WHAT ABOUT HUMOR?
Charles Handler, today the head of Rocket-hire.com, recounts this object
lesson. Interviewing for a recruiting job with the company’s CEO, Handler
was trying to make a point about the most reliable methods of selecting
employees. In an attempt to be lighthearted, Handler said that he
supported every way of selecting employees except graphology. Graphology
is the study of handwriting as a means of analyzing character.
You can guess what happened next. The CEO looked up with a tight
smile and slowly informed Handler that graphology was his hobby and
that he thought the practice had substantial merit.
The good news is at the end of the day, the wisecrack didn’t hurt Handler.
He still received a job offer. But it did teach him a lesson. “Think
twice about making a joke or a wisecrack,” he says. “Any subject you
choose, no matter how seemingly innocuous, has the potential for alienating
the interviewer.”
On the other hand, humor elegantly framed and sharply focused can
be effective and advantageous. But it must come naturally to you. Nothing
is as risky as forced humor. Amateurs shouldn’t try this at the office.
A half-baked attempt at humor can seriously backfire on you, and if you
offend the interviewer—a possibility less and less discountable in these
politically correct times—you will never recover. For that reason many
job coaches advise against any attempt at humor, sarcasm, or teasing.
Just play it straight, they say, and you can’t go wrong.
Some hiring managers welcome humor because it demonstrates you
can keep work in a proper perspective. “The ability to laugh at yourself is a great attribute,” says Susan Trainer. “It means you don’t take yourself
too seriously, which is a very attractive trait.”
Other recruiters are skeptical. “I want my questions taken seriously,”
warns Bryan Debenport, corporate recruiter at Alcon Laboratories, a
3000-employee manufacturer of ophthalmic products in Fort Worth,
Texas. “Humor may be appropriate at the start and finish of interviews,
but use it sparingly.”
The goal of using humor is to bond with the interviewer, to use your
shared senses of humor as a way to underscore the prospect that you will
fit into the organization. Of course, if your perspective and that of the
hiring manager seriously differ, then your attempt at humor will only underscore
the disconnect.
At the same time, when people laugh, certain physiological changes take
place that make people more flexible, relaxed, and—this is what you most
want—agreeable. Humor is also synonymous with wit—and wit is born of
intelligence. No wonder recruiters look for candidates with this quality. Let
the interviewer set the tone. If the interviewer starts with a joke and seems
to be in good humor, you can try for a little self-deprecating humor.
MAKE FUN ONLY OF YOURSELF
The only thing you can make fun of is yourself. Everything else, without
exception, is off limits. You may think you and the recruiter share a
perspective on politics, gender relations, and certain ethnic groups.
Don’t go there. No laugh is worth insulting someone. There’s always a
risk of humor backfiring. If you think there’s the slightest chance of offending
someone, keep the humor to yourself.
So what kinds of self-deprecating joking can pass the humor test? Dialect
is too risky. Leave it at home. Sarcasm may be misinterpreted.
Deep-six it. Personal anecdotes can sometimes work. But make them
personal, short, and to the point. One candidate reports that the following
line, delivered tongue in cheek with a broad smile, sometimes led
to a laugh and real feedback:
How do you like me so far?
A line like this can work, concedes Nancy Levine, VP of client services
at San Francisco–based Pacific Firm, but the risks are too high because it is so obviously a line. “If I happen to feel that the candidate and I have created a close rapport, that our senses of humor are on the same wavelength, then it’s great. But there is nothing more irritating to me
than someone trying to be funny whom I don’t find funny. Proceed with
caution if you want to use humor. And then, use it sparingly, just to add
spice, like pepper on the finest filet mignon.”
Another candidate got some mileage out of a similar expression, by
finding just the right time in the interview to say, in a dead-on New York
City accent:
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