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This month's issue of GQ had a surprisingly good article on interviewing advice, so support the dying industry of print media and go check it out. Yea, I'm a subscriber - I'm a gentleman and I like quarterly publications that actually come twelve times a year. The first half of the article was more radical and truthful - like they were speaking from the heart. The rest was pretty standard advice: research the company, don't lie, blah, blah, blah. We get it.

Going back to the beginning of the article, I'm going to go ahead and not only quote the author, Cecil Donahue, but illustrate the quote:

"The ensuing dialogue, when practiced by skilled professionals, may resemble an actual conversation, but it is of course a game of verbal cat and mouse in which both parties attempt to ascertain precisely the same thing - namely, where the other is located on the Psycho-Success Cartesian plane."

I am a strong supporter of companies, ceo's, and recruiters striving to be as truthful about the positives and negatives of the company that they represent, the job responsibilities, and their honest opinion on if the job is right for you more so than if you are right for the job. I'm always focusing on the flaws of recruiting entry-level employees as a result of misrepresentation in order to meet hiring quotas or simply to fill a position, but it is equally important for all of the job seekers out there to bring the same attitude and honest approach to the table.

Other than telling the truth and fully answering questions, how do you make yourself transparent or appear to be transparent? If you had an interview with no time limit, how much should you reveal?

These are tough questions, and I don't think that you can say that revealing the same amount of information to every recruiter is a wise decision. I think there is something admirable and ethical about not just answering the questions that they ask you, but revealing details about your experience and past that they didn't necessarily ask to hear about. If the recruiter is a seasoned interviewer or HR professional they will appreciate any additional information that you are willing to share with them in order for them to decide how good of a match you actually are.

That's the easy answer for the situation where you applied for a position, they offered you an interview, and you are in the room with them. What about making your resume and details of your past available through your profiles on Monster, CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Facebook, or your blog? I'm not talking about the pictures of you passed out on a couch with sharpie all over your face, but more about the details highlighting your previous employment, current interests, portfolio of sample work, or academic performance.

My answer to this: the more the better. Go into detail about successes and failures at each of your previous positions. Justify any possibly negative points of your past. There is no limit to what you can post about yourself on the social networking sites or your personal website. The popularity of social networking sites lies in our enjoyment of making and managing personal connections. Use the same power to attract the attention of a recruiter who seems to connect with you - your profile, actually, and you will be a step ahead of everyone else. Hopefully, you are attracting companies who are more aligned with your skills and interests since you would have revealed more of these details. When you apply for jobs they usually want a one or two page resume included with a one page cover letter. Three sheets of paper amounts to several millimeters of thickness. If you want to trust a recruiter to let you know if you are right or wrong for a job based on this minimal amount of information combined with several hours of interviewing that's your call.

We all know how it feels to be told that we are doing something right, exceeding expectations, or simply receiving a pat on the back. Unfortunately, life is not a walk through a metaphorical park, and their will be days when things will not go your way.

When interviewing you will certainly experience the calls or emails letting you know that "you just are not what we are looking for". It is usually not much more descriptive than this, and you are left to guess what you lacked or did wrong in the interviews. After similar calls, I would always go back to the job description on the company's website, review the company information, and then try to replay as much of the interview as possible from the recruiter's perspective usually seeing something that I did wrong.

Other times, you may review every little detail and still wonder how in the world you were not offered the position at stake. It is beneficial to review what you did wrong and right, but you should not let it bring you down, or hang onto the unpleasant experience for too long. Some people will consider completely different career paths after a few bad interviews. After a few of my not so great interviews early on, I was talking to recruiters with the Air Force with quasi-serious intentions of making an 8 year commitment to be a pilot. Keep in mind that I have always wanted to fly, and it would have been much cheaper to serve in the military as a pilot than to pay for private lessons and additional coursework to be become a commercial pilot. Eventually I thought about what it would be like a few years down the road, and I could not handle being committed to an employment situation like a military position so I stuck with the business route and won out eventually.

Never make a decision or take action until the effects of a negative situation have passed. It sounds simple enough, but it is much more difficult in practice. Stick with your plan which may change, but don't let it change as a result of something that you had little control over. Most interviews where you were qualified and personable during the session end poorly only because of the ideal candidate perception that the recruiter had in mind before the interview did not match the perception that they had of you.

I'm going to have to go with Billy Walsh from Entourage: Suits Suck! Well, right after the cubicle it's the worst part of being in business. Yet, you have to wear one to impress a recruiter regardless of how intelligent you are or what skills and experiences you have that make you the most capable candidate.

Almost every time, the person who has the nicely groomed "straight shooter" look wearing a nicely pressed suit will set the bar high for every other candidate simply because of the first impression. Unfortunately, like with many other things in life, recruiters eat up that first image of a college student or recent graduate who cares enough to present themselves in a "professional" manner.

What is being professional? It varies from company to company. If you work at Google, being professional means working as much as possible on coding cutting-edge applications whether you showered and changed out of your pajamas or not. At Accenture, Deloitte, or any other large consulting firm being professional involves wearing suits or ties every day, and being in client facing situations and on the road most of the time.

You need to find a nice mix of being you and being professional. I would love to see someone pull a "Peter" (Office Space, post hypnosis), and roll into an interview with one of the big four consulting firms wearing flip-flops, jeans, and an un-tucked shirt. Not only walk in, but walk out whenever they feel like the interview is over.

I don't recommend dressing down and attempting a "Peter" if you have an interview with a suit-loving business. Face it, most first jobs are going to involve at least business casual dress attire. However, there is the growing trend of companies outside of silicon valley allowing their employees to wear whatever they want in an effort to foster a more comfortable work environment and more hip culture. Whatever type of company you end up interviewing with and possibly working for just be aware that professionalism is defined differently within different companies, and even within teams or divisions within companies. You just need to match or surpass that level of professionalism, whatever it may be.

Your career counselors and professors always stress how you need to be honest and present yourself as, well, yourself. What about honesty from the recruiters?

The average interview lasts between 30-60 minutes. Most of my offers were secured by the second or third round, so let's say five interviews at the maximum of 60 minutes apiece and you have five hours that a company determined you were right for them. You just went through 16 years of education, and are going to make a decision about what's next in your life in the matter of five hours. How can you possibly know what a job will be like, what it will be like several months after starting when the new smell starts to wear off, and what your job duties will really entail?

You can't, and recruiters and human resource employees even if they were completely honest could not paint you a clear picture about the job and company. Even though they seem to be unaware it's in the recruiters' best interest to be as honest as possible about the position, so that you don't take the job under false pretenses and end up quitting less than a year into the position. I don't know how to get this message through to recruiters, because they go goo-goo for ga-ga when a 3.5 cumulative GPA candidate with internship experience walks through the door. They receive pressure from above to get this candidate to accept an offer, and if clouding the truth is going to help matters then it will certainly be partly to mostly cloudy the day of your interviews.

They know that after graduation you will get an apartment or house, possibly a new car, and have student loans on the side, so even if you are not satisfied with the position several months down the road you have several financial commitments that will hold you back slightly from quitting suddenly.

Go into the interview process with the intentions of being as honest as possible, but at the same time you need to be realistic and know that the person across the table will certainly be selling the good and standing in front of the bad. Don't be afraid to walk away from the table when an offer comes down if you felt that the BS was thicker than usual.

I've talked about it before, and I saw it explained in detail by none other than Larry David on last night's episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO. They have taken in a hurricane refugee family, and one of the family members had a job interview. Larry explained to him that the interview starts out and the interviewer is on top and you're on bottom as they start to grill you and ask all the questions. As you start to ask more questions you start to move up and interviewer starts to move down. Eventually you have flipped the interview, and the interviewer is answering all of the questions and trying to impress you. That's where you want to be at the end of the interview.

Check out the episode if you have it DVR'd, Tivo'd, or have access to HBO on-demand (Episode 56: The Rat Dog)

Larry suggests that Leon flip the power dynamic of an interview by asking questions, not just answering them. Leon gets excited by the idea of turning it around on him: "topsy turvey the motherf**ker!" - from HBO.com episode guide

I like Careerbuilder and Monster as much as I rip on them for selling out and not providing the type of job searching tools that they could offer with all of the positions that they have in their database. Careerbuilder thinks that video resumes will be the future of the resume. I wonder why they think that? Maybe because YouTube is hot, hot, hot right now and for the past few years, and even though CB is late to the game with incorporating video into their service they have done it. Should they, though?

Whether or not video resumes are the future (they are probably not...), I found their examples on right and wrong ways to present yourself as ridiculous. The people in the "right" videos are about as personable as my left foot after it has fallen asleep and no longer has any feeling. The sad thing is that this is considered professional behavior, and if you want a job you need to read your resume back at 23.75 words per minute staring straight into the camera wearing a suit. Imagine an office full of these people and you have the current environment at the majority of companies out there.

I want to work with the people in the "wrong" videos, even if it is for a short period of time. The first guy is your typical sales rep, but at least he has fire. I probably wouldn't hire him because I would be annoyed after 5 minutes, but at least he has a personality. The girl in the middle needs to lose the "ummm", but at least she stands out. The last guy is awesome. If you are going to play guitar and sing a song in your interview, you are in. I would take a chance on hiring this guy believing that his motto is "work hard, play hard".

You can be personable and professional at the same time without being a future corporate robot. Whether you submit a video resume or are in an actual interview, don't be another Pinocchio.

That's basically how a company views your summer time with them. They get a chance to see how you fit in with their company, what you are capable of, how big or small of a risk you will be to hire, and they may get you to do some work in different types of settings to see how capable and flexible you are. You, on the other hand, get to bag some professional experience, network with other professionals, and pick up the soft skills that will benefit you later on when you are interviewing and eventually selecting a full-time offer.

It's hard to get an internship as a freshman or even as a sophomore, but you need to try and at least familiarize yourself with the companies and positions that are out there, so by your junior year you know exactly what to look for. You may go to a career fair and experience the typical response from a recruiter, "Oh, you're only a sophomore. Well, we are really looking for juniors and graduating seniors...". Who cares? At least you practiced talking with a recruiter and made yourself available. That will go a long way in the long run.

There are some other tips and advice for landing internships and jobs as a college student in this article from USAtoday.com.

In this article on tips to perform well at a Career fair they make it sound very nerve-racking and top it off with a rigid procedure. I think you should use their bullet point list of topics you need to cover as a guide, and nothing more. I think you should wing it a little bit. After being on both sides of the table at a career fair, I can’t tell you how nice it is to have someone come up that is as natural and smooth as can be. They are so intersted in finding out about the company rather than going over the standard details of their resume or background. Go with the flow after the initial introduction and find out as much as you can about what kind of opportunities are available and if you could see yourself working for the compnay.

I would lean more towards winging it: less pressure, more natural, more beneficial to you finding a company that truely fits you.

Continuing with the "buying a new tv" analogy, how can you sell yourself? Will you be a name-brand or a knock-off? What kind of first impression will you leave? Do you have the features to fit the buyer's needs? Here's a good article from AllBusiness.com about self-promotion and selling yourself to potentional employers and recruiters. It is kind of centered on women going through the hiring process, but the concepts presented are beneficial to all of us. As a college student, you will need to prove that even though you are between the ages of 21-23 you can still be yourself and mesh and fit in within the professional workplace. Sell yourself - the good qualities, your abilities, your accomplishments, but most importantly, be yourself.

Not literally, of course. This is the basic mindset of a serious recruiter interviewing the nervous college student. Imagine you're in the store looking to buy a new tv, and also imagine that you like to talk to yourself aloud or in thought. You've found a tv that seems to fit your requirements, but you ask the tv a few more questions (also imagine you enjoy talking to inanimate objects). Will you last (will you quit when the first thing doesn't go your way, or when your friend claims they have a way better job)? Will you work (will you show up motivated, dedicated, and willing to work most of the time)? Are you worth the money (will the productivity and return on investment from you outweigh the hiring costs, salary, benefits, and other costs to the company)? Will you not break in the first year (many college students usually change jobs within the first year, and I don't want to assume the risk that this may happen and waste precious time and training, so do you really want to work for me)? Will my friends enjoy watching this tv (will you fit in with the other members of the company, and are you able to work collaboratively)? See, there are many more "bigger picture" questions that have less to do with what is on your resume, and much more to do with the recruiter's decision to hire you. People put so much emphasis on the resume, but the resume is simply like the back of a baseball card. It's just numbers that you will have to back up once you step foot in the office on day one. That's why the cover letter, which is more personal and representative of your true qualities, works magic when paired with a well prepared resume. Neither answers the "bigger picture questions, though. Those questions cannot be answered with words, and yet your future depends on the answers. It's your personality, qualities, character, past actions, and plans for the future. You can fake them and get hired, but you won't be happy. You will become the statistic and perception of our generation by quitting, and then searching for the right company. Just be true to yourself the first time around, and get your career started out on the right foot by waiting for the right company...or stumbling upon it. I'm telling you, check out companies that you have not heard of, you will be pleasantly surprised.

I found this interviewing article on the Young Money website under the career advice for college students section. People used to tell me in grade school to visualize myself acing an exam in a very relaxing atmosphere. I would usually do that for about a minute before going and injuring myself attempted to race my bike at break-neck speeds. I think it helped in the long run though, mentally, and I'm sure it applies to interviewing as well. I remember getting this magazine every couple of weeks in the IDS at Indiana University, and it was always slightly entertaining. I'm sure many of you have seen it if many of you read the school paper. I like how they emphasize entrepreneurship, which isn't stressed enough around college students...unless you are a business student. It's important though, and I think there are many people with tons of potential and leadership skills that could run a business. Work for someone else for a few years to learn about how business really goes down, and then have a go at it. I think you become more responsible this way to minimize the risk that comes with running a business (80% of businesses fail before 3 years pass). It all starts with interviewing though. Get that first J-O-B (that's so lame when people do that, breaking down a 3 letter word is insulting to me). So, visualize yourself dominating an interview for a minute before riding a bike at break neck speeds or doing whatever you do.

Unless you're a lady, then invest in business suits and nice blouses and [insert other classy articles of female clothing because this is all I know]. I have seen guys walking in to interview with companies wearing dress pants and button down shirts which may be fine for some companies. Too bad their interviewers were in full suits aka rocking the business professional. When you are not dressed up at the same level of the interviewer, points have just fallen off your side of the scoreboard. It's always good to at least wear a tie. Dress to impress as the interviewer's perception of you is decided in the first few seconds after they see you. From there on out, your responses and personality can either weaken or strengthen their initial decision of if you may be a good fit for their company. Don't dig a hole to climb out of before you even begin the interview which is going to be awkward enough for you. Plus, walking around campus in your finest garments will no doubt result in some wandering eyes becoming strangely attracted to your aura.

A quality movie, check it out later. Also a skill you should build up or shape if you already have it. If you feel awkward or nervous going up to company reps at career fairs, then you are a normal human being. The more times you do it, the less it will bother you. You need to try not to show it, though, if you are feeling uneasy. That's why it's good to go up to companies that you have hardly any interest in, and just work on your skills. In time, you will be a natural. Some people get so nervous and worked up, and then go straight to the top company on their list and just give a horrible impression of their true self. Progressively work your way up to the companies that you really want to look at seriously. That's why I recommend spending several hours at a career fair experimenting and learning what to do. Another thing to remember is that you are interviewing these people as well because you will be dedicating at least a few years of your life to the company that you choose to work for. You want to make sure that they are really right for you. Take your time, build up confidence, and leave the most personable and natural representation of yourself with the reps working for the companies that matter most to you. Oh, and you'll probably end up getting interviews and offers from some of those "practice" companies. Take the interviews to gain experience, or leave them on the table if you honestly are studying that much for your history of bubble gum exam and can't spare a half hour of your time. Is that a real class? I don't know. It should be.

Everyone and their mothers has either a cell phone or an ipod, gigabeat, sansa, zune, or or [insert your mp3 player here] to their ear at all times when walking around campus or town. When you walk into a career fair, meeting room for candidates prior to interviewing, or any other location where you are trying to find a job or internship, put the cell phones and ipods away. Take the time to talk to other people, and find out what they know. Talk to any company reps greeting people. Do anything that makes it appear that you can socialize and not just rock out to the newest track from The Fray or talk to your friend about that guy that you stared at for 45 minutes at the bar last night (OMG!!!). Some people claim that it helps them relax before interviewing. Listen to whatever song it is that pumps you up or settles you down on the way to the interview or career fair, and then just keep it in your head. No earbuds though. I think it sends a horrible impression if you are just sitting there bobbing your head or intently listening to nature sounds with your eyes closed (funny as it sounds, you will no doubt see other candidates doing these things). Moral of the story: take the opportunity to learn from your classmates and company reps rather than draining the battery power on your phone or musical device.

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and it's time to release this into the wild. What if employers either interviewed over AIM or included an AIM or other type of messaging session in the interviewing process? That would be nuts, but I can see why they would. In my office, we use windows messenger to communicate more so than phone, among the younger generation. It's less distracting since we are in cubes and talking on the phone can bother other people, and the person can answer whenever they get a break in their work. Our generation grew up chatting online, so its only natural to continue this trend when we need to work with others who are located across the office. What happens when more of our generation is in the workplace, and eventually clients will be IM'ing us. You'll have to maintain a professional tone and communicate as effectively as you could over the phone. I'm not saying that messaging will replace the phone, but I can see it becoming widely used in business as we start to take the reigns. Employers and recruiters may start using a test IM session with possible candidates to see how quickly and effectively they can present themselves through this medium. I doubt it will ever become an interviewing tool (other than to schedule meetings) as you have to meet students and candidates in person with the liability and investment in hiring someone who is new. Just you wait, it will probably happen. Something to think about.

I'm sure a lot of you are going through all the different rounds and stages of interviewing right now for your dream jobs. Leave a comment and let me know how its going or if you have any questions. Some things to remember about interviewing:

* Don't let the recruiter interview you the entire time. Interview them.
* Ask them some BIG questions:
o What are you looking for in the ideal candidate for this position?
o Describe the culture of your company, if you could.
o What daily tasks will I be performing as a fresh out of college employee?
o What percentage of my time will be spent doing mundane, entry level work?
o What percentage of my time would I be traveling?
o What do you offer for your customers and more importantly, your employees, that other companies do not?
o What is the turnover percentage right now and what kind of chances do I have of growing my career with you?
* Just relax and enjoy learning about possibly working for this company.

The biggest thing that most companies are looking for in a college graduate is personal skills. If they can talk and carry on a casual and pleasant conversation with you then your chances of securing an offer are pretty good. It may take a few rounds of interviewing, but it will happen. Be sure to dress appropriately, suits in most occasions but at least a tie for guys or a nice blouse/top for the ladies (women's clothing is not my area of expertise so help me out ladies). I wish you all the best of luck, and if you have any questions send me a message by email or leave a comment.