Interview Mistakes You Definitely Want to Avoid

Have you got a job interview coming up? That’s awesome, but don’t blow it! According to CareerBuilder.com, a surprising number of job seekers make big blunders during the interview. Like what? The top five most common mistakes are: Dressing inappropriately, badmouthing a former boss, acting uninterested, being arrogant, and giving incomplete answers to questions. It doesn’t stop there. Here are a few real-life interview mistakes that are truly mind-boggling:

• One applicant in the survey answered their cell phone and asked the interviewer to leave her own office because it was a "private" conversation!
• Another real-life job candidate said she couldn’t provide a writing sample, because she had worked for the CIA and everything was "classified."
• Then there’s the applicant who said he was fired for beating up his last boss.
• The job candidate who smelled his armpits on the way to the interview room.
• One last real-life interview mistake: During a phone interview with a hiring manager, the job candidate flushed the toilet!

You may not make those mistakes, but here are five tips to guarantee your interview is error-free:

• Research the company's history, goals and current activities. That’ll prove you’re prepared for the interview and that you want to work there.
  
  
• Don't pretend you know everything. If the interviewer asks about an unfamiliar topic, admit you don't know, and explain how you’d find the answer. You’ll make a better impression by problem-solving than by saying things that aren’t true.
  
  
• It’s all about the job. So, don’t offer irrelevant personal details that might be controversial, like political and religious beliefs, or stories about your divorce.
  
  
• Practice your answers to common interview questions, like: "What's your biggest weakness?" and "Why did you leave your last job?" Open-ended questions are harder to answer than you think, so rehearse your responses ahead of time.
  
  
• Put on a happy face. An interview is not the time to air your grievances about your last boss. Bottom line: How you refer to your previous employer gives the hiring manager an idea of how you'll speak about them once you've moved on.