As you interview, one of the areas you may want to gauge is do you have diarrhea of the mouth? More specifically, do you take over the interview gushing all your flaws so that it is almost impossible for the recruiter or interviewer to put you into the “not interested” file?

32462510_sThere is a delicate balance between sharing enough about you with the interviewer and over-sharing. If you don’t provide enough information, the interviewer will not connect with you or feel compelled to hire you.

However, most of us have some of those dirty little secrets about our work life or career and those things are best left out of the interview process. Just take a look at one of my most read posts – Interviewing or Job Applications: What do I say if I was fired? There are so many situations where people think they have to tell everything (my notion of diarrhea of the mouth) when it is perfectly acceptable to share only what you need to share.

Here are some specific situations (often in an interview and sometimes just in talking in general) where you want to think how to avoid diarrhea of the mouth:

  • Going into detail about why were you fired and how it was unfair.
  • Talking negatively about your last boss.
  • Complaining about why no one will hire you.
  • Taking four minutes or longer to answer a simple question.
  • Rationalizing why you have been on an extended out of work situation.

So, what should you do? Recruiters and interviewers will ask questions to draw out these red flags on a resume.

Keep your answers short and to the point. Do not over share since that opens the door to more questions. Once you have what you want to say, practice and practice again.