It's a law of nature.

Seven interviews make one weak.

But if you think that surviving seven interviews is going to get you hired, you're sadly mistaken. Consider, if you will, the experience of one disgruntled job seeker who took their dissatisfaction with a potential employer's extenuated hiring practices to Karla L. Miller, the workplace columnist of The Washington Post.

According to the applicant, writes Miller, in addition to the multiple interviews, the candidate was also asked "to complete an assessment consisting of my recommendations for four different hypothetical situations."

The questionable company in question did offer to pay $500 for this assessment, which may be a sign of a generous nature or a Scrooge-worthy trick to get a passel of useful information for peanuts.

And, oh yes, after the assessment was completed, before a job would be offered or not, the company demanded four more interviews.

For columnist Miller, the company may indeed be committed to an in-depth hiring procedure, somewhat akin to what you faced when you OD'd on Marvel movies and applied for a management position with the Maggia. (I told you that a recommendation from Count Nefaria would not be sufficient to get you hired.)

Or they could be committed to getting a lot of work done on the cheap, figuring that by the time a candidate finished 11 mind-numbing interviews, they'd forget to ask for or cash their rather puny paycheck.

If you think you could never be ensnarled in such a devious recruitment scheme, think again. People looking for jobs can be vulnerable and easily deceived. (People who already have jobs can be vulnerable and easily deceived, too, but not everything is about you.)

In her exegesis, Miller gets all legalistic about the situation, pointing out that "working interviews are legal as long as the applicant is getting paid and the payment is equivalent to or greater than the minimum wage."

Fair enough.

She also suggests that such a lengthy hiring process "gives the impression that the employer is indecisive and lacks a clear vision." If this conclusion is correct, this would indeed be good news, since those are exactly the attributes required of any company that would ever hire you.

In the end, what concerns me is the person who discovers that what they think is a real job is actually a long-term assessment period, a fact that they may not fully grok until they reach retirement.

Can't you just see it? The human resources professional conducting that long-awaited exit interview explains that all the retirement benefits on which the employee has been counting will not be forthcoming.

"It's been a great 20 years," the interviewer will say, "but we've decided we're not offering you the job."

Want to avoid a sad end to your so-called career? There are warning signs.

No. 1: Your position is being advertised on job sites.

If you find a job description that sounds suspiciously like the job you currently have, for your current salary, with your current employer, it could be a sign that the position that you think is permanent simply isn't. The solution here is to put in an application as soon as possible. Convince your boss to let you interview yourself for the job, in which case you can summarily reject you. At this point, it will be obvious that it's impossible to find a decent candidate to replace you, so you might as well give your job to you.

No. 2: You arrive at work in the morning to find someone else sitting at your desk.

This is a bad sign, even if your boss explains the new person is simply testing out a new mouse pad the company is considering. If you're told it's a long-term test and that you should go home until the results are in, you may never have had the job in the first place. On the plus side, you're likely to leave with one heck of a mouse pad.

No. 3: You ask your boss if the last 10 years have been an extended test, and they answer, "well, maybe."

This is an excellent outcome. You'll still have time to put the pedal to the metal and try to convince your boss that, despite your miserable performance for the past 10 years, you are definitely worthy of a job offer.

Alternately, you could start looking for a new position.

Hey, with the time it takes to complete 11 interviews and analyze four "situations," you could have more job security than you have now.

Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at [email protected]. To find out more about Bob Goldman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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