"So, what are your weaknesses?"

For the first time in a couple of years, I'm preparing for a job interview.  It could be worse - it's for a different job at my current company, so a level of complication has been removed.  Still, the whole gruesome process is coming flooding back.  Wear a nice tie.  Firm but not too firm handshake.  Look them in the eye in a you-can-trust-me way and try to avoid the boggly I-start-fires way.  Would you like a drink before we get started?  Just a water please.  No problem, here you go.  Thanks, I'll just take that glass from your hand OH GOD I'm sorry it's gone all over you, gosh your trousers are drenched, let me just get this napkin and dab at your GET OUT OF MY OFFICE!

I've never had an interview experience quite that terrible, although there's been some low moments.  The Cambridge interview that started well and then spluttered into silence when I admitted that I didn't know who, what or when the Red Army was, for example.  In my defence, I hadn't technically been taught that yet.  In the University of Cambridge's defence, I had claimed seconds earlier to have a particular fascination with Russian history.  I unveiled another truly crappy performance at the final stage of a major advertising agency's graduate recruitment programme.  Having jumped through hoops with the elegance of a buttered seal during the previous submissions and interviews, I choked magnificently during the group presentation excercise.  I was 99% sure I'd failed, and the final 1% fell into place when one of my team "mates" stood up and gave me a consoling hug so patronising that I almost pummelled her with a brushed chrome executive mousemat.

But since I entered the corporate world I've spent more time interviewing than being interviewed.  You know that cliché about the interviewer making up their mind in the first few seconds?  Horribly, comprehensively true.  In that time I've already decided if you're too shy, too cocky, too noisy, too smelly, too laddy, too flirty, too scruffy, too crazy, too whatever.  I'm not saying I'm right - although I do think my hit rate is fairly high - but that's not the point.  I've made a knee-jerk decision and you're going to have to do something special to still my twitching knee.

So I'm focusing on the first five minutes of my interview tomorrow.  I'm going to be the most reasonable, presentable chap you could hope to meet.  I was going to do some planning for the rest of it as well but I accidentally knocked out this blog instead, so I'll have to rely on key memorised phrases instead.  "By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history", for example.