John Butleron making a lasting first impression
Here's one for you - two men are interviewed for the same job. The first man comes in, breaks eye contact to turn around and close the door behind him, then offers each person on the panel a handshake and a howrya, hitches up his trousers and sits. His hair is tousled, his suit pressed - yet clearly not new - and his manner quite informal. He crosses his legs and the panel notices that while both socks are navy blue, the left one is not precisely the same colour as the right. Maybe one has been washed more than the other, because they belong to the same tonal range, but they are not the same colour - in short, he's wearing odd socks in a job interview.
When he has left, the second man enters, dressed in a crisp starter suit and tie, hair slicked against its will into a new shape. He fumbles awkwardly for the door handle behind him as he tries to maintain constant eye contact, and continues gawking at the panel as he lurches forward, then down onto the edge of a chair he could have sworn was much closer than that. He would have given a handshake, but he's just too sweaty right now, what with all the rules he has to remember. The chair bucks to the right, tipping him onto the ground and snapping his wrist bone in two. A guttural howl pierces the air. Rescue services are called, and splints are fashioned from broken chair-legs.
Which of these men has attended a course on interview technique? My money is on number two. I'm not saying interview candidate number one got the job, but I'm deeply suspicious of the benefits of these courses. There are some modes of behaviour you will have to learn for the workplace - if you were raised in the wild by a pack of wolves - but beyond that? Just as advertising finds new ways for us to feel bad about ourselves, these courses are the first to suggest that something is wrong - their very existence offers the thought up to you. They feed off the nervous anxiety you cannot avoid generating before a big meeting, anxiety which sharpens your senses naturally.
If you dread the idea of going into a room to explain why you are an amazing human being to people who want to give the most amazing human being they meet that day a pay rise, a course offering 1,000 rules of etiquette to memorise during the conversation might not help. No matter what you manage to remember, you'll always forget something. That one tiny thing (protective folding of the legs, careless reference to enjoying a bet, lit cigarette cupped in the left hand) is how the panel will recall you forever. So you may as well party.
Sometimes you can be doomed by your choice of seat. I went to a meeting with a Hollywood producer on the 18th floor of a mid-Wilshire Boulevard office block. I'm well aware that a sentence such as that one can read like a toe-curling brag of the highest order, but in Los Angeles, the dogs on the street can get a general meeting with top Hollywood producers. It has been well-reported that the business operates on the basis of fear and that these men and women will meet everyone once, in case they miss out on the next big thing. It's an understandable modus operandi - does anyone recall the name of the A and R man who turned down The Beatles?
For this meeting, I was in the company of my producer and my writing partner. That week, we had been sent spinning through a dozen such encounters with the most eccentric, dysfunctional people I've ever encountered. We've all read Down and Dirty Pictures and You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. Some of us have also read the Chevy Chase autobiography, so we get the picture.
We arrived on the 18th floor and were ushered into a conference room by a frazzled assistant. He scurried away to fetch unwanted mineral water and we surveyed the room. We saw one long boardroom table that could accommodate nine people on either side, and one at each end. "Make the right impression," I thought. "Be that one guy who locks antlers with him."
Down I sat, at the top, the other two flanking me, and I'll be damned if it didn't feel like checkmate already. We sat and chatted until the door swung open, and the producer stood in front of us, cracking his knuckles. He looked like Mussolini, only more stern. After a brief wordless pause, he strode to the other end of the table and sat down 20 yards away. He swivelled away from us and stared out the window for a moment, then swivelled back, introduced himself and we yodelled our pleasantries across the mahogany valley for 40 minutes.
Our second meeting with him came some nine months later. This time, we were shown into the producer's office and not the boardroom. This time he was on the phone, sitting with his feet up on a large desk in a cramped office. In front of us was a tiny two-seater couch and one leather office chair. The other two took the couch. A pause. It was a test, it had to be. I began to lower myself into the only chair, the office chair.
"That's my chair!"
I looked up. He was still talking on the phone, and wasn't even looking at me. Was he talking to me? I lowered myself once more.
"That's my chair! Sit on the sofa."
He wasn't talking to me, in fact, he was screaming at me. I wedged myself down beside the others on the low-slung couch, my knees higher than my head, and thought triumphantly: I've got this guy licked. I'm meeting him again in March. I intend to bring a deck chair. u
John Butler blogs at http://lozenge.wordpress.com