The Every Three Weekly Obligatory Advice Column
Dear Every Three Weekly,I can't tell you how happy I am to finally be done with college and school in general, after so many years. I graduate at the end of April, but unlike some of my classmates, I haven't yet landed a job for after graduation. I've got a couple of interviews lined up, but I'm nervous about the whole prospect.
E3W, please tell me how I can best ready myself for getting a job after I graduate.
Sincerely,
Frank Masterson
This month's response is from: Stuart Traugh, Computer Science Graduate Student, College of Engineering
The key to meeting new people in any situation is to make a good first impression, and having a successful job interview is no exception. The keys to a successful job interview are a strong resume and a professional appearance.
First, and most important toward getting an interview, is your resume. Your potential interviewer knows that you're applying right out of school so it's very important to distinguish your resume from the pile of other applicants. Make sure you include all of your previous job experience, even if you don't think it's relevant to the field you're applying for. When applying for a job at Google last year, I made sure to mention my job as the Hunter leader in my guild
Secondly, you have to "dress for success" as I've heard it said, which officially rules out anything you might have worn for the last four years. You may think that your suit from high school fits like a charm, but it's probably a little more snug than you remember. After all, your pants size changed six times through your freshman fifteen, sophomore thirty, and junior "Cadbury Caramel Egg"-induced fifty-five, and JC Penny suits are ill-suited (I rock!) to alterations. In the end, you should probably buy a new suit and iron your Star Trek Captains necktie, although appearance doesn't end with a freshly pressed Captain Picard (but you should make sure you clean off the pizza sauce, it's really hard to miss against his sexy, bald head. Picard could totally make the bald thing work, but Kirk was stuck with that stupid hairpiece. First Contact is so much better than Wrath of Khan, anyway, and if you need any other convincing that TNG is better than TOS, I've got two words for you: Riker's Beard). Anyway, your body language and other mannerisms can go a long way.
When you enter the interview room, dangle your limp hand no more than a foot and a half from your torso in the barest attempt to make a handshake. Do not, under any circumstances, squeeze or attempt to move your hand independently. The handshake is a delicate waltz, with your prospective employer as the leading man and you as his dainty feminine companion, eager for his tight, sweaty embrace. This handshake tells the interviewer "I am a man with no spine. I offer little resistance to you and can be manipulated at will. I am soft, malleable, and will probably have sex with you if it will get me a job." They love that stuff. My uncle says that I would've never gotten the job working for him on the construction site if I had been "too tight," so that handshake advice has been tested in action. I don't know why he told me to thank my dad, though. I don't really remember that much about him, except for the smell of whiskey and almost nightly spankings. Oh well, thanks Dad!
Although your handshake is weak, your voice must be strong, like a level 15 Sorcerer casting an empowered Shout spell. Nothing shows your determination like 30 hit points worth of sonic damage. The interviewer will be confused at first, namely due to the 2d6 rounds of deafness, but afterwards you can be sure that they'll listen to you. If they're too fragile to survive the damage, don't worry about it, they're not even level 5 Managers (Level 5 managers have, at most, 30 hit points, but it's highly unlikely they rolled that high). Managers don't even get "Hire Without Approval" until level 7 anyway, so these guys are as useless as a Bard in D&D v3.0.
Follow this advice and you're sure to get dozens of job offers from employers who are bound to be impressed by your sexy physique, unending charisma, and raw technical prowess. If you don't get any offers, don't be discouraged. You're probably too awesome for the real world and should probably go to grad school for another couple of years. There, you can finally finish your thesis on the practical uses of ASCII-based Japanese anime erotica on mainframe systems of the 1980s. Then the world will finally realize your true brilliance.
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