Dear Mr. or Ms. hiring authority,

Thank you for the time you’re taking to interview me, but could you please help us both in the interviewing process?

Please don’t ask me to “tell me about myself,” because I don’t know what that means to you.

Tell me what you’re looking for in a candidate and then let me explain to you why I would be good for your job.

Act like interviewing me is important. Please don’t answer the phone, carry on conversations with other people, read your emails, look at your phone while you are interviewing me.

Please take notes, so I don’t have to repeat myself three or four times.

Please, let’s not have general conversations about anything except you, your company and the job you are expecting to fill. Going off on tangents that have nothing to do with the company or the job don’t help either one of us.

Please don’t keep me in the interview for an hour and a half when you know in the first 15 minutes that you’re probably not going to hire me.

Please don’t tell me that I’m a wonderful candidate when you know that I’m not.

Please don’t tell me that you’re going to call me in the next day or two when you know you aren’t.

When I ask you how I stack up to the other candidates that you’ve interviewed, please tell me where I actually stand.

Give me a realistic idea of what the priority of hiring somebody really is. Please don’t tell me you’ve been looking for six months but now you really need to do something about it.

Please don’t tell me how lousy all of the other candidates have been, because I know that you’re going to say the same thing about me.

If you tell me that most of the people that work with you are lousy employees, I really don’t want the job.

If you really think I’m a very good candidate for the job, sell me on why I ought to come to work for you and your firm.

Please realize that “time kills deals.” The longer you appear indecisive, the less trust I have in you being a good manager and your company being a good place to work.

If you have lousy reviews on Glassdoor or Google, be ready to explain about them.

If you are not sure about some things about the job, please be honest about it. I understand when someone says “I don’t know.” I don’t expect you to know everything about the job

If you need clarification about my experience or anything we discussed in the interview, please don’t hesitate to make sure you really understand.

If I ask you about my strengths and weaknesses in your eyes, please tell me. I can take it.

If you’re not going to hire me and you know it, tell me. I may very well ask you the reasons so it will make me better in other situations, but please be honest with me.

Please have a very specific procedure about how the hiring will take place so, if you do think I’m a good candidate, I know what to expect.

Please treat me the way you would want to be treated. Please remember that somewhere down the line, I might be interviewing you for a position.

Thank you again for your time.

Sincerely,

A Sincere Job Candidate