My Worst Job Interview

              There is an old question that is asked during job interviews- “What is your worst characteristic?” Or flaw, or trait, or whatever.  I’m not sure what the purpose is from an interviewer standpoint, but I do know that as the interviewee, your goal is to make up something that sounds like a flaw but is really something unbelievably awesome.  See the following example.

              Fancy HR person:  “What is your greatest flaw?”

              You:  “My golf game is terrible because I spend every weekend volunteering at the children’s cancer ward.”

              Or:  “I have to go to the bathroom frequently because I donated most of my urinary bladder to a sick child.”

              Damn, I’m good at this

              Because you can’t tell the truth.  You cannot say, in an interview, that your greatest flaw is shoplifting or showing up to work hung over every day.   It’s a game.  I didn’t make it up, I just follow the rules.

              There’s the flip side question, where they ask you what your greatest asset is.  This one is a little tougher to game, because everything sounds like bragging.  You have to try to sound like a humble badass.

              My problem with interviewing in general is my hyperactive sense of humor.  I learned in freshman psychology that humor is a healthy coping mechanism.  However, that is absolutely untrue if you are in a job interview.

              Let me take you back to the spring of 1996, when I was preparing to graduate with a degree in chemical engineering from The University of Kansas.  I was not at the top of my class, I had a 3.2 gpa.  Not exactly setting the world on fire.  In my defense, beer.  I discovered beer in college.  Also girls.  Not that I discovered girls in beer in college, I had already technically discovered them in high school.  But I waited until college to go pro.  So, yeah… a 3.2.

              I was not snapped up during the first round of interviews because I had neither a 3.9 nor anything else particularly impressive.  No high-powered recruiter would have been impressed that I once drank 19 keg beers from a red Solo cup then ate two 2-lb burritos from Burrito King in Lawrence.  No, those snobs were looking for things like volunteering experience or participation in the junior Olympics.  Not from this guy.  So I received fewer invitations to interview than most of my classmates.

              But, miracles do happen, and I got an on-campus interview with Exxon.  That’s kind of the holy grail for chemical engineering graduates.  A 200-billion-dollar company with unlimited resources and potential for growth.  This job probably paid fifty thousand dollars to a 22-year-old kid right out of college in 1996. A thirty-year career there would have been incredible.  Money and benefits, and the opportunity to help pump countless tons of pollution into the environment…. It was a dream.

              I got through my first interview with Exxon, and was invited for a second interview.  Now, I was starting to get excited.  A second interview!  That means they liked me!  My mediocre grades must not have mattered.  So, I got a haircut, and dry-cleaned my only suit, and went for the interview.  And it went well too!  I was on my way.  For days, I waited by the phone (there were no cell phones yet, at least not for a poor college student.)  Finally, I received an offer for the third interview.

              A third interview.  This was incredible.  If they had disliked me, they wouldn’t be meeting with me again.  I was in.  At this point, I thought, all I have to do is not shoot myself in the foot, and I’m on to an incredible job making lots of money.

              The day of the interview, I felt good.  A little nervous, but I had the assurance of the previous interviews behind me.  I was the man.  Exxon was all over my stuff.

              The HR lady who met me that day was very professional-looking.  Pretty, maybe 28 years old, dressed in an expensive business suit.  She was very smooth, and put me at ease, to the extent that you can be at ease when you’re 22-years old, interviewing for your future.

              We talked for maybe twenty minutes, and everything was going well.  Then she threw out the question.

              “What is the one thing you are most proud of?”

              I thought for a moment, then answered with my best shot.

              “Well, I put myself through college.  I’m proud of that.”

              “Oh, really,” she said, her face approving.  “I did too.  What sort of jobs did you work?”

              I answered promptly, without thinking.  It was as if my conscious mind wasn’t even queried.

              “I sold crack, mostly.”

              Silence.  She stared at me, her expression wooden.  I gave an awkward laugh, to show that I was kidding.  I didn’t really sell an addictive illegal drug to schoolchildren.  It’s just something I like to joke about.  In a job interview.  And not just any job interview.  Exxon.

              Then, I’m not kidding, she pulled out a red pen from somewhere and began scribbling on her clipboard.   I wanted to scream, to grab the pen out of her hand, to turn back time and get a do-over.

              I didn’t get a do over.  I torpedoed my job opportunity.  Because I’m a jackass who can’t be serious.  The remainder of the interview lasted maybe ten minutes, a total perfunctory waste of time.  It was over the second I made that inappropriate joke.  She knew it and I knew it. 

              I’ve spend a fair amount of time thinking about that day, over the last thirty years.  I understand myself better now, and I know that I use humor when I’m nervous or tense, and usually, it goes well.  I can defuse a situation, and make everybody laugh a little, and we all feel better.  I make people laugh when I’m sticking a 9-gauge needle in their breast, or pouring barium in their rectum.  Which is funny, because the barium squirts back out when they laugh.  It’s called the Valsalva maneuver.

              I was a standup comedian for most of a decade, so I actually was paid to be a smartass.  Not well,  In nine years of comedy, I probably made less than I would have in one year working for Exxon.  But not everything is about money.  Or success, or aiding and abetting polluters.  Sometimes life is just life.

              I think about it this way:  If I had gotten a job with Exxon, I would have been shipped to Houston or New Jersey, or to a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.  I would have worked my way up, and would never have become a standup comic.  I never would have met all those people, the commedians and fans and club owners.  I definitely would not have had all the amazing confidence-building approval that you achieve when you’re performing for crowds of people.  I would not understand humans as well as I do.

              I never would have met my wife, and we wouldn’t have had our kids.  I never would have gone to medical school.  People whose lives I have saved by diagnosing a pulmonary embolism or finding a breast cancer maybe would have died.  Probably not, their disease probably would have been found by the next doctor.  But maybe not.  So, no regrets.  I’ve still had a wonderful life, even without that one awesome job.  And it’s not over.  Turns out, I’m glad I was a socially inept smartass.  I guess some things never change.