Interviews

In law school a friend of mine and I talked about how it would be fun to interview for random jobs. The idea was to apply for jobs for which we were unqualified or were completely unrelated to anything on our resume and see if we got an interview for the job. We would become professional interviewers. Not sure how we would make any money, we just wanted to see if we could get the jobs, and then reject them. It was a fun little fantasy to talk about at a time when the economy wasn't in the tank, my friend wasn't out of a job and we could discuss things like making a hobby out of applying and interviewing for jobs in other fields because having an ideal job in our field would be easy and a given.

I was thinking about that conversation because I was randomly thinking the other day about interviews I have had that totally bombed. The thing about interviews is that you only know how you did if you nailed it, or totally bombed. Nailing it is always fun, but bombing is more memorable. Two notable bombs came in law school.

The first one was with the Riverside DA's office. This interview was over in about 6 seconds. This was more or less how it went:

"Hi"

"Hi"

"So, why do you want to work for the Riverside DA?"

"Because I want to live in Indio."

Head cocks, eyes perk, "Really?!"

Now, I admit that a poor way to start off an interview is to make fun of some aspect of your employer. It's like going into a Microsoft interview and saying you want to work for them because you want to be part of a company that produced the Zune. So I'm not really sure what I was expecting in response. I guess I was hoping for some sort of response along the lines of, "Ha, yeah right. Man, I had to do a few months in Indio and it was terrible. What a drag. I feel for you when you have to work out there. Do you like Real Madrid?"

I can't remember exactly what I did say to the "Really?" I probably should have been quick on my feet and said, "Of course. Indio is the greatest." Instead I went with something along the lines of, "Well, no. But I of course would be happy to work there." I shouldn't have said anything and just nodded and walked right out of the interview. Unfortunately the interview lasted another 5 excruciating minutes which were mostly spent proving that Riverside county was awesome, so awesome in fact that I a loser like me wasn't qualified to work out there. I'm pretty sure they threw out my application before I even got out of the interview room.

My other bombed interview also happened to be for a DA job. This one was for Maricopa county in Arizona. I'm not sure why I even applied since I had no intention of working in Arizona or taking the Arizona bar. I think there was a resume drop where you just photocopy your resume 50 times and give it to a bunch of employers. For whatever reason, I got an interview with the Maricopa DA.

The interview was actually fine until the interviewer asked me about something I am proud of that I have accomplished during law school, that isn't school related. He noted that I had gone to BYU and served a mission and thus mentioned that in other interviews, some of "my fellow people" had said they were proud of being able to juggle law school while also being married and raising 3 kids, which is really just a nice way of saying, "I'm happy I made it through first year of law school without getting divorced."

I of course wasn't married at the time and didn't have 3 kids so neglecting my kids while I tried to get good grades wasn't an answer option for me. The problem was that I totally blanked. I couldn't think of anything and went with the winner answer of: "I think my biggest accomplishment was getting up early every morning last semester and making it on time to the courthouse where I was doing an externship." Translation: my biggest accomplishment outside of law school was being able to get out of bed every morning at 6:30 for 4 months straight.

The interviewer just stared at me and said, "Hmph."

Here's the thing though, I've thought a lot about this question and answer and with all the time in the world to think about it, I'm not sure that I have a much better answer. Well, pretty much any answer is better than the one I gave, but I didn't really do anything in law school besides law school. I realize now that I probably should have also been volunteering at the local nursing home or raising kittens for orphans or something. But during school I pretty much just focused on school. I was single so outside of school I was focusing on number 1- me. But I went to school and when I wasn't at school I was studying. If I wasn't studying I was watching TV or working on my Myspace profile. What were other law students doing that they could have said that was any better than my response? In fact, I think that if someone had a good answer, it should have raised a red flag for the interviewer. The person's main focus should have been law school yet they were off focusing on things like raising a family. Is that the type of employee they really want? Someone that is more committed to their family? No way. They should want someone whose biggest accomplishment each day is the fact that he woke up, actually rolled out of bed, showered, and dragged himself to work. Talk about an extremely happy person and a dream employee for any organization.