Evil Interview Techniques That Should Never Be Used – EVER!!

By Chris Delaney

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The job interview should be a place of positivity, enthusiasm and self validation. But winning an interview can change your life, double your salary and potentially boost future advancements. It is this greed that causes some job applicants to take interview preparation to a new evil level.

We don’t recommend that you use the following manipulative interview techniques, as they can ruin other people’s hopes and dreams as you advance your own career. Some call these techniques psychopathic, evil and down right nasty, but if you can leave the interview with a clear conscience after stepping over the weak, you may also leave with a job offer and pay rise.


John’s Internal Interview Let Down.

John would say anything to his client to get a sale. He was known as the sales psychopath at work. His managers loved him as he always over achieved his targets. When going for an internal promotion, he knew he only had one competitor  – Sally. Sally had worked for the company for 7 years and had a consistent approach which resulted in steady sales.
Sally worked like a well processed machine, but when the process broke down so would Sally. This was her only weakness, a weakness that John would manipulate.

After following Sally home a few nights before, John now knew where Sally lived. On the night before the interview, John drove over to Sally’s house at 3:00am in the morning and sliced two of the tyres on her car with a kitchen knife.
The next day a flustered Sally arrived 45 minutes late for her internal interview, highly stressed. As predicted by John, Sally couldn’t concentrate. She mixed up statistics and undersold herself, with every second answer, she would again, apologise for being late. Later that evening with a drink to consol herself, Sally told her friends how this was the worst interview she had ever attended, all because some naughty teenagers had let her tyres down. 


Michelle’s Meltdown Technique

Michelle understood psychology; she had a master’s degree in it. She had learnt on her course, how emotions are attached to imagined events in the mind. She knew that, if you thought about a past birthday, you would remember the positives feelings you felt at the time of the event. If you thought about spiders, and you’re a spider phobic, you feel the same fear as you would if you actually see a spider. This is just one way your unconscious mind works.

Michelle decided to use this principle of psychology to ruin the chances of other interviewees at her forthcoming group interview. As she arrived she was asked to wait with the other interviewees. She picked her victim and sat next to him - “Hi, I’m Michelle” - she said, politely introducing herself – putting her victim at ease. She struck up a conversation and quickly moved it on to the interview. “How are you feeling?” she innocently asked. Feeling questions make people think about their emotions, and in the job interview everyone is feeling anxious and nervous. “Nervous, I messed up my last interview” he replied with a smile. “Why, what happened?” Michelle asked, looking concerned. By getting people to remember negative past experiences makes them, as Michelle well knew, relive that associated negative emotion. He went on to discuss how bad he messed up, “That sounds really bad, how did you feel afterwards?”. By the time the interviewees went into the interview Michelle’s victim felt worse than ever – flustered, nervous and anxious and knew deep down that today wasn’t going to go well.


Detective Dave

As with all interviewees, David knew the importance of research. But unlike other applicants David didn’t just research the company, David researched the interviewer. David knew that, if you can make the interviewer like you, then your chances of a job offer  will increase, as every answer you give is taken by the interviewer positively, as they filter it through an “I like you” filter. This filter deletes negative answers and only stores positive memories.

The easiest way to get someone to like you is through instant rapport. Rapport is built on commonality. We tend to like people who are like ourselves; people who wear the same make of clothes, who follow the same football team, a similar or same name can build rapport, as can “wearing the old school tie.” Similarity builds likeness.

David was the master of rapport building. First he would check the interviewer’s online profile. Reading his Linked-in profile would highlight the values the interviewer deemed important. His Facebook and Twitter account shown his hobbies and interest. David took this one step further and found the interviewers address online and followed him around for a couple of days, finding out where he shopped, his hobbies, his routine – all snippets of information that he would use in the interview to show how they both had common interest.

After days of research David knew his potential employer inside and out. He was a man of routine (a procedural man in work) he was organised and always looked smart (systematic), most of his suits were made by the brand BOSS. He enjoyed Italian food and went jogging everyday before work. He volunteered at his local church and enjoyed espresso coffee.

On the day of the interview, David was asked the common “tell me about yourself" question. After talking about his career highlights David ended by telling him some personal facts “I try to volunteer as often as I can, I feel that it's important to give something back to the community..” The interviewer looked impressed. “And I try to keep myself fit and healthy, I like to run at least once a day.” The interviewer smiled. "Before I go on would you like a coffee or tea?" The interviewer polilty asked. “Yes please, an espresso.” The interview stood to pour the coffee. “Is that a BOSS suit you’re wearing?” David asked innocently. “Yes, it is, I see you’re wearing a BOSS suit too.” “It's the only make I wear!” David answered confidently.


Don’t Ever Use These Techniques.

There are many underhanded ways to get the upper hand in the job interview; talking down an other applicant's successes in the interview, stealing other peoples' ideas as your own suggestions or even spreading rumours about colleagues and competitors, but only the immoral would consider such a course of action.

You can influence the interview without having to consider such evil tricks. There are ways to be seen as a real diamond employee, so valuable that the employer has to recruit you. The key to passing a job interview is selling your unique selling point. If you can show employers how you will add value (make them money!!) to the organisation, they will want to recruit you.

 

Chris Delaney is an Advanced Interview Coach at www.employmentking.co.uk and the author of The 73 Rules for Influencing the Interview using Pyschology, NLP and Hypnotic Persuasion Techniques

 

Image courtesy of bandrat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

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