Many of us have that fear of accidentally saying the wrong thing during an interview. While that often doesn’t happen, there are some common mistakes people make when answering or asking questions in interviews. With this in mind, here are six things you should never do during a job interview.

Ask Basic Questions about the Company

While it’s perfectly acceptable to ask many types of questions about the company, you should never ask basic questions that could have been answered with a simple Google search or by viewing the company’s website.

Before going to an interview, you are expected to do your research. This is important in helping you prepare. Doing your research also shows that you’re genuinely interested in working for the company. Asking basic questions such as, “what does the company do?” is a good way to get looked over for the role because they don’t feel you are serious about the job.

Speak Poorly about Previous Coworkers or Bosses

You may get a question such as, “Tell me about a time you had to deal with a workplace conflict.” When answering the question, it’s perfectly acceptable to talk about how you handled miscommunications or differences in working styles. However, you should never speak poorly of a previous boss or coworker during an interview.

If you do make the mistake of speaking poorly about someone, you are likely doing damage to your image rather than theirs. Even if you did have a toxic boss, that’s something you want to keep to yourself when being interviewed.

Overuse Buzzwords

Virtually every industry has buzzwords and jargon. However, some words or phrases are so overused that they become clichés and should be avoided during job interviews. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about a strong talent you have. Rather, you should find another way to phrase it.

For example, instead of saying that you “think outside the box,” say you have “strong critical thinking skills” or “creative solutions to resolving problems.” Then back this up with an example of a time when you were able to use these skills at a previous workplace or during a prior project. This answers the question without using buzzwords and provides a concrete example of your success.

Bring Up Potential Problems

The interview is not the time for you to negotiate or bring up specific issues. For example, you shouldn’t state that you have a vacation planned for next month or that you may not be able to meet the typical nine-to-five schedule. While you can ask general questions such as “are flexible hours a possibility,” don’t go into depth about your own situation.

You should only bring these issues up if and when you are offered the job. Then you can negotiate things such as a flexible schedule or specific time off. These are things that you want to do after an organization has already decided that it wants to hire you, not before.

Use Profanity or Inappropriate Stories

You would think that not using profanity would be the basic assumption for interviews, but you would be wrong. There are countless times when people have used profanity, and it doesn’t end well. It can make you look unprofessional and will generally be seen as a red flag. It’s something you should never say during a job interview.

Additionally, when telling stories in response to interview questions, be sure that your stories are appropriate for the professional atmosphere. While you may want to use a personal story to describe a time you used your communication skills, ensure that you’re not sharing too much personal information.

Not Asking Any Questions

After the interviewer is finished asking their questions, they will typically ask you if you have any questions. You never want to be the person that says you don’t have any questions. Even if they have already answered your main questions during the interview, not asking questions can convey a message that you aren’t that interested in the job.

Part of preparing for an interview involves doing some research about the organization and coming up with some questions. Be sure to have a few questions to ask when the time comes. Asking questions can also provide you with an extra opportunity to make additional points or further express your excitement about the opportunity.

Final Thoughts

When participating in a job interview, it’s important to perform your best. While there are many things you want to highlight to sell your skills to an employer, there are also a number of things that you never want to say during a job interview. These six things are among those that you should always avoid.

At Achēv, our Employment Ontario Services offers a wide range of resources to support your career and employment needs. Our employment centres are located across the Greater Toronto Area, including Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga and North York. Contact us today to register for our free employment services.

Achēv is excited to introduce the new project, Advancing Equity for Women and Girls, funded by Women and Gender Equality (WAGE). This new project supports a feminist response and recovery from the impact COVID-19 has had on the employment of immigrant and racialized women in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) by contributing to systemic change to promote women’s economic prosperity and equality.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant and racialized women were disproportionately affected in their employment

In March 2020, during the onset of the pandemic, women accounted for 62.5% of employment losses. This is due to the overrepresentation of women in sectors that were the most affected by the pandemic, such as accommodations, food service, retail, and wholesale trade. Jobs in these sectors are often low-paying and require face-to-face interaction between customers and workers, making it difficult to transition to remote work. This resulted in many women working in frontline occupations with inadequate access to personal protective equipment (PPE).

The disproportionate gendered division of housework and care work that is present in many Canadian households resulted in women taking over more family responsibilities and childcare during the pandemic. When the impacts of the pandemic became long-term, many women left their jobs to care for their families. For women that continued to work in a remote capacity, it is likely that their productivity declined due to the demand of completing housework and caring for their children.

The pandemic pushed immigrant and racialized women to unemployment, low-skill jobs or even unstable employment. Studies show that women experienced an interruption in their career trajectory due to layoffs, increased housework and care responsibilities, as well as decreased job opportunities.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant and racialized women faced barriers to employment

Many immigrant and racialized women face barriers to employment. When immigrating, barriers to finding job opportunities in the Canadian labour market pushed women towards underemployment and deskilling. Women are likely to find themselves securing low-wage occupations with low job security that often do not equivalate to their education and work experience in their country of origin.

Women are impacted by several barriers to joining the Canadian labour market, from having difficulties transferring their foreign credentials, discrimination based on the lack of local work experience, lack of access to networks, and discrimination based on gender, race and immigrant status.

Advancing Equity for Women and Girls aims to address these barriers

Our project aims to address these systemic barriers to employment and, in turn, support women’s equality through:

• Advancing inclusive policies and practices in the labour market
• Supporting positive distribution of authority, voices and decision-making power
• Increasing networks and collaboration to accelerate systematic change to advance women’s equity

During the first phase of our project, we will conduct broad consultation with GTA stakeholders, including women, business leaders and employers, to gain perspectives on existing practices and barriers faced by immigrant and racialized women in employment. The information gathered from the consultation will directly inform the resources we will create for employers, such as workshops and a toolkit to implement inclusive practices.

Join us in addressing systemic barriers to employment for immigrant and racialized women in the GTA

Share your story with us! We want to hear your experience in the Canadian labour market, the impact COVID-19 has had on your career path and your suggestions on how to address systemic barriers to employment.

Complete our survey:

Register for our focus groups:

Contact us

For any questions regarding the project, contact us:

Hodan Mohamed, Coordinator: hmohamed@achev.ca

Mayela Lozano, Community Liaison: mlozano@achev.ca

We all know that resumes are the key to getting employed. A quality resume will enable you to get your foot in the door for that valuable job interview, which gives you a chance to further sell your experiences and how you will fit within an organization. However, making mistakes on your resume can ruin your chances. After all, you want to stand out and not go into the rejection pile. Here are some common resume mistakes that you should avoid.

1. Focusing on Your Job Responsibilities

One of the most common resume mistakes people make is using the valuable space to highlight their job responsibilities. However, this is not what will get you noticed by an employer. Instead of documenting your roles, you need to use this space to highlight your achievements.

You should describe how you excelled in this role. Things that can be quantified are particularly useful to mention. Discuss how you improved an organization rather than simply stating your responsibilities. These are the things that will truly stand out to employers. After all, every applicant with a similar position will have similar responsibilities, but your achievements are unique.

2. Using an Objective

Traditionally, resumes have included an objective statement; however, this practice hasn’t been common for over a decade. After all, the objective of the resume is very clear: to land a specific job. Thus, the objective statement that used to be recommended is redundant and a waste of space. If you have an objective statement on your resume, you should remove it.

In its place, put a professional profile, which is a short section that highlights your major expertise and skills. This provides a concise summary of the core assets that you will bring to an organization. It should give a potential employer a quick summary of what you bring to their team.

3. Using Unrelated Experiences

One of the biggest resume mistakes people make is filling their resume with completely unrelated experiences to the job they are applying for. In many cases, this occurs due to people using only one resume when job hunting. Resumes should be tailored to the job you are applying for. This doesn’t mean you need a unique resume for every role, but you should at least have different resumes for different types of roles.

Before sending in your resume, be sure to give it a look over and ask yourself if the experiences on your resume are directly related to the job responsibilities of the role you are applying for. If they aren’t, use that valuable space to tailor your skills and experiences to the job. Doing this will make you much more marketable.

4. Grammatical and Formatting Errors

Regardless of the role you are applying for, attention to detail and accuracy are important competencies to have. A resume with grammatical or formatting errors can quickly land you in the reject pile. Be sure to carefully read through your resume to catch spelling mistakes that spell check may have missed.

In terms of formatting, make sure you are using acceptable fonts. It’s good to use a widely recognized one such as Arial or Times New Roman. Additionally, stick with black ink and avoid bright colors and graphics, as these can distract from the written content you are trying to get across.

5. Using an Unprofessional E-mail Address

This is a quick way to get looked over and a huge resume mistake many people have made. Your e-mail address conveys a message about you, and that message should be that you are professional. Is your e-mail address unprofessional? If you find yourself wondering, the answer is probably yes.

An easy remedy is to create a separate e-mail address that you will use for professional communications. Get a free address from a provider like Gmail and use your name as your e-mail. Combinations of your last name and initials are typically good to use. If you have a common name, you may need to add a number at the end.

6. Exaggerating the Truth

You may have heard people say it’s ok to exaggerate a bit on resumes; however, this is a mistake. Outright falsehoods are easy to verify. However, exaggerating can get you into trouble in a number of ways.

First, large exaggerations typically reveal themselves during an interview or reference checks. Second, exaggerations may lead you to land a job you aren’t well qualified for, leading to poor performance that can hurt you.

Final Thoughts

If you are finding yourself having difficulty securing interviews, it’s a good idea to look at your resume for these common resume mistakes. Additionally, it’s always helpful to have an extra set of eyes take a look, as other people may notice things that you miss. Happy job searching!

At Achēv, our Employment Ontario Services offers a wide range of resources to support your career and employment needs. Our employment centres are located across the Greater Toronto Area, including Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga and North York. Contact us today to register for our free employment services.