Seasoned recruiters typically have a rather lengthy list of war stories—tales from the recruiting battlefield of nutty candidates, even nuttier clients and interviews gone terribly wrong. The best way for you to avoid being the main character in one of the stories that we tell during Happy Hour Thursday is to LISTEN TO US. You can learn a lot from unfortunate mistakes that previous candidates have made. In order to help you on your job search journey, we’ve compiled a short list of lessons learned from recent recruiting mishaps here at TZ. If you follow these simple rules, you’ll be on your way to landing a stellar gig:

Do your research. Before you head into an interview, take some time to read up on the agency and its clients. Please do not talk about the great work that the agency does on General Mills, when the “GM” on their client list is actually referring to General Motors.

Know your audience. Learn everything you can about the people you’ll be speaking with prior to the interview. You really don’t want to badmouth a campaign when the Creative Director that you’re interviewing with was the one who came up with the concept.

If it’s questionable or unnecessary, don’t include it in your resume/portfolio. I’m sure that your mom was super proud of the paper that you wrote in high school on the advertising industry, but I guarantee you that the Account Director won’t be nearly as impressed. He probably won’t fake it nearly as well as your mom did.

Don’t discuss substance abuse during your interview.Okay, it’s a fact that many advertising people like to hit the bottle… hard. Please keep in mind that an interview isn’t a college Rush party. You will not get a job based on how many shots of Petron you can take or how well you can do a keg stand.

Don’t piss off your recruiter. Remember that we are on your side and will do anything we can to get you the job. We do have limits though. If you don’t show up for a scheduled interview, fail to return my calls and then get in touch 2 weeks later to see if I can re-schedule it for you… the answer is no.

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