Do Not Criticize, Condemn or Complain

After many years in corporate life I've interviewed dozens of people for all kinds of jobs from individual contributor to Vice President. In that time I've learned that one of the surest ways to blow an interview is to ignore Dale Carnegie’s advice from his book How to Win Friends & Influence People: “Do Not Criticize, Condemn, or Complain.”

Regardless of how big a jerk your boss was, how dumb your co-workers were or how badly your current or former company was run, the only impression you will make is a bad one if you resort to whining, complaining or, even worse, story-telling.

No employer wants to bring a negative attitude into the workplace. Not only that, an interviewer’s reaction to complaining and negativity is nearly always to assume the complainer was at least partly if not entirely at fault in bad relationships.

But worst of all, if the interviewer is your potential new boss, he will be saying to himself: “if he says this about his current boss, what will he say about me?”!!!