The reason: As in most human endeavors, people are wary of accepting the first choice offered. Therefore, do what you can to position yourself among the last candidates interviewed, and definitely not among the first. Other reasons include corporate inertia. It’s often customary to move at a glacial pace. The sense of urgency may not exist at the beginning of a search.

Wait 10 days to two weeks before responding to a help-wanted appeal. (Aged ads are excellent for this purpose). If you have a good relationship with your executive recruiter, ask him or her to wait it out and not propose you too early. And if the interviewer asks you when you can set up an appointment, push the day back as far as possible. Other studies have shown that Monday is the worst day of the week to be interviewed for a job. The worst time for an interview is late afternoon.

Let’s examine this guideline one step further. Research indicates that almost two-thirds of the time the best qualified candidates don’t get the offer, and the person chosen often meets fewer than 50 percent of the job qualifications. How can this be?

The reason is because job offers are given most frequently to those candidates who, regardless of formal qualifications promote themselves best, intimidate least and listen the most. Strong listening skills allow the candidate to determine or uncover just what the interviewer is looking for. This approach provides a perfect way to maximize your opportunity to sell what your prospective employer is buying. When you have this vital piece of intelligence, you have everything you need to make a masterful presentation. A by-product of this is likeability. After qualifications, the most important reason an employer will advance your candidacy is because he or she likes you. And the easiest way to get other people to like you at the start of your relationship is to listen to them attentively

Adapted from: Association for Career Development

• The rule of thumb for older workers is to list about 15 years worth of jobs on a resume. Simply omit your older jobs from your resume unless you feel you have a compelling reason to leave them on.
• De-emphasize dates. Certainly don’t list your birth date. Omit college-graduation dates that are more than 10-15 years old. Some experts even advise omitting dates from the listings of your jobs, instead just listing the number of years you were in each job.
• If you’re not willing to leave dates off your resume altogether (some employers will think you have something to hide if you omit them), consider a chrono-functional resume, which is organized around functional skills clusters. After listing 3-4 skills clusters and showing how you’ve demonstrated those skills, you include a bare-bones work history at the bottom. Listing your work history after your skills clusters has the effect of emphasizing relevant skills and de-emphasizing dates.
• Some experts suggest softening the job titles you list on your resume so you won’t seem overqualified. For example, “senior manager” instead of “vice president.”
• Be sure to list all courses and professional-development activities that illustrate your willingness to learn and keep your skills updated.
• Definitely list all the computer and other technological skills you possess that are relevant to the type of job you’re applying for.
• Emphasize results, accomplishments, and achievements. List some accomplishments that set you apart from other job candidates. You will likely have a greater quantity and quality of achievements than will younger workers. In each job, what special things did you do to set yourself apart? How did you do the job better than anyone else or than anyone else could have done? What did you do to make it your own? What special things did you do to impress your boss so that you might be promoted? How did you leave your employers better off than before you worked for them? Accomplishments are the points that really help sell you to an employer — much more so than everyday job duties.
• If you are just entering the workforce after a career as a homemaker or volunteer or have large gaps of unpaid experience in your history, learn to portray your skills on your resume as transferable and applicable to your next job.

Cover letters:

• Avoid cumulative experience statements. Older workers are justifiably proud of their work histories and have a tendency in cover letters to make statements such as this: “My 25+ years in management would enable me to make a significant contribution in the position you’re advertising.” With that much experience, it’s probably best not to quantify in your cover letter. Stick to expressions such as “significant experience” or “extensive experience.”
• An “autobiography letter” or one that rehashes the job history you’ve already laid out in your resume is never a good idea, but it’s especially harmful for older workers who will only call attention to their age with such a letter.
• Include language in your cover letter about flexibility, adaptability, and willingness to learn.
• Emphasize that you are a proven commodity (in unspoken counterpoint to a younger worker who may be untested).

Job Interviews:

• Realize that you will probably be interviewed by someone younger than you, and don’t be unnerved by that situation.
• Overcoming the obstacles that may be inherent within your resume and cover letter is a major victory, but once you’ve gotten your foot in the door with an interview, you have to do more than younger workers would need to do to show yourself as a value-added employee. “Despite your age, you’ve got to show that you’re still very current in today’s workplace, such as with your computer skills,” says Deborah Russell, who manages information and resources for older workers at AARP, as quoted in the Washington Post. “Tell how flexible, adaptable, creative you can be, that you’re a team player and able to work with multiple-age generations.”
• Stress your willingness to learn. One of the biggest obstacles to the hiring of older workers is the concern that their skills are outdated and they aren’t willing to learn new skills. Writing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Margo Frey urges older workers to demonstrate their willingness to learn based on their past record and future commitment to keeping skills updated:
  • If you’ve taken courses and attended workshops, seminars, conferences, and other professional development events throughout your career, be sure the prospective employer knows that.
  • Especially ensure the employer knows your technology aptitude is up to date, particularly as it relates to the job you’re interviewing for.
  • Telling the prospective employer that you sought out and paid for learning opportunities on your own can be especially impressive.
  • Convince the employer that you are more than willing to get up to speed on any skills that may be lagging.
• Subtly suggest that your work ethic is unsurpassed (in possible contrast to that of younger workers). Be sure prospective employers know that your references will vouch for your reliability and stable work record.
• Convince employers that your maturity is an advantage because your experience makes you wise in the ways of problem-solving. “Wisdom involves using past experience to help solve a current situation,” writes Margo Frey in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Having successfully survived difficult situations, older workers can apply their knowledge and experience to make better judgments than a young person might make. Wisdom also means keeping an open mind to better or more appropriate ways to solve a problem.”
• Stress interpersonal skills, especially your delight in working with people of all ages. If you’re interviewing for a job with client or customer interaction, the AARP suggests you might want to mention your ability to identify with an aging customer base.
• Be prepared for interview questions that are inappropriate, borderline illegal, or downright unlawful. Surprisingly, it’s not illegal for an interviewer to ask how old you are, although it’s certainly inappropriate. If you are asked any question that suggests the employer wants to know how old you are or is concerned about your age, the AARP recommends responding with a question such as: “How do you see my age affecting my ability to do the job?” Don’t be defiant or confrontational as you ask the question; remain upbeat and positive. If you’re asked whether you’d have a problem working for a younger manager, the AARP suggests you respond with: “When I get to the point where I can’t learn from someone younger or older than I am, I will stop working.”

We had a 55-year-old correspondent who told us that she was asked what year she graduated from high school. At another interview, she was asked for a photo ID and presented with citizenship documentation clearly stating at the top of the page “To Be Completed by Employee on First Day of Employment.” The consensus among career counselors to whom we presented these situations was that they were clearly illegal. Other counselor suggestions:

• Anyone in this situation should report the company and call the firm’s president.
• Ask yourself if you would really want to work for such an unprofessional company.
• In response to the high-school graduation question, say: “Can you tell me how this question applies to my ability to perform the job?” And when presented with the obviously post-offer forms, simply ask if the forms represent an offer of employment.
• Say: “I am sensing that there may be concerns about my age. Unless there is something I haven’t been told, I can only assure you that there are no aspects of this position that I cannot handle, and I would be committed to bring you a wealth of education, training, and experience that few could equal.”

Adapted from Association for Career Development

“Imagine you could trade places with anyone for just a week. The person could be famous or not famous, living or from history, real or fictional. With whom would you trade places?”

It’s all you can do to keep your jaw from dropping. You’re stunned. You feel your mouth drying up and sweat forming on your forehead. Your head is spinning, and your mind is a blank. You’re thinking, why in the world is she asking me this absurd question?

Welcome to the world of the off-the-wall interview question — weird, wacky, gimmicky, and offbeat “wild card” questions that seem to have nothing to do with your ability to handle a job. If they’re irrelevant to job performance, why do employers ask them?

They want to see how well you can think on your feet. They want to see if you’ll get rattled. They may want to test your creativity or sense of humor. They want to challenge you. Employers who ask these goofy questions no doubt may feel the questions do relate to job performance. In creating stress by asking you a weird question, the interviewer may be testing how well you’ll respond to the stress of the workplace.

And let’s face it; job seekers have vast resources at their disposal in the form of books, articles, and Web sites on how to respond to traditional and even those tricky behavioral interview questions. So interviewers sometimes want to lob a curve ball at you by asking a question that you probably didn’t prepare for. In his book, College Grad Job Hunter, Brian Krueger calls these question “dumb” questions, whose purpose, Krueger writes “is to get past your pre-programmed answers to find out if you are capable of an original thought.”

Of course, we won’t refute the possibility that some employers may just be sadistic and want to see you squirm, or they relish the amusement of seeing how you’ll answer an oddball question.

Because an off-the-wall question can be virtually anything, they are nearly impossible to prepare for. Still, some, like the question about being/meeting/dining with a famous person, have been around for a while and are worth preparing an answer for–just in case.

The key to responding to an off-the-wall question is not to let it rattle you. Don’t adopt a deer-in-the-headlights look if you get hit with one of these funky queries. Simply smile, take a deep breathe, and take a moment to compose your response. A little bit of silence is better than blurting out something even sillier than the question. You don’t have to brilliant. You don’t have to be witty. Just be yourself and give an honest response. If worse comes to worst, and you absolutely cannot think of an answer, ask if you can come back to that question later. You may lose a few thinking-on-your-feet points, but you’ll gain points for handling a difficult situation with poise.

Above all, take comfort in the fact that there is rarely a wrong answer to these offbeat questions. True, some responses can raise eyebrows. When I taught college students and conducted mock interviews with them, I would occasionally get “Adolph Hitler” as a response to the famous-person question. Rather than thinking the student was a Neo-Nazi, I chalked up that answer to a student who probably knows so little about history that Hitler was the only person he or she could think of.

If you can turn your answer into something job-related, that’s a bonus, but it’s probably above the expectations of the interviewer. For example, if you’re interviewing for a finance job and are asked what you’d do with a large windfall of money, you could give a clever response about how you’d invest the cash.

Below, we’ve provided some sample off-the-wall questions. The first group is questions submitted by readers, along with the answers they used. Be aware that studying this list of questions may be no help at all if you’re ever asked a weird question because you may be asked something totally different from any of these questions. The point is to expect the unexpected, and looking over these questions will at least give you the flavor of what might be asked and enable you to do a little out-of-the-box thinking about how you might respond when you’re asked a question as strange as these:

Shelley Feakes, resource navigator at Queens Career Resource Center in Nova Scotia, Canada, was asked: “If aliens landed in front of you and, in exchange for anything you desire, offered you any position on their planet, what would you want?”

“I thought about this question for a minute,” Feakes recalls, “then responded: ‘First I would want to go change my clothes since the aliens just scared the crap out of me! … then I would for a job as Chief Navigator so I could enjoy coming to Earth and scaring the crap out of other human beings.”

Explains Feakes: “My strategy was this: I first thought that it was a psychological question, that the interviewer was trying to see how far up the ladder I desired to be … then I thought twice and decided that I would express my creativity and go for an answer that was just as odd as the question itself. It must have worked … I got the job!”

Another reader was not happy about the odd questions she was asked. “I was asked who my heroes were and how I felt about affirmative action in the same interview. Talk about loaded questions! Looking back, it was obvious that I would be required to be very [politically correct] and think just like them to work there. If I hadn’t been a single mother and desperate for work, I would have answered, ‘I think this interview is over.’” She doesn’t remember how she actually did answer, but notes that “Those questions have nothing to do with the ability to do a job and are out of line. I’m probably lucky they didn’t hire me because I’m sure I would have been unhappy there.”

Still another reader was asked “if you could be any animal in the jungle what would it be?” He answered: “I would be a gorilla so I could be the king of the jungle because it is survival of the fittest in the jungle. I would also be able to climb trees well and get a bird’s eye view of what is going on so I could stay abreast of what was happening in the jungle scene.” The reader felt the employer liked his response because he got a second interview. “I thought it was a pretty good answer myself,” he observed.

More off-the-wall “wild card” job interview questions:

• If you could be any character in fiction, who would you be?
• If Hollywood made a movie about your life, whom would you like to see play the lead role as you?
• If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?
• If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?
• If you had to be shipwrecked on a deserted island, but all your human needs – such as food and water – were taken care of, what two items would you want to have with you?
• If you had six months with no obligations or financial constraints, what would you do with the time?
• If you had only six months left to live, what would you do with the time?
• If you could have dinner with anyone from history, who would it be, and why?
• If you could compare yourself with any animal, which would it be and why?
• If you were a type of food, what type of food would you be?
• If you won $20 million in the lottery, what would you do with the money?
• If you were a salad, what kind of dressing would you have?
• How do I rate as an interviewer?
• If you were a car, what kind would you be?
• Who do you admire the most and why?
• In the news story about your life, what would the headline say?

Adapted from: Association for Career Development