Bullies fall into two categories. The first merely like to make us feel small. They are obviously troubled by a deep-seated sense of inferiority, but that is no consolation to us who have to suffer their rudeness. When we enter the room, they do not bother to put us at ease. Their questions are mainly closed, or if open invariably start with 'Why'. At the end they dismiss us with a wave of the hand. Mind you, we are thankful to get out of their presence.
The second category of bully is perhaps even more dangerous because they disguise their real motives behind some pseudo-psychological principle. They have heard or read about 'stress interviewing', and they excuse their bullying by saying that they want to see how we will behave under pressure. They throw question after question at us, and their body language conveys the clear message that they believe nothing we tell them.
They do not realize that it is questionable whether such techniques work. We may be able to respond well to a stress interview but collapse under the strain of a real-life crisis. On the other hand, we may find the environment of the interview such an effort that we freeze or clam up, but put us into a situation that demands all our emotional maturity and we perform brilliantly. No matter what our potential, we never get the chance to show what we really can do because we fail to come up to the absurd and unreal expectations imposed on us by such interviews.
This is not to say that interviewers should not make their interviews demanding. In fact, they have a duty to do so, but they can achieve this far more effectively by being polite and businesslike, by asking questions that make interviewees think and by giving them the freedom to respond fully.
Runners are those who would prefer never to conduct inter views, but as sometimes they are forced to do so, they try to get through them as quickly as possible, no matter how difficult or demanding the subject. Their eyes are seldom off their watches even while the interviewees are answering their questions.
They also interrupt to make phone calls (‘just got to call my accountant') and brief excursions outside their office ('Have to tell my secretary something'). Invariably they end their inter views with a final 'Sorry, got to dash', and disappear out of the office before the interviewee has finished his or her last reply. They probably do not intend to do so, but the effect of their impatience is to make us feel insignificant, and they very seldom get anything worthwhile out of their hurried interviews. Good time-keeping is good interviewing, and if an interview can be kept short, it should; but that is different from forcing the pace.
Neurotics cannot sit still, physically or mentally. They pace up and down the room while we are trying to answer their questions. They twiddle with objects on their desk (of which they always seem to have an ample supply), they cross and uncross their legs, they make little paper balls out of our CVs, they bite their nails and examine their handiwork from time to time, and then cannot look us in the eye while they are talking to us. They also leap about from topic to topic, and concentrating on the direction of their questions is near impossible. After few minutes spent in their company we are exhausted and quite ready to certify ourselves.
Policemen are rigidly conformist in how they conduct their interviews, doing all the right things, but in such a way that they threaten us instead of making us feel comfortable. They will greet us and shake our hand firmly, but we shall not feel welcome. They will ask the right questions, but we shall not sense they are really interested in what we have to tell them. If we try to develop a point, they will interrupt with a curt 'Please, just answer my question', as if they were in a court of law.
They also sit in judgment on us, letting us know by the occasional frown, the pursed lips or shake of head that they are convinced we are guilty, whatever we say. If we go before them for a job, we end up believing that everything we told them was a lie. When they appraise us, we feel that we are not worth the money they pay us. They never agree with us; but they are too well trained actually to argue.
Clowns were told that the way to put interviewees at ease was to tell us jokes. Either because they are so anxious themselves, or because they are totally lacking in empathy, they do not realize that someone working overtime at being funny can be far more embarrassing and disagreeable than a quiet, polite individual who gets on with the interview with as few preliminaries as possible.
The other problem with clowns is that their humor is often in poor taste. They make jokes about our names if they are at all unusual. (That one's quite a tongue-twister, what!') They tease young interviewees with references to their looks or age. ('You don't look old enough to be out of school let alone coming to us for a job.') Women are made to squirm with embarrassment with facetious comments. ('What's a pretty girl like you doing applying for an engineer's job?' - a prohibited question, by the way, under Equal Opportunities legislation)
Clowns, we are told, are irrepressible, which is a pity because they can do a great deal of damage to the reputation of a company, and no one will ever persuade them to change their act.
Shoulders are always there if we need someone to lean on or to cry with, and even if we would rather just talk, they encourage us to express our feelings by shaking their heads or clicking their tongues sympathetically and by murmuring, 'How awful it must've been. How terrible for you,' and the like. Shoulders are like bullies. They, too, use interviews as an exercise of power, but in a more subtle and, possible, more dangerous, way. They do not insult or hurt us, but they want us to depend on them, and in the final reckoning both undermine our self-respect.
Instead of helping us, they make it more difficult for us to solve our own problems. We come to resent this apparent concern as an unwarranted intrusion into what we regard as our own business, and so they do more harm to us than good.
Don Juans are a menace. They imagine that they are irresistible to women, and they treat every interview with a woman as a potential sexual encounter. Their demeanor is over-familiar and flirtatious. Their handshake is lingering, sometimes accompanied by a hand on the arm or back; their questions, often personal, are charged with hidden meanings.
(‘Do you mind working late in the evenings?', 'What would your husband say if you had to travel occasionally?') Their eye contact, instead of being friendly and intermittent, is lingering and persistent. They are seldom so obvious as to lay themselves open to a charge of harassment or sex discrimination, but everything they do or say reveals them to be basically contemptuous of women. Because their actions are intimidating, no one has the courage to report them, so they continue with their odious activities undetected.
The examples, admittedly, are slightly exaggerated and, though few people fall clearly into any one category, few of us are entirely free of some of these unfortunate traits. Awareness of our defects, however, is the first and most important step if we want to change ourselves because, in doing so, we shall also be improving our skills as interviewers, which is the whole object of the exercise.
