TRAPS: Beware
– if you are unprepared for this question, you will probably not handle it
right and possibly blow the interview.
Thank goodness most interviewers don’t employ it. It’s normally used by those determined to see
how you respond under stress. Here’s how
it works:
You answer
an interviewer’s question and then, instead of asking another, he just stares
at you in a deafening silence.
You wait,
growing a bit uneasy, and there he sits, silent as Mt. Rushmore, as if he
doesn’t believe what you’ve just said, or perhaps making you feel that you’ve
unwittingly violated some cardinal rule of interview etiquette.
When you get
this silent treatment after answering a particularly difficult question , such
as “tell me about your weaknesses”, its intimidating effect can be most
disquieting, even to polished job hunters.
Most
unprepared candidates rush in to fill the void of silence, viewing prolonged,
uncomfortable silences as an invitation to clear up the previous answer which
has obviously caused some problem. And
that’s what they do – ramble on, sputtering more and more information,
sometimes irrelevant and often damaging, because they are suddenly playing the
role of someone who’s goofed and is now trying to recoup. But since the candidate doesn’t know where or
how he goofed, he just keeps talking, showing how flustered and confused he is
by the interviewer’s unmovable silence.
BEST ANSWER: Like a primitive tribal mask, the Silent
Treatment loses all it power to frighten you once you refuse to be
intimidated. If your interviewer pulls
it, keep quiet yourself for a while and then ask, with sincere politeness and
not a trace of sarcasm, “Is there anything else I can fill in on that point?” That’s all there is to it.
Whatever you
do, don’t let the Silent Treatment intimidate you into talking a blue streak,
because you could easily talk yourself out of the position.
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