How to fail a telephone interview in four easy steps:

1. Be completely unprepared because they chose to call you up, tell you the position you applied for has already been filled, and then launch straight into an interview without even explaining what on earth is going on. Am I being interviewed? For what? You said you'd already filled the position ... oh, where do I see myself in five years' time? Umm ... (I don't even know what I'll be doing in five minutes time. Probably hitting my head against a wall for making such a cock-up of this interview!)

2. Don't do any prior research about what the job actually involves (because you weren't even expecting a response to your application, since you already got turned down for two retail jobs over the past week) and then when asked, rattle off some crap about motivation and determination to succeed, oh and it involves finding new clients or something, right?

3. ???

4.

So suffice it to say, I will not be launching into a career in sales and marketing any time soon. But I have taken this awfully embarrassing, cringeworthy, kill-me-now interview as a learning experience. I have written up a big page of all the questions interviewers seem to love asking, like 'What is your biggest weakness?' and written out some notes to help me answer them coherently, and I have decided that from now on every time I send off an application I will print out a page of notes specific to that job.

So next time I get ambushed by a 'HAHA, GOTCHA!' style phone interview, I will hopefully manage to sound like an articulate and educated individual, instead of a confused and frightened animal that has wandered into a recruitment office.