填空题

How to Take a Job Interview
To succeed in campus job interviews, you have to know where that recruiter is coming from. The simple answer is that he is coming from corporate headquarters.
That may sound obvious, but it is a significant point that too many students do not consider. The recruiter is not a free spirit as he flies from Berkeley to New Haven, from Chapel Hill to Boulder. He’s on an invisible leash to the office, and if he is worth his salary, he is mentally in corporate headquarters all the time he’s on the road.
If you can fix that in your mind--that when you walk into that bare-walled cubicle in the placement center you are walking into a branch office of Sears, Bendix or General Motors--you can avoid a lot of little mistakes and maybe some big ones.
If, for example, you assume that because the interview is on campus the recruiter expects you to look and act like a student, you’re in for a shock. A student is somebody who drinks beer, wears blue jeans and throws a Frisbee. No recruiter has jobs for student Frisbee whizzes.
A cool spring day in late March, Sam Davis, a good recruiter who has been on the college circuit for years, is on my campus talking to candidates. He comes out to the waiting area to meet the student who signed up for an 11 o’clock interview. I’m standing in the doorway of my office taking in the scene.
Sam calls the candidate: "Sidney Student." There sits Sidney. He’s at a 45 degree angle, his feet are in the aisle, and he’s almost lying down. He’s wearing well-polished brown shoes, a tasteful pair of brown pants, a light brown shirt, and a good looking tie. Unfortunately, he tops off this well-coordinated outfit with his Joe’s Tavern Class A Softball Championship jacket, which has a big woven emblem over the heart.
If that isn’t bad enough, in his left hand is a cigarette and in his right hand is a half-eaten apple.
When Sam calls his name, the kid is caught off guard. He ditched the cigarette in an ashtray, struggles to his feet, and transfers the apple from the right to the left hand. Apple juice is everywhere, so Sid wipes his hand on the seat of his pants and shakes hands with Sam.
Sam, who by now is close to having a stroke, gives me that what-do-I-have-here look and has the young man follow him into the interview room.
The situation deteriorates even further--into pure Laurel and Hardy. The kid is stuck with the half-eaten apple, doesn’t know what to do with it, and obviously is suffering some discomfort. He carries the apple into the interview room with him and places it in the ashtray on the desk--right on top of Sam’s freshly lit cigarette.
The interview lasts five minutes...
Let us move in for a closer look at how the campus recruiter operates.
Let’s say you have a 10 o’clock appointment with the recruiter from the XYZ Corporation. The recruiter gets rid of the candidate in front of you at about 5 minutes to 10, jots down a few notes about what he is going to do with him or her, then picks up your resume or data sheet (which you have submitted in advance)...
Although the recruiter is still in the interview room and you are still in the lobby, your interview is under way. You’re on. The recruiter will look over your sheet pretty carefully before he goes out to call you. He develops a mental picture of you.
He thinks, "I’m going to enjoy talking with this kid," or "This one’s going to be a turkey." The recruiter has already begun to make a decision about you.
His first impression of you, from reading the sheet, could come from your grade point. It could come from misspelled words. It could come from poor erasures or from the fact that necessary information is missing. By the time the recruiter has finished reading your sheet, you’ve already hit the plus or minus column.
Let’s assume the recruiter got a fairly good impression from your sheet.
Now the recruiter goes out to the lobby to meet you. He almost shuffles along and his mind is somewhere else. Then he calls your name, and at that instant he visibly clicks into gear. He just went to work.
As he calls your name he looks quickly around the room, waiting for somebody to move. If you are sitting on the middle of your back, with a book open and a cigarette going, and if you have to rebuild yourself to stand up, the interest will run right out of the recruiter’s face. The recruiter expects to see a young professional come popping out of that chair like today is a good day and you’re anxious to meet him.
At this point, the recruiter does something rude. He doesn’t walk across the room to meet you halfway. He waits for you to come to him. Something very important is happening. He wants to see you move. He wants to get an impression about your posture, your stride and your briskness.
If you slouch over him, sidewinder like, he is not going to be impressed. He’ll figure you would probably slouch your way through your workdays. He wants you to come at him with lots of good things going for you. If you watch the recruiter’s eyes, you can see the inspection. He glances quickly at shoes, pants, coat, shirt; dress, blouse, hose--the whole works.
After introducing himself, the recruiter will probably say, "Okay, please follow me," and he’ll lead you into his interview room.
When you get to the room, you may find that the recruiter will open the door and gesture you in--with him blocking part of the doorway. There’s enough room for you to get past him, but it’s a near thing.
As you scrape past, he gives you a close-up inspection. He looks at your hair; if it’s greasy, that will bother him. He looks at your collar; if it’s dirty, that will bother him. He looks at your shoulders; if they’re covered with dandruff, that will bother him. If you’re a man, he looks at your chin. If you didn’t get a close shave, that will irritate him. If you’re a woman, he checks your makeup. If it’s too heavy, he won’t like it.
Then he smells you. An amazing number of people smell bad. Occasionally a recruiter meets a student who smells like a canal horse. That student can expect an interview of about four or five minutes.
Next the recruiter inspects the back side of you. He checks your hair (is it combed in front but not in back), he checks your heels (are they run down), your pants (are they baggy), your slip (is it showing), your stockings (do they have runs).
Then he invites you to sit down.
At this point, I submit, the recruiter’s decision on you is 75 to 80 percent made.
Think about it. The recruiter has read your resume. He knows who you are and where you are from. He knows your marital status, your major and your grade point. And he knows what you have done with your summers. He has inspected you, exchanged greetings with you and smelled you. There is very little additional hard information that he must gather on you. From now on it’s mostly body chemistry.
Many recruiters have argued strenuously with me that they don’t make such hasty decisions. So I tried an experiment. I told several recruiters that I would hang around in the hall outside the interview room when they took candidates in.
I told them that as soon as they had definitely decided not to recommend (to department managers in their companies) the candidate they were interviewing, they should snap their fingers loud enough for me to hear. It went like this.
First candidate: 38 seconds after the candidate sat down: Snap!
Second candidate: 1 minute, 42 seconds: Snap!
Third candidate: 45 seconds: Snap!
One recruiter was particularly adamant, insisting that he didn’t rush to judgment on candidates. I asked him to participate in the snapping experiment. He went out in the lobby, picked up his first candidate of the day, and headed for an interview room.
As he passed me in the hall, he glared at me. And his fingers went "Snap!" In the experiment the recruiters should snap their fingers when they decide ______.