Manners Expert Identifies The Most Common Job Seeker Mistakes

Don’t treat potential employers as therapists.

A leading expert on work place etiquette says that’s exactly what too many job seekers are doing in the down economy. Ann Marie Sabath says that it’s one of the two major mistakes that they’re making in their job searches. Sabath is the author of One Minute Manners, a guidebook to appropriate behavior at work and noted speaker on manners to business groups, including major CPA organizations. She says that many job applicants see interviews as an opportunity to vent about why they’re unemployed and how it’s impacted their lives. They appear desperate. That’s hardly the spare, grounded approach that earns companies’ respect. “Instead job seekers should share how the responsibilities of their past positions have prepared them for the job for which they are applying,” Sabath says. She says that job seekers’ other major error is asking friends and family to help them attain interviews at their organizations. “While it certainly is appropriate for job seekers to ask individuals in their personal lives and business network to put in a good word for them, these people should not be confused as job seekers’ personal headhunters,” Sabath says.