Susan Adams,

If you’re a single parent with five kids, or caring for a gravely ill relative, or dealing with a serious medical condition–what do you say and when?

You’re interviewing for a job and you know you may need time away from the office to care for your children, or for your terminally ill mother, or for your own serious medical condition. What and when do you tell your potential boss? Vicki Brackett, who runs Make It Happen for Women, a firm in Denver that professes to do “job search makeovers,” takes a hard-line stance. “You never tell an employer,” she says emphatically. “Never. Not until you’ve been there a while.”

Especially in this job market, she adds. The competition for jobs is so fierce that employers will always go for the candidate they believe can work the longest and hardest. “What employer wants to hire someone who’s not going to be there?” she asks.

What To Reveal During Your Job Search

Many job seekers, especially women, want to find a job that fits their life, rather than the other way around, Brackett says: “What women want most is a culture that works for them. They make the mistake of thinking that other women are going to understand, or that employers will care. It could be that the woman who’s interviewing you barely got to work in the morning because of problems at home. She doesn’t want to hire someone who has problems at home too.”

Brackett advises that as a job candidate you focus on proving your value to an employer, not only throughout the job search but even in the first months on the job. Some companies don’t firm up their hires until an initial trial period of 90 days has come to a close. Only then should the employee consider asking for flextime. Frame the request by describing how it will benefit the company. “You should say, ‘It’s something that can help me be more effective,’” Brackett advises. “Every discussion should be about the company.”

Stay away from chatter about your personal life, including seemingly harmless topics, she also advises. Even if you just returned from a fabulous two-week honeymoon in Italy, keep that to yourself. “The boss may think, here’s someone who takes long, expensive vacations. She’s going to want a lot of time off.”

Though it may seem a smart move to form a personal bond with an interviewer, avoid the temptation, Brackett says. A harried employer can view even do-gooding work outside the office as a liability these days, she adds. “If you say you’ve been out banging nails for Habitat for Humanity, the employer might think, she’s going to want time off to do that.” Only bring up non-work subjects if you’ve done your homework and you know, for instance, that the company encourages employees to do volunteer jobs.

Keep in mind that employers are forbidden by law to ask most personal questions. Kathleen McKenna, a partner in the labor practice at the law firm Proskauer Rose, says that both federal and local statutes forbid job interviewers from asking about marital or family status, or about medical conditions. The only exception comes when a medical condition may directly affect the candidate’s ability to do the job. “If someone comes in in a wheelchair and you’re hiring for a pole-vaulting position, then you can ask, ‘Exactly how do you see this working for you?’” McKenna says.

Not all career coaches agree with Brackett’s zero-disclosure policy. Win Sheffield, a coach in New York City, says, “The way I look at the job interview process, it’s about three things: Can you do the job, is it a job you want, and will you fit at the company.” If you realize during the search process that a special medical condition or family circumstance will make for a bad fit, then speak up, Sheffield says, or at least be honest with yourself. If you don’t, you may wind up feeling you betrayed yourself–or your employer may feel you betrayed her.

Anita Attridge, a New Jersey career coach, says she has counseled candidates with special circumstances about grappling with whether they may in fact need a part-time, rather than full-time, position. Nowadays full-time really means full-time, she points out. “The expectation is that you come in and you’re immediately ready to go,” she says. “Everyone has really tightened down their head counts. They don’t have the option to accommodate people’s special needs.”

You may have heard the horror stories—job hunters who take phone calls or text during an interview, or bring out a sandwich and start chomping, or brush their hair, or worse. You wouldn’t do any of those things, would you? Of course not.

But there are tons of other job interview
no-no’s you may not have thought of. Or that you’ve forgotten. The job hunting trail is long and arduous, and a little refresher course can’t hurt. So for your edification and enjoyment, here are 50 (yes, 50!) of the worst and most common job interview mistakes:

1. Arriving late.
2. Arriving too early.
3. Lighting up a cigarette, or smelling like a cigarette.
4. Bad-mouthing your last boss.
5. Lying about your skills/experience/knowledge.
6. Wearing the wrong (for this workplace!) clothes.
7. Forgetting the name of the person you’re interviewing with.
8. Wearing a ton of perfume or aftershave.
9. Wearing sunglasses.
10. Wearing a Bluetooth earpiece.
11. Failing to research the employer in advance.
12. Failing to demonstrate enthusiasm.
13. Inquiring about benefits too soon.
14. Talking about salary requirements too soon.
15. Being unable to explain how your strengths and abilities apply to the job in question.
16. Failing to make a strong case for why you are the best person for this job.
17. Forgetting to bring a copy of your résumé and/or portfolio.
18. Failing to remember what you wrote on your own résumé.
19. Asking too many questions.
20. Asking no questions at all.
21. Being unprepared to answer the standard questions.
22. Failing to listen carefully to what the interviewer is saying.
23. Talking more than half the time.
24. Interrupting your interviewer.
25. Neglecting to match the communication style of your interviewer.
26. Yawning.
27. Slouching.
28. Bringing along a friend, or your mother.
29. Chewing gum, tobacco, your pen, your hair.
30. Laughing, giggling, whistling, humming, lip-smacking.
31. Saying “you know,” “like,” “I guess,” and “um.”
32. Name-dropping or bragging or sounding like a know-it-all.
33. Asking to use the bathroom.
34. Being falsely or exaggeratedly modest.
35. Shaking hands too weakly, or too firmly.
36. Failing to make eye contact (or making continuous eye contact).
37. Taking a seat before your interviewer does.
38. Becoming angry or defensive.
39. Complaining that you were kept waiting.
40. Complaining about anything!
41. Speaking rudely to the receptionist.
42. Letting your nervousness show.
43. Overexplaining why you lost your last job.
44. Being too familiar and jokey.
45. Sounding desperate.
46. Checking the time.
47. Oversharing.
48. Sounding rehearsed.
49. Leaving your cell phone on.
50. Failing to ask for the job.

Karen Burns is the author of the illustrated career advice book The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use, recently released by Running Press.

Here are the keys to successful phone interviewing. Follow these simple rules and you should achieve success in this important phase of job-hunting.

• Do give accurate and detailed contact information in your cover letter so your interviewers can easily connect with you.
• When in job-hunting mode, don’t have a disproportionately silly or long greeting on your answering machine or voicemail.
• Do ensure that household members understand the importance of phone messages in your job search.
• Do know what job you are interviewing for.
• Do practice, if possible. Have a friend call you to do a mock phone interview so you get the feel of being interviewed over the phone.
• When being interviewed by phone, do make sure you are in a place where you can read notes, take notes, and concentrate.
• If you cannot devote enough time to a phone interview, do suggest a specific alternate time to the recruiter. It’s often best to be the one who calls back so you can be mentally prepared.
• Do consider using a phone interview log.
• Do consider keeping some note cards or an outline in front of you to remind yourself of key points you want to cover with the interviewer. You don’t want your responses to sound scripted, but you don’t want to fumble for important points either. Do also have your resume in front of you so you can remember highlights of your experience and accomplishments.
• Do ensure that you can hear and are being clearly heard.
• Do consider standing when being interviewed on the phone. Some experts say you’ll sound more professional than if you’re slouching in an easy chair.
• Do consider dressing nicely for the phone interview. It may sound silly since the interviewer can’t see you, but you really will project a more professional image if you’re dressed for the part instead of wearing, for example, a ratty bathrobe.
• Don’t feel you have to fill in the silences. If you’ve completed a response, but the interviewer hasn’t asked his or her next question, don’t start babbling just to fill in airtime. Instead, ask a question of your own related to your last response.
• Do create a strong finish to your phone interview with thoughtful questions.
• Don’t panic if you have special needs. If you are hearing-impaired, for example, phone interviews are still possible.
• Don’t snuffle, sneeze or cough. If you can’t avoid these behaviors, say “excuse me.”
• Don’t chew gum or food, or drink anything noisy.