The never-ending job interview.

I like it when places give you one job interview and then hire you. It's happened once or twice.

(It happened at ipackets. They hired me after meeting me for 20 minutes, but 6 months later they were out of business.)

Unfortunately, that's just not the trend anymore. Now the trend is toward multiple interviews.

On Friday I have my third interview with a big company. This one is a panel interview with all the managers.

I also had to do a grammar test and two writing tests. I also had to show them my writing samples.

The bad news is that it takes forever to go through their hiring process. The good news is that maybe lots of applicants will drop out somewhere along the line and I'll get an offer.

I'm slumming it a work.

When I go to rich companies for job interviews I realize how much I'm slumming it in my current job.

Today I had a job interview at a huge auction company - a company that makes billions and billions of dollars. Their building was like a glass palace. They had an in-house cafeteria, daycare and fitness room.

They had glass elevators and huge walkways and giant pillars. They had LCD monitors embedded in the glass for chrissakes.

Here, I work out of a classroom in an old elementary school that's closing in a month and a half. The fluorescent lights in the classroom hum. My boss sits so close to me that I can hear her breathe. The hallways smell like chemical disinfectant.

There are no LCD monitors embedded in the glass, but there are stick-figure paintings of people and animals pinned to bulletin boards along hallways.

Is this actually a benefit of a job?

Last week during my telephone interview, when we were discussing salary, she told me a range which was too low.

I told her this and she said, "Oh but don't worry, that doesn't include overtime!" She said it brightly, excitedly, like this was a huge benefit.

I said, "Pardon?"

She said, "Most companies don't pay you for overtime, but we do. That will push your salary up to your range!"

So let me get this straight. The salary is low but if I work extra long hours, I'll have an average salary? In other words, I get to work longer and harder for an average salary and this is a benefit!!! Wow!! Sounds like an amazing place to work!

The only problem is I want to work smarter not harder. I don't want a job that requires working long hours and weekends just to earn what everyone else in the industry is already making.

It's beyond me why they think this is actually a benefit. But I've come to expect that many corporations and human resources people choose to be deluded.

How do I relate-socially with someone who's 19?

I have another phone interview today. The woman sounds very very young. Early 20s is my guess. Maybe even 19.

I wrote in an earlier posting that I've decided to treat phone interview more like social chats. Most phone interviews are more like elimination interviews. A sure way to be eliminated is to start stiffly talking about how qualified you are for the job.

"What a loser," the interviewer would think. "Why would I want to hire a cold dude that only talks about his work?"

But if you're social during a telephone interview, the person will say, "Hey, he's pretty cool. Plus his resume shows he's qualified. Let's call him in and see in person."

This technique has worked for me 100% of the time! (1 for 1).

Now the problem is, because she's so young, how do I relate? I've never spoken socially to a young person before.

I have no idea what young adults talk about from ages 18 until about 25. How do I sound cool and hip, without coming off as trying to hard?

I need to think of some great stories to tell.

I had a job interview 2 days ago.

It went pretty well. I had read in Richard Wiseman's new book, 59 Seconds, that the scientific studies about job interviews shows they're not really about qualifications. It's about social comfort.

If you ingratiate yourself to the interviewer you have a good chance of getting the job. So I tried a new strategy. Think of the interview as 25% social. I had a couple of social stories rehearsed - one about driving, one about hay fever and one about coffee.

I used 2 out of 3.

Turns out the manager was also a laid-back, social guy who said, "I'm not into the whole job interview thing." Our interview was basically like a conversation between two people. He was on "holiday mode" because, well, he was on holidays.

He had come in to work just for the interviews. He said he was interviewing 3 candidates, one internal. That worried me a little - an internal candidate. But he said she annoyed him with an email so I might be okay.

Why it's hard to find a job here.

Well I had another phone elimination interview last week. I hate these pre-phone interviews where they ask you questions in hopes that they can eliminate you from their short list.

I wrote another blog entry about the challenge of a phone interview - how to keep my voice positive and upbeat when I sound naturally depressed and monotone.

I sensed I did okay in this phone interview. Hopefully he'll call me in for a real interview this week.

Anyway, a few people have asked me how the job market was here. I don't really know at this point. My impression is that there are jobs here, but they're hard to get because of a hugely qualified pool of workers.

In other words, when you apply for jobs your biggest obstacle are the hundreds of resumes from people who are very highly qualified.

It's an employers' market, and they have the best of the best lining up to work for them. That's why it's hard to get a good job.

(At least this is what I tell myself whenever I get rejected for a new job.)

An easy way to lose your job.

If you want to lose your job, just get your wife pregnant. Works every time.

For example, when Jake was born in 2007, a couple months after his birth, and the day before his heart surgery, my employer took me into a room and said they were laying me off.

Flash forward to the present. My employer just told me they were ending my contract early because they ran out of money. When? The same week that my next child is due.

This technique of losing our job by getting your wife pregnant works really well during a recession. It also works well in a tight-labour market.

It's great because at about the time in your life when you're most sleep-deprived, broke, overworked and exhausted you also get to look for a new job.

How to predict someone's performance.

I think it's interesting that we pretty much can't predict people's job performance ahead of time. Academics don't matter, intelligence doesn't matter, personality tests don't matter, traditional job interviews don't matter.

I was reading What the dog saw: and other adventure stories by Malcolm Gladwell. He talked about researchers at Harvard studying the effectiveness of teachers.

Apparently, if you watch a 10 second video-tape of someone teaching, you can rate their effectiveness as accurately as a class who's had that teacher for a semester. In other words, your snap judgment is pretty accurate.

Same with job interviews. People who watched a video of the first 20 seconds of a meeting between a candidate and the interviewer, judged the candidate just the same as the interviewer did.

Yet job interviews are a rite of passage in our society. I've had dozens and dozens of them. They're a sham, and generally pointless. They're not related to job performance and they're superfluous since you can make up your mind on whether you like a candidate within 20 seconds anyway.*

(*Note: I'm just talking "traditional" job interviews here. Structured, behavioural interviews are shown to be a better predictor of performance. The problem is almost no companies use them. I've had 2 in my life - and I failed to get the job in both of them.)