Male Boss: Then you and I need to go hang out some time you know it.

Male Interviewee: Sure man.

Male Boss: Awesome. How about I give you a call in a couple days and we can go get our party on dude.

Male Interviewee: Sounds good.

Male Boss: Great! Have a good trip.

Male Boss: Um, Patrick, hey can you sit there for a while, I need to talk to somebody else.

Male Boss: Linda, hi, come on in, come on in.

Nice to meet you. I’m Mr. Miller. I’m so sorry I kept you waiting.

It’s just that the last guy that I interviewed, he was such a character.

Turns out we were both from the same home town and we had so much to talk about and went way over time

but you know what, you and I are here now so let’s get into it alright?

Female Interviewee: Okay.

Male Boss: Um, oh here is some low down on our company

and you can just look at that while I review your resume.

We do a whole lot of different things but you probably know that already.

Oh, it looks like your name may be of the oriental perspective.

Female Interviewee: Excuse me?

Male Boss: Well, my sister’s husband, he’s oriental and I’ve just got to say I love Orientals.

They are such a clean people. You know, well except for those Chinese restaurants,

have you heard about those? Horror stories, horror stories, tons of roaches.

Roaches everywhere. You’re not Chinese Oriental are you?

Female Interviewee: No, I’m Tai.

Male Boss: Okay, um, oh I see that you have been working at Ackerbee-Nelson.

Female Interviewee: Uh huh!

Male Boss: Tell me, who’s your boss over there. I know those guys.

Female Interviewee: Shelley Heart, she’s my supervisor.

Male Boss: Shelley Heart. I love Shelley, she’s fantastic.

You know I wonder if she knows you are over here interviewing for a new job.

Laughs! Oh, hey, listen. What type of experience do you have doing collections in the health care industry?

Female Interviewee: I’ve actually worked for Integra and a couple other places but my experience is mostly … (cut off by Male Boss)

Male Boss: Hey, as long as I know you know how to bring in the money, we’re good.

Tell me, do you have any children, any family, anything like that we need to be concerned about?

Female Interviewee: I have a son. He is in elementary school.

Male Boss: Just the one so far. I guess your husband helps take care of the kid when you’re at work.

Female Interviewee: Actually I’m not married. We divorced a couple of years ago.

Male Boss: Oh, well I only ask because sometimes this job requires working at night

and now and then on the weekend and as a single mom how are you going to deal with that and well what if you got pregnant again?

Female Interviewee: Actually I’ve already accomplished getting child care established so that’s not even an issue for me.

Male Boss: Wow! That’s very impressive. Hmmm, it sounds like you are well like very organized.

You know how to juggle a lot of different things at the same time.

Very, very impressive. Listen, I’m thrilled to hear that you have some of the skills that we use here and the thing is

I’m out of time because my last interview. You know, the one that went over but

the guy was just so good and we had so much to talk about. It was awesome but I want to thank you for

coming by today and talking with me. It has been really good.

Female Interviewee: Actually I have a couple of questions about the company and about the job position.

Male Boss: Oh oh, anything you ask is probably going to be answered right there in that brochure.

You can keep that (he hesitates) and someone from HR might call you, um, at some point. Alright?

Female Interviewee: Alright. Okay.

Male Boss: Great, you have a good day.

Male Boss: Snaps fingers at Female Interviewee and mouths the words “Thank you very much.”

Male Boss: Dials phone and says “Hello Blair! Uh huh!”

Karen Thornton: Hello, I’m Karen Thornton. As we’ve seen, Mr. Miller could use a few pointers on the interviewing process.

From beginning to end, not only were his questions and behavior disrespectful, some of them were darn right illegal.

On a deeper level, Mr. Miller failed to use the interview process to his full advantage.

He didn’t give the candidate a fair chance to articulate her qualifications

and has potentially cheated his company out of the opportunity to hire a great new employee.

In this series, we’ll help you avoid making those mistakes and discuss why it’s important to

have good interviewing skills. We’ll also go over the steps needed to prepare for, conduct,

and conclude an interview. And along the way we’ll help Mr. Miller do a better job with his next interview.