/political/religious commentaries.

If you want to check your own digital presence go to http://www.jobsearchdebugged.com/blog/?p=160 for a list of sites to see how the world sees you with very little effort.

It is crucial to mind your internet manners and never set free into the digital universe that which you would not share with your mother.
The Job Coach
www.jobsearchdebugged.com