(Read time 11 min 42 sec)

I have interviewed hundreds of people and can confidently say I know the best way NOT to get a job.

That’s right.

The best way for someone to step on every self-inflicted landmine and give themselves zero chance of landing a job even if they’re the most qualified candidate.

But why would we want to know everything the worst candidates do?

The answer is in the inverse.

By doing the opposite of what the worst candidates do, you can make yourself stand out in all the best ways, put yourself in the best position to be remembered, and land the job.

At the bottom of the newsletter, I’ll share the full list of what you should do to crush the interview and land the job.

So, let’s set the stage.

You landed an interview at your dream company.

What are all the things you can do to absolutely positively make sure you DONT LAND THAT JOB?

Let’s go!

#1 - Have no idea what to expect

Is it a phone interview, virtual interview, or in person?

Who will you be speaking with?

What will they ask?

You don’t know because you don’t ask the recruiter or anyone else at the company about the interview structure, who will be in each interview, or the topics they will want to cover.

Hell, you don’t even confirm the date or time.

It’s going to be a miracle if you arrive at all.

#2 - Get terrible sleep the night before

Don’t sleep well before the interview.

The bigger and darker the bags under your eyes, the better.

Ensure you have gotten such poor sleep that it’s hard to string a few sentences together and you lose your train of thought midway through a sentence.

#3 - Show up late

Make sure you join the Zoom room or show up on-site minutes after the interview is supposed to start.

Don’t be early.

Your time is precious and they’re the ones who are having the privilege of interviewing you, so be fashionably late.

Be so late that someone on the team needs to email you to ensure you know there’s an interview going on and that you’re supposed to be in it.

#4 - Use untested tech with tech issues

Whatever you do, do not test the meeting software before you join your virtual meeting.

Make sure you are clicking on that software for the first time as you’re entering the interview.

Don’t plug in your computer the night before to make sure it’s charged.

Search for your headphones as all of your interviewers appear on the screen, then have them wait as you connect them to your computer.

Also, don’t test your internet connection.

Stay away from anywhere with a strong internet connection because you want to break up constantly throughout the conversations and have as many disruptions as possible.

You want your interviewers to barely be able to make out what you’re saying because you’re constantly freezing on their screens with all sorts of unflattering facial expressions.

#5 - Take the interview from your phone

Use your cell phone while sitting on your couch, not a computer.

Make sure the camera is looking up at your face from below so the interviewers can see inside your nose and move around while you speak with the interviewers.

Either don’t turn your camera on when everyone else has their cameras on or turn it on and make sure the picture is very grainy.

Make sure your background doesn’t look polished.

Encourage your roommates to go about their regular business of walking around behind you and keep all those posters you kept from your college dorm visible.

#6 - Have dim or blinding light

Make sure the light is so low they can’t tell if you’re a person or a shadow.

Or so bright your face washes out of the image and they have to shield their eyes.

#7 - Show up in your PJ’s

Wear whatever you had on when you woke up that morning.

Don’t check the company webpage to see what the other people in the photos are wearing and don’t dress slightly more formal than that.

Don’t get your hair cut or clean it up for your conversation.

#8 - Be distracted

Keep all of your notifications on and tell your wife, husband, kids, roommates, in-laws, distant cousins, and people you just saw on the street that it’s completely cool to ask you questions, use the blender, and play a game of Mario Kart in the same room as you.

In fact, find the loudest and busiest place to take the interview from.

#9 - Wing every answer

Don’t prepare at all.

Make sure that you’re hearing each question for the first time and that you’re going off the cuff.

Don’t write out your answers to questions ahead of time, and don’t use tools like ChatGPT or perform mock interviews with friends and former co-workers.

You want to be cold as ice going in.

#10 - Be cocky and overconfident

Talk down to the people who are interviewing you.

Belittle their accomplishments and make sure you one-up everything they say.

Take credit for everything and don’t acknowledge the work of your cross-functional peers or your team.

When they ask you a question about a topic you know deeply, roll your eyes and tell them that the question is stupid and the answer is obvious.

Act as if they’re lucky to have you in their presence.

#11 - Speak before you think

When the team asks you a question, don’t pause to think about it.

Just start talking about whatever immediately came into that skull of yours.

You don’t need any clarifying questions or to gather your thoughts.

Just let that mouth do its work.

Fire up that verbal diarreah.

#12 - Ramble, don’t be concise

Continue talking until you have provided every tiny detail they could possibly want to know about each bullet on your resume.

Don’t structure your stories using the STAR method (situation, task, action, result).

Hell, tell them stories and tie in different situations that they didn’t even ask about.

#13 - Don’t support your stories with numbers

Whatever you do, do not support any stories you tell with numbers.

Don’t reference the scope of the project, the budget you were in charge of, the absolute number or percent changes of the metric you were looking to improve.

Speak in generalities and be vague.

Say things like, “Lots,” “Tons,” or “really big”.

And make sure you can’t clearly tell them your role in any given project or initiative.

#14 - Talk sh!t about your previous employers

They’re not in the room, so they’re fair game.

Air out all the dirty laundry you had with former bosses, employees, and coworkers.

Talk about how stupid the founders were for choosing the strategy they chose.

Talk about how everyone else was a huge problem and a bad person, and that’s why you just didn’t fit in.

#15 - Have a generic answer about why you want to work for the company

When they ask why you want to work there, choose the most generic thing you can say.

Here are some great examples:

• “To advance my career in X field.”

• “To join a fast-growing company.”

• “Because I need a job.”

• “I know X will look great on a resume.”

• “I know X will be great for my career.”

Make sure you don’t actually want to join the company to ensure there’s no deep reason why you think this role and this company will be good for you and your career and how you can uniquely help them achieve their goals.

#16 - Be combative and rude

Treat everyone poorly.

The receptionist, the recruiter, the hiring manager, future direct reports, and any cross-functional stakeholders you speak with are wasting your time so treat them like it.

The only person that matters is the person who makes the final decision and they’re stupid for making you go through this process in the first place.

If anyone says something you disagree with, tell them they’re wrong and then describe why in vivid detail.

Make inappropriate jokes and swear as much as possible.

#17 - Show no interest in the company or your interviewers

Don’t listen to any interviews, watch any videos, or read any articles about the company.

You should have no idea who they are, what they care about, and their goals.

You already didn’t ask who would be interviewing you, so ensure you’re surprised by each person who shows up.

It’s best to have no clue about their role and no interest in what they do for the company, what they have done for prior companies, or what they care about and like to do outside of work.

#18 - Don’t ask any questions

Ask no questions when it’s your turn to ask about the company.

A simple “Nope, no questions from me. I think I’m all good.” is a perfect way to end the interview.

#19 - Don’t send personalized thank-you notes

No thank you notes AT ALL.

Definitely don’t send any valuable documentation, resources, connections, or playbooks to the team about topics they described as challenges and that you have experience solving.

#20 - Don’t follow up after the interview

No follow-up with the recruiter, nothing.

After the interview, wait by your computer, stare at the screen, and get continuously older as the messages never come.

Make sure that any communication is coming from them, not you.

Wait to hear something from them before ever speaking to another person from the interview panel or the company again.

Now let’s do the opposite…

To set your self up for success as much as possible in the interview to land the job you should…

1. Have a deep understanding of what to expect in the interview by asking the recruiter or hiring manager about the structure of the interview, the topics covered in each interview, who you will be interviewing with, and confirming the data, time, and if it via phone, video, or in-person.

2. Get good sleep and eat a light good meal before the interview to be well rested and operating at peak performance. Get some exercise before for improved confidence.

3. Show up early no matter whether it’s in person or online. Early is on-time. On-time is late. Late is unacceptable.

4. Test out all tech, apps, and hardware days before and have backup plans in the event anything fails. Technical issues make a candidate interviewing for a tech job look terrible.

5. Take the interview from your computer and make sure your background is professional. Use either a virtual background, blurred background, or (even better in my opinion) an unblurred bookshelf.

6. Take the call in a well lit area. Grab a lamp or desk light and make sure your face is lit from the front and not just above. Steer clear from looking directly into a window.

7. Wear professional attire even if it’s a casual work environment. If everyone’s wearing a t-shirt they won’t knock you if you’re wearing a button-down shirt. It’s far better to dress slightly more formal than to dress down and be seen as sloppy.

8. Turn off notifications and eliminate all distractions. Tell everyone who may be in your location about the interview and ask them to please steer clear of your room and to keep all noise to a minimum.

9. Practice, practice, practice. Your stories about each bullet point of the job description should be well rehearsed and you should have practiced them in written and verbal form. Ratchet up your prep with mock interviews with friends, former colleagues, former bosses, or mentors.

10. Be confident in your descriptions of your accomplishments but acknowledge the great people you have worked with. Make your interviewers feel important, knowledgable, and be gracious for their time.

11. Think before you speak. When you’re asked a question, take your time to think it through before answering. If you think you could respond with a more complete answer by asking clarifying questions, ask them. You have far more to gain by asking clarifying questions to ensure your answer is what they’re looking for than trying to guess. It also shows your subject matter expertise.

12. Be concise, don’t ramble. If it’s a virtual interview, you should have the main points of each of your stories bulleted out on a cheat sheet on your computer, and you should have rehearsed them multiple times so you don’t need the cheat sheet. Provide them with the information necessary and let them know you can expand further if there are any areas they would like more details on.

13. Use numbers to support your stories. Talk about the scope of the project, the size of the budget, the absolute number or percent changes of the metrics you were looking to improve. Knowing your numbers and key metrics shows you know your stuff.

14. Do not badmouth prior employers. Tell a story about how you’re looking to take everything you learned from them in order to help your new company grow. Don’t give them all the reasons why your prior company sucked. Show your emotional stability.

15. Have a clearly thought-out specific answer about why you want to join the company in the role you’re interviewing for and why you think your unique background is perfect to help the company tackle the problems or opportunities at hand and achieve its goals. Make it specific to the company you’re speaking to, not a “fill in the company name here” answer.

16. Be polite, thoughtful, and engaging with each person you speak with. There are stories of people being rejected because they were rude to the receptionist or bus driver.

17. Demonstrate you’re interested in the company and each of your interviewers by doing research on them. Know and be able to talk about recent news, interviews, and company progress and highlight them in your answers. Look at the backgrounds and roles of each interviewer to connect with them on a personal level and so you can ask thoughtful questions.

18. Prepare a list of questions ahead of time. Tailor them to the person you’re asking the question of and ask people insightful questions about their time at the company, the challenges they’re working through, and things they wish they would have known when entering the company.

19. Send personalized thank you notes to each person you interact with during the process no matter how small the interaction. Send any resources, playbooks, connections, or other documentation that you believe can help alleviate specific pain points each interviewer brought up about their daily role.

20. Follow up with the person leading the interview process after the interview. I like to follow up three, five, seven, and ten business days after. If you still haven’t heard back from them after at least three follow-ups then you can move on. But… if you did everything in the list above it’s very unlikely you won’t hear back.

These twenty points are a comprehensive list of what you should do to crush any interview by first thinking about all the ways a person can kill their chances of landing a job by blowing the interview.

It all comes down to being thoughtful with your preparation, thinking through each possible thing that could go wrong, and putting steps in place to prevent them.

Funding slowed in July as VC’s took their summer vacations but there were still 123 companies that raised $3.8 Billion.

We can expect August to be slow as well but there are already 23 companies that have raised $787 Million in the first 5 days.

»Click here to find out all about those 146 companies that recently raised money and the roles they are hiring for.«

So there you have it, two lists that you can follow to blow any chance of landing a job or making it very hard for the interview panel to say no.

Which one you choose is up to you.

Follow the second list and you’ll be a memorable candidate that the interviewing team will be talking about as they walk out of the room.

This is how to receive glowing reviews from each person in the interview debrief and find a place on the team.

Put these steps in place and let me know what your interviewers say.

But until then… let’s become career champions together 🏆

Kyle

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