Painting With Light

“Late Fall Sundown” © R.L. Herron

I read an article today on Ladders.com about the age impression you make when you interview. While age is not supposed to be an issue in hiring practices, we all know it is an issue.

So, what did the article say? Basically, it stressed how you need to learn the art of appearing younger. Not just looking younger, but acting younger, too. It actually listed twenty (yes, 20!) rules (their term, not mine) to take years off your interview image.

To me, most of them were amazingly funny. For instance, take their top, number one rule:

Crest Whitestrips

Honest. If you want to look younger in your interview, whiten your teeth. Forget about grey hair and crows feet around your eyes. Go for white teeth. And smile a lot.

Visit Your Apple Store

Learn the difference between an iPod Classic, iPod Touch and iPod Nano. You don’t have to actually buy or use any of them. Just get the identifiable white headphones to carry around. Perception is apparently everything.

I won’t go through all twenty items, but there are a few more that caught my eye … and tickled my funnybone.

Don’t Talk Starbucks

Or any other coffee place for that matter. If you have that much time to spend at any of them, it apparently screams “unemployed loser.” It’s probably not a good idea if you’ve just whitened your teeth, either.

Hairstyle

This actually made some sense, until they mentioned women plucking or bleaching their facial hair. Moustaches on women is apparently a no-no. It got worse (and funnier) when they told men to clip their nose and ear hair.

Never Talk About the 90s

I suppose it only gets worse if you mention anything you did in the 70s and 80s (or before). As the article pointed out, “nothing at work is groovy, dy-no-mite or far out” any more. Ever.

Makes me almost glad to be semi-retired, taking life easy, taking pictures like the soothing fall shot above and only working part time, on things I really enjoy.

Tubular, man.

This entry was posted on December 30, 2009 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Lifestyle, Non-Fiction Writing, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.