Someone, let’s just call them a genius, once likened dating people to going for job interviews.

Despite the fact that you sit there for an hour or so, nervously attempting to say the right things and be the right person, half the time you don’t even want the job.

Then there are some jobs that want you really badly, but you’d rather shave your head and give up Chanel beauty products than schlep it to work with them every day.

Then there are the worst kinds of jobs when the job you really want is actually a real asshole who, despite treating you like a princess and doing all the right things, never calls you back to make a formal offer.

But whatever the job, even when you don’t want the job, when you interview you have to pretend like the only thing in the world you want is that very job. Despite the fact that the salary makes you laugh, the location sucks and the office looks like something out of the 1970’s, you smile politely and pretend everything is going to be okay. You even tailor yourself to this hideous retro building and make it look like we could make this work!

Sometimes, if the job is particularly attractive, you go so far as to compromise and pretend that you think computer game jokes are funny and that the Lord of the Rings trilogy really was the most influential set of films produced in the 21st century.

If the job is really attractive, and possibly Christian, you may even pretend you don’t smoke, drink alcohol or listen to Britney Spears.

Despite the fact that this employer is clearly interested in you, as they have called you for an interview, they pretend that they don’t, as this is how the game is played. You have to accept that they may be interested in you but they show this by being nonchalant, in a manner that actually suggests they wouldn’t care if you got hit by a bus.

So you do the interview, highlighting your ‘strengths’ and downplaying your ‘weaknesses’.  Of course you are as close to god as an Angel and your only weakness is working too hard.

You hide the information that could compromise being offered the position (of course I don’t get home at 3am every night of the week and I never put Coke up my nose even if it’s free)

You make it look like the two of you get along so well you could almost be BFF’s! Then you wander off into the after interview abyss and try not to choke on the garbage that just came out of your mouth.

Some employers are arseholes and don’t even have the balls to let you know that you didn’t get the job.

Some employers offer you too much and suddenly the job doesn’t seem that interesting.

Some employers pretend that the job interview went really well and make a bunch of promises they can’t keep but never actually offer you the full time position.

Some employers offer you the job which you gleefully reject because they were a douche bag.

And finally there is the very odd employer, who actually was themselves in the interview, was genuinely interested in what you had to say, calls when they say they’re going to call and would like nothing more than for you to become a member of staff.

But for the most part dating is like the bad side of job interviewing, more about selling yourself to a buyer that isn’t interested or protecting yourself from a schmuck that you are way overqualified for. The only upside of job interviews is that using the internet as a platform to hook them up isn’t as creepy as AdultMatchmaker.com.

All the single ladies
All the single ladies