Naked truth about interviews :

Fine art of image stripping

Gaston de Rosayro

The difficulty with job interviews is that so much advice is published on how to survive them - if you’re the interviewee that is. Even seasoned interviewees occasionally get butterflies. Being nervous weighs you down, makes the interview seem interminable and makes you look uptight. More importantly, it prevents you from being who you are. Although being nervous is not something you can easily control, you can learn to mask it. I was offered some tips in this regard from a job-hopping uncle who actually created a record of sorts in the pursuit of professions.

Uncle Roger, later known as ‘Dodger,’ secured more than 30 jobs in an astoundingly successful and chequered career. As a rolling stone he adroitly leapfrogged all opposing contenders with the panache of an athlete of Olympian magnitude. I was a callow youth at the time when Roger advised me that I could clip the wings of the butterflies and reinforce my sense of superiority with a little imagination. The advice he advocated was simple yet bizarre. He insisted that I should picture my interviewers without clothes.

Uncle Roger conveying a peculiarly deadpan expression propounded his theory thus: “All it takes is a little imagination, my boy. You simply have to conjure a mental image of the persons holding your future in their hands in their birthday suits. I emphasize nude, as starkers under their clothes, do you understand?”

I nodded in reluctant agreement while he went on to clarify the importance of visualizing the big-shot inquisitors in their natural state: “And if you feel the interview is going nowhere, or the employers are rude or trying to be patronizing just give them hell. Kick them up their...well you-know-where...and get the hell out of there.

It’s the image, dear boy, or rather the satisfaction of stripping them of that image of all-powerful control in your mind that counts most. And when I say projecting them in the raw, I mean the ultra form of unconcealed raw that has come to be commonly accepted as ‘buck naked.’ Get it?” he barked.

I nodded again in acquiescence. After all he had been the undisputed champion of all roving job-seekers and a darn successful one at that. And in similarity to Julius Caesar’s immortal ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici’ (I came, I saw, I conquered) Roger’s line with a slight amendment should have read: “I came. I worked. I vanished”.

Having tried to practice the maestro’s technique, I must say quite honestly, that I am not quite sure this advice actually works to your advantage all the time. What I mean is it works sometimes, such as when I was alone in the ring with a quartet of grossly corpulent bullies with slack jaws and even slacker blanch mangling bellies and bottoms. They were all confrontational and offensive. I had already decided I was not going to work for this gang of goons at any cost.

The ad-firm vacancy was for a copywriter. But one of the fat-faced brigands kept harping on my lack of expertise in computer technology with aggressive impertinence. I was in a career-suicide mood by then. I stretched out across the conference table and switched on the public intercom so the whole office could hear the debate before spitting out my venom: “Now look here fat man, I am a wordsmith not a functional, fiddlesome computer technician. Besides, artificial intelligence could be no match for your natural stupidity.”

The entire group was gob-smacked. My questioner turned apoplectic stuttering: “Wha...wha...what did you just say?” I was in total control by now and enjoying every moment of it. “You heard me the first time, you and your mob of tyrannical obese goons. If any of you grossly overweight slobs dare stand up I will puncture your blubbering bellies.

You can take your job and shove it where the monkey stuffed his nuts. I strode purposefully out of that boardroom to be greeted by a cacophony of resounding cheers in the general office area. I acknowledged the adulation with a flutter of airy half salutes as expected of a conquering hero. Then I was out of that office like a bat out of Hell!