Good manners; politeness; consideration of others; those are some of the reasons the job interview issue mentioned in this article will rarely see the light of day in any forum.
And hope the observations cited herein -- regarding why someone may not get hired in a timely fashion and why those job seekers rarely hear back from an employer after they interview -- are never associated with you - even when such job candidates bring excellent skills and job know-how into their job interview.
In fact, this job interview issue is so destructive to a job search it is more akin to dropping solid human waste into the middle of a birthday party. Is that too strong an image to evoke? Well... keep reading and decide for yourself.
No, I am not speaking of job search issues such as offering an HR rep a poor resume (which is bad enough on its own), or being late to a job interview, or choosing the wrong garb, or not researching a potential employer prior to a job interview. No, the issue I speak of here will rarely - if ever --come to the attention of the job seeker who allows this damaging job interview issue to prevail.
"Did he smell like poop to you?"
Don't laugh. This author has attended thousands of job interviews. Far too many of them held me captive inside a small-to-medium sized office where, when the door was closed for privacy, a stale beefy odor would begin building inside the room, causing mere minutes of my life to ache into horrific quarter-hour increments.
I don't mean to be rude - which is exactly why most such job candidates with the issue described here will never be notified as to why they did not get that all important call for a second job interview. After all, who is going to be that person to phone and inform a job candidate that they were eliminated from consideration of hire due to an overt human smell? What would the legal ramifications be for a business that made such a phone call?
After all, any one of us may find that our deodorant fails and as a result body odor manifests - which is quite understandable. At some point in our lives it happens for many of us, we get nervous and we sweat, and since job interviews make some of us very nervous it may cause us to exude additional amounts of perspiration; ergo - increased body odor.
At other times, though, in my experience, some job candidates find themselves setting new records for interview odors, often not even realizing at the time that they carried with them into the job interview their resume, their job references -- and a noxious scent so strong that it destroyed any chance to get hired.
I offer two real-life examples to illustrate this issue; examples that may cause you to cringe, yet examples that I personally witnessed and experienced both with my eyes and my nose. Please excuse the vividness of the words to follow, they are the only way I know to express the negative bias this job interview issue usually brings to bear for both the afflicted job seeker and the innocent employers simply trying to hire the best person possible to fill their job opening.
Example one -- focuses on an intelligent, professionally dressed lady in a very stylish and appropriate dark-blue business suit (it was winter season); which in later retrospect was lucky for us and for she, given the results witnessed. She was interviewing for an office management position for a multiple practice facility of medical specialists. As she entered the room and the door was closed behind her there was an immediate and strong scent of urine, which mingled and intertwined with a light, lemony perfume she wore, enough to give the lemon scent a decided twist! An odor that increased its want of attention as the first minutes of the interview began. What was causing the odor? We did not know and were too polite to ask (please refer to the first sentence in this article). So we quickly completed the job interview, only to notice afterward that she had left a small wet spot in the chair she occupied; true story.
Example two -- another such job related meeting lasted only five minutes or so due to a small, but brown shaded, stain that a job candidate carried with him as he stood to introduce himself there in the small conference room where the interview was to occur. A stain that was clearly seen by us when he turned to sit, a brownish colored mark, having formed inside the creased area of this job candidate's pants; a place on the pants where his bottom met the seat of the chair - a stain casting up a strong aroma of well warmed human feces. Very fresh feces, I may add. A smell that had already permeated the room, as he had been asked to await ten minutes or so as I completed some notes I was making prior to the job interview about to take place.
Some readers will accuse this author of exploiting a few limited outrageous circumstances for purposes of media attention - and they would be correct in that accusation. Too many good job seekers miss out on great job offers due to this interview issue, thereby demanding it be addressed in a public forum, if the issue is not to be discussed in the job interview itself - which will likely never occur, due to good manners, politeness, and consideration of others, as mention in the first sentence of this article.
Probably most job seeker readers of this article will assume they will never have to deal with such a noxious problem as those addressed herein. Maybe the defeated job seekers used in the examples above had health issues that exacerbated their bodies and caused the offending circumstances; it's probably true. Does that knowledge repair the issue for them or the employers, or others? No.
And too often it is not a health issue at fault; I have attended such interviews where way too much cologne or perfume was applied by the job candidate, enough to literally chase out of the room job interviewers having allergic reactions to the chemicals hanging in the air of the room; again, a true story.
Same for job candidates who arrive carrying a very strong smell of fuel; in more than one case job candidates had just filled their their vehicles with gas and inadvertently spilled gasoline heavy upon their shoes and/or hands and the odor carried into the room, other job candidates sported a healthy farmyard character, even as job interviewers sometimes noted a series of brownish carpet stains from something those candidates had stepped into before arriving for the job interview.
Whether it's a case of unexpected diarrhea, a step into a putrid pile, an over measure of cheap (or expensive) cologne or perfume, weak urethral muscles causing a leak, profuse body odor from sweat - whatever the offending scent, double check yourself for these related job interview issues prior to attending your next job interview. And do not assume that you are the one person in the world that such a thing will never happen to, even as you are pulling into a fuel station for a quick fill-up on the way to a job interview.
Mark Baber, Job Placement expert and Radio Host of "The Job Search Show," is a 20 year Executive Search specialist and Recruit Consultant, and advisor to [http://www.JobNewsRadio.com] & "JOB SEARCH MAGAZINE"; which includes a Job Search Directory job seekers use to access 1000's of hiring contacts in every region of the USA and in every industry, including telephone numbers, faxes, email addresses, web links and more, to help introduce you to hiring specialists willing to help you find gainful, career level employment.
Article Source: EzineArticles.com/8486118