honest answers to all of your interview questions.

I’m not very good at interviewing.  I’m just not.  Why?  I get nervous.  I tend to answer peoples questions the way I envision them wanting to hear answers, trying to form each and every syllable with perfect diction and direction.  Very similar to the way people answer focus group questions.  Why nervous?  I get nervous because I tend to think that what I actually feel about a subject is so irrelevant or uninteresting that it will without a doubt be the “wrong” answer and I will be totally fucked.  This behavior has led to many awkward pauses during clunky interviews full of boring and safe answers, which has to this point left me . .totally fucked.

Also after thinking about some of the questions I have been asked such as “What is your biggest fear,” or “What do you want to do with your life,” then of course there is “where do you see yourself in ten years,” and “What is your favorite color, and why?”  I catch myself thinking “Who the fuck cares?” But then I realize that I do because I don’t know the answer to any of these.

But what if there was a world where you really could just say what you felt all the time, without the fear of trying to develop your persona or persuade someone what the “insert your name here” brand would be like.  It would be like sitting in a dimly lit bar about six beers deep with only two or three people.  Which is the way I think interviews really ought to go.

So here is an attempt at that.  Here is an attempt at answering those questions the way I really would, and next time, will.  All of the “questions” have been taken from actual interviews.

“Tell me about the brand ‘Bryan’ ” 

Alright but that is a pretty vague question. Actually, can we put “Bryan” in some sort of context? I mean when I think “Bryan” I think transient, but what does that really tell you? 

“Alright then, well where does your brand live?”

Who cares? He probably lives on a back porch talking about all of the things he did when he was younger, and then he realizes that he is talking too much so he opens a bottle of wine and starts to ask a whole lot of questions about  you and what brought you to the same back porch as him.  Eventually the two of you will be drunk and he will try and convince you that you can actually kill fish with a cross-bow.

But in reality he lives in his dad’s basement and is trying to find a job as quickly as possible because being there is driving him fucking crazy.

“What kind of wine?”

Red

“Who would you have lunch with if you could have lunch with anyone dead or alive?”

Hemingway

“Why?”

Because I would want to try and drink him under the table.

“Who is your favorite author”

Well, I already used Hemingway, so lets go with Hunter S. Thomson. 

“Why?”

Because he just told the truth all the time, his writing was about himself and his struggle with just being human, and how fucking awkward it is.

“Ok, well why do you think you should be a planner”

Because I am ridiculously fascinated with people and I didn’t have the guff to make it as a psychiatrist.  Which incidentally was my original plan, but don’t they really do the same thing?  Just go out there, get to know people, figure out what is wrong or right and take a lot of notes? I guess the difference is one starts with the problem and the other assigns it.

“Where do you see yourself in Ten years?”

I hope to have started my own shop.  I started my own business to get myself through college and realized it is very rewarding to work for yourself.

“How do you manage work / life balance?”

Being a planner is being naturally curious and trying to solve problems and that is what I like to do.  When I am not at work I am still asking the same questions about people and their motivations it just isn’t for any specific direction, it is more for entertainment. That being stated, I am pretty good at shutting off my brain, and enjoying the crap out of my weekends.

“What is your biggest fear?”

Submarines at night.  I was recently on a sailing trip and one night while anchored and sleeping on deck I awoke to a low whirling and seemingly distant wushing sound.  I looked a few hundred yards to my left and realized that a large submarine and just emerged from the water and was now going in a straight line north across my horizon.  I could only see the top of the tower out of the water and the navigation lights glowing just under the surface.  I just sat there, petrified until it disappeared, which scared me even more.

“If you could do anything what would it be”

If I could do anything with my life, it certainly wouldn’t be Nascar.  No, I probably wouldn’t be a movie star either. I would want to be some indy rock kid that makes it just far enough to sell a few million records but won’t be hassled running down the street and can still afford to do pretty much whatever.  I’d want to be the type of rocker that sits on Pat Lorentzs’ night driving playlist. But my definition of adulthood was realizing that I won’t get famous for playing the guitar. . so I would have to say a travel-writer.  Yes, I want to be some sort of writer so that other people can point out how awkward my confused view is and hopefully get some sort of entertainment value from it.

“What are some things that you haven’t brought up in your other interviews?”

I don’t drink coffee, actually I can’t have any caffeine or sugar because I react to it like a four year old.  If I so much as have a bowl of ice cream after 4pm I end up counting ceiling tiles all night.

“Anything else?”

I measure my day one victory at a time, if I can find my Ipod adapter cable today I win, If not I lose.

“What is your favorite color, and why?”

I don’t have one, because I don’t really care that much about colors.  Why do you people keep asking this?

“What is your strongest point?”

I’m an entrepreneur at heart, I like to get things done and get on to the next.  I am sort of a self-starter.

“I see, and what is your weakest point?”

My grammar blows.

“Why did you write this ridiculous article about yourself?  Didn’t you find it was a little pretentious?”

Because I needed to put some thought into how I felt about the sorts of questions interviewers seemed to be asking these days in order to make my next interview a little more successful.  It wasn’t meant to be pretentious, more like private practice.

“Your thirty minutes is up.”

Cheers, so should I call you?

“No, we’ll call you.”