The thousand things I learned for Interviewing

I've been through enough boring lectures in school to know some things when being in an interview.  Always be on time, maybe a little early to make sure you aren't late, keep eye contact, don't show signs of nervousness.  However, I was always at the receiving end of that, which meant that those were things that I as the one being interviewed had to deal with.  This week, I got to listen to Alicia Shepard as she taught the class important things to do as the interviewer.  I knew when she was talking that these words that she was saying would probably come to use one day.  She told us always to take three things with us: a pen, a piece of paper, and a grain of salt.  We should always be skeptical when interviewing.  One of the key questions to ask is "What do you mean?"  That phrase makes people stop and think, and you always want the person you are interviewing to give up information they wouldn't usually give up.  Never ask questions with a yes or no answer so make sure to try and use open ended questions.  Don't talk about yourself and use silence as your friend.  All these things went jumbling through my head as I strived to take them down on my clumsy spiral notebook (which, thankfully, I have a replacement for).  She advised us to use our own original shorthand because trying to take down every sentence word by word is one of the hardest things to do.  She also told us to never ask the question you want to ask the most, first.  Bias is something that should never get in the way.  No matter what my opinion is, I should always try to bend over backward for someone I don't agree with.  Have throwaway questions just to buy time and if you get to the "bomb" question, ask it, because they will probably be relieved about it.  I learned so much during my one small hour and a half class that seemed to go by in the blink of an eye, that even now, trying to think of anything that wasn't written down seems impossible.  The one thing that will forever remain in mind, though, is that I should never use the word interesting.  Interestingly enough, this word means nothing.