Prediction — at job interviews, these people will hear something I heard a lot during my own interviews: “We’re seeing a lot of applicants from the mortgage industry.”

Yeah . . . tell me something I didn’t know.

The Elite Mortgage Daily Blog has helpfully provided a brief history of IndyMac stock:

It’s a small IT group — 8 people, including the director. I’ve got to admit I’m a little burned out on big corporate IT shops.

I got out of hands-on programming and into leadership roles because I thought I could do a better job than the people I saw doing it. I wanted to develop teams that got things done using their skills and their collective intelligence, but in practice, you typically get locked into some corporate process standard.

A process may be good for delivering consistent results, but they may not be consistently good results. Like at McDonald’s, every Big Mac is just like every other Big Mac because they have a process for making Big Macs. But is a Big Mac a high-quality dining experience? Not really . . .

A friend and former colleague, who was also recently let go by a local mortgage company, emails to say

I’m doing well… still spending a lot of time in Bakersfield, spending time with my parents. I’ve been looking for jobs, but haven’t applied for anything. I guess I actually need to apply.

She’s single, she can afford to be sanguine.

I was in contact with at least 100 companies in one way or another – sent a resume, called, phone interviews, in-person interviews – and got two job offers. So the upside with her approach is that I could have avoided 98 rejections.

Did I mention the job is with a healthcare organization? I was laid off from my last job, with a mortgage bank, when the mortgage industry tanked. Prior to that, I was laid off from a dot-com consulting company when that industry imploded.

I’ve got a knack for getting into industries at their absolute zenith, then riding them down the drain.

But healthcare — it’s recession-proof! You can’t say, “I’m going to put off getting critically ill until I have a better read on the economy.”

Well, you can say it, but you can’t do it.

As it happens, I did not have any trouble finding the place and said so. I had printed out a map from one of the numerous online map sites and the building was right where it was supposed to be.

But even if I had had trouble finding it, my answer would have been the same.

“Some people have trouble finding it,” he told me.

Interesting. As an IT person, I consider myself a problem-solver — actually, I could make a case that any person in any job is hired as a problem solver — so I wouldn’t start out an interview by admitting that I got lost on my way over.

“Don’t hire anyone who can’t find the building,” I said.

Which brings me to my point: It’s easy to overprepare for interviews.

For example, we have a book here that my wife bought called Best Answers to the 201 Most Frequently Asked Interview Questions.

Two problems:

1. Who has time to prepare answers for 201 interview questions?
2. What if the interviewer asks a question that’s not on the list? Where is your God now?

But wait! It gets worse! If you go to Amazon and look up this book, you’ll find a list of similar titles like

• More Best Answers to the 201 Most Frequently Asked Interview Questions
• The 250 Job Interview Questions You’ll Most Likely Be Asked
• 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions
• 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions
• Etc., etc., etc.

Clearly this notion of preparing answers to all possible interview questions in advance quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns.

Here’s what I’d suggest instead: Write up a list of the key points you want to make about yourself in the interview, the unique contributions you’ll make to the job and the company. Brush up on a few stories that show you at your best in the workplace.

Then — no matter what the interviewer asks — respond with your points and stories. We’re in the midst of a political season, so it’s easy to observe this technique in action. Politicians are not out there to think up answers to every stupid question someone throws at them. They have a list of points they want to make. So do you!

This list is mostly for your own reference, but you may want to go ahead and put together a nicely formatted version, print out a few copies and bring them to the interview. That way, if the interviewer asks — and they often do — “What makes you the best person for the job?,” you hand them a copy of your list.

Bonus: Most of what’s said in an interview is quickly forgotten. What remains is a general impression and of course — documents!

Related Links

• epoWiki: Interview Questions
• Four Questions to Ask a Hiring Manager

No, wait, let me back up a little bit . . .

I can never find anything around the house because people keep moving my stuff. Why everyone can’t keep their hands to themselves, I don’t know, but I don’t even try to keep track of things anymore. I just look for something in the last place I put it, and when it’s not there, I ask someone.

“Don’t ask me. I didn’t touch it.”

So I look some more and it always turns out that my camera is in my son’s room, or my keys are in my wife’s purse, or the important document is in the trash, and everyone still maintains that they have no idea how it got there.

Living with people is a mixed blessing, I’ll tell you.

So I was leaving the house for a job interview, nobody else was home, and I couldn’t find my black oxfords.

I was able to find my son’s black oxfords, but his feet are a little bit smaller than mine . . .

Theory X assumptions

• People have an inherent dislike for work and will avoid it whenever possible.
• People must be coerced, controlled, directed, or threatened with punishment in order to get them to achieve the organizational objectives.
• People prefer to be directed, do not want responsibility, and have little or no ambition.
• People seek security above all else.

Theory Y assumptions

• Work is as natural as rest or play.
• People will exercise self-control and self-direction in the pursuit of organizational objectives.
• Commitment to objectives is a function of rewards associated with their achievement.
• People usually accept and often seek responsibility.
• Imagination, ingenuity and creativity are widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.
• The intellectual potential of the average person is only partly utilized.

I come down strongly in favor of Theory Y. I don’t feel like I’m an inherently unmotivated person, that my boss has to keep coming up with new ways to get my head in the game, and I don’t find that most other people do either. People want to do good work. They want the opportunity to do good work.

The key, really, is not to motivate people, but to avoid demotivating them. A lot of managers haven’t figured that one out yet.

You have 50 white marbles, 50 black marbles and two bags. Your task is to arrange the marbles in the bags so as to maximize the probability that a person making a blind selection from one of the bags will select a black marble.

My answer: Put one black marble in Bag 1, and the other 99 marbles in Bag 2. Each bag has a 50 percent chance of being selected. Bag 1 guarantees the selection of a black marble, while Bag 2 offers a probablility of almost 50 percent, so the overall probablility of selecting a black marble is slightly less than 75 percent.

A recruiter called me the other day, and in the course of our conversation, he asked me which “business requirements methods” I’ve used.

I said, “I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that.”

After a pause, he said, “I’m not really sure what it means either. I’m kind of new at this.”

“Well, go ahead and read the next question, then . . .”

Thus spoke The Programmer.