If you have been through more than a cou­ple of job inter­views as a can­di­date you most likely caught on quickly that you can’t antic­i­pate what you’ll walk into. Any­thing from a casual con­ver­sa­tion with a man­ager to a panel inqui­si­tion awaits you behind the door. Sure it’s daunt­ing, I don’t know many who would say their favorite activ­ity is going to a job interview.

The very min­i­mum you should be guar­an­teed is that you’ll meet with pro­fes­sional, nice, friendly staff and you won’t be asked ille­gal ques­tions. Employ­ers should not ask about your race, gen­der, reli­gion, mar­i­tal or fam­ily sta­tus, age, dis­abil­i­ties, eth­nic back­ground, coun­try of ori­gin, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion or age*.

If I were attend­ing an inter­view that included ques­tions along those lines I wouldn’t answer them and if it con­tin­ued I would call it to the atten­tion of the inter­viewer and end the inter­view. Then I would go home and write a let­ter to the CEO of the com­pany explain­ing what hap­pened and include a copy of the EEOC FAQ’s that explain the Fed­eral Laws Pro­hibit­ing Job Dis­crim­i­na­tion. Though the temp­ta­tion to “do some­thing about it” might be there, the real­ity is I wouldn’t want to work there because I would never be happy work­ing in a place that had those kind of man­agers around. So, I would actu­ally be relieved to find out about that up front rather than later after I had made con­sid­er­able invest­ment in the orga­ni­za­tion. I would hope to receive an apol­ogy and to have con­tributed to mak­ing the world a bet­ter place and helped to pre­vent a “next time” for them and some­one else.

Call me charitable.

But what about can­di­dates who push the enve­lope? Sadly, if the hir­ing man­ager is awake they sab­o­tage their oppor­tu­nity. But, just like an employer must not prac­tice ille­gal ques­tion­ing of can­di­dates, the can­di­date who ini­ti­ates con­ver­sa­tion on these top­ics could quickly become as unde­sir­able as the plague.

The pre­ferred can­di­date checks chat­ti­ness at the door and sticks to the mis­sion — answer­ing the inter­view ques­tions.

There are plenty of ways to infuse your per­son­al­ity, char­ac­ter and style into your con­ver­sa­tion and answers. The point is not to ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tion that could eas­ily back­fire on you. After all, you want to set your­self up for suc­cess not fail­ure, right?

I have had the plea­sure of inter­view­ing some fab­u­lous, stel­lar tal­ent. Some can­di­dates pre­sented them­selves excep­tion­ally well and have promis­ing or tenured careers. Oth­ers will con­tinue to have a very dif­fi­cult time land­ing desir­able employ­ment, all the time won­der­ing why and feel­ing like the forces of nature are against them and the world just isn’t fair. Nat­u­rally, self con­fi­dence, pre­sen­ta­tion skills, pro­fes­sional appear­ance, per­son­al­ity, char­ac­ter and the desired skills and expe­ri­ence for the job can­not be over­stated or over­looked as essen­tial inter­view traits. Where many can­di­dates fail to make the grade is in the amount of non job related com­men­tary they engage in. Be it nerves, over con­fi­dence, a feel­ing of enti­tle­ment or the gift of gab, TMI from a can­di­date causes inter­viewer heebie-jeebies .

• Bring­ing up what a great hockey mom you are invokes images of you need­ing to leave work early or not being avail­able to work late.
• Talk­ing about your ill­ness brings thoughts of absen­teeism and your abil­ity to carry your own weight in the organization.
• Men­tion­ing your sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion will cre­ate con­cerns about why you feel the need to bring that up.
• Though you might be rightly proud of rais­ing 3 kids all by your­self, you cre­ate men­tal images of late starts, tons of calls from school to pick up the kids because they’re cough­ing and other child­care concerns.
• Whether you defy biol­ogy like I do and will always be 28 or not, putting out there that it’s been tough to get a job since you turned 40  or 60 isn’t rel­e­vant or help­ful and points out your being in a pro­tected class like a sore thumb.

Any of these all too real sce­nar­ios can cause the inter­viewer to stick fin­gers in ears, sing lalalalala, chant “God bless equal­ity” and wish for a swift pain­less end. It cer­tainly causes the inter­viewer quandary and panic about what to and not to include in the inter­view notes and frankly, after a can­di­date causes that much trauma the chances of get­ting the job have shriv­eled like pri­vate parts sub­merged in ice.

Sound harsh? I’m try­ing to make a last­ing impres­sion here..

So, be good, be great, be pre­pared, stick to the inter­view ques­tions, don’t push the enve­lope and be hired!

*This post is geared to job seek­ers in the U.S. If you are job hunt­ing in another coun­try be sure to check for sim­i­lar laws gov­ern­ing equal oppor­tu­nity employ­ment before you inter­view!