hmmm ... how many days do you have? I could talk you ear off about interviewing mistakes. I have done the research for over 100 companies and got lazy on quiet a few others. I have confused names before. When I went to my first AAAAs conference, I asked someone if Jay Chiat was still in the business (he's been dead for quiet a while, but ogilvy is making a comeback these days). And I saw a lot of business card hungry candidates there. All in all, the lazier I got, the less stressed I got and the better I was able to bullshit. I know that I'm a little late to the blog and I hope your article went well ... What else are you working on these days?

Here's a story: There was a person (let's call the person Jo) who had an interview to be a Visual Merchandiser for a clothing retail chain. Jo had to reschedule the interview, which was in the late afternoon/early evening, because Jo was hungover from partying the night before. It was not just a regular hangover. Jo vomitted the night before, probably gallons and gallons of puke, and probably had--or probably came extremely close to having--alcohol poisioning. When Jo came in for the rescheduled interview, the interviewer could tell that Jo did not have a lot of experience in Visual Merchandising. Jo did have experience in working in clothing and retail but not in the visual side. One of the questions was, "What makes you qualified for the position?" Jo immediately answered, "Because I'm a visual person" and bit the tongue right after and wanted to shrivel up. However, Jo was young, and learned from the whole experience. Now, Jo is older . . . and wiser!

I remember hiring an intern at a big agency to freelance on a pitch. Because of the craziness of workflow, I didn't have anything for her to do until the afternoon. She walked out and sent me a nasty email about how she was too good to be paid to do nothing. If anyone knew anything about the business they'd know that it's feast or famine and had she waited we would have found plenty for her to do.

I would always go to agencycompile.com to learn about the agency and its clients--if they don't have positions posted at least I could find out the key contact people so I would know where to send my resume. I also check out the agency's Web site (though some agencies don't necessarily update their sites all that often). And of course there's always plain old google to see what else is out there.

My first interview was at Publicis with the HR department. I was interviewing for an assistant position, but when I met with HR they said their immediate need was for a traffic coordinator. I had absolutely no idea what that meant, but they didn't expect me to, so it made for a good interview.