What about humor?
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.
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