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.

Some of the most important elements of a successful job search are details. Here are nine tips to follow and details to consider, offered by the experts: hiring managers, executives, human resources managers, and career coaches

Fine-tune your cover letter. Suppose you're a manager, and you're making your way through a thick stack of plain-vanilla résumés. You barely have a moment to scan a cover letter, and when you do, it appears to have been written by someone who knows your company's name but doesn't seem to have spent much time getting to know the business. You toss it. Employers want to know that you're interested in them specifically. You should fine-tune your résumé and cover letter
to suit the position. "Spend two hours going through the company's website, executive LinkedIn profiles, blogs, and industry articles—before you even touch your résumé or cover letter," says G. L. Hoffman, chairman of Jobdig.com and blogger at Whatwoulddadsay.com. "Only then can you do a decent job with both."

Watch your body language at a job interview. Employers are looking for the candidate with the best knowledge and experience, but rarely do they hire for work skills at the expense of social skills. If you lack self-awareness, it shows. And it doesn't look good. Even in the critical small talk before the interview, make eye contact when you're speaking, smile when it's appropriate, and look alert, says Karen Burns, author of the The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real-Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use. "Most of all, don't jiggle your knee, kick the desk, twirl your hair, check your cellphone, play with your pen, stare off into space, or bite your nails," says Burns.

Fill in a long résumé blank with volunteer work. Nearly 6 million Americans had been out of work for six months or more in October. President Obama recently signed a bill providing another extension of unemployment benefits, giving as much as two years of benefits to eligible workers. Many Americans w ill have gaping recessionary holes in their résumés through no fault of their own—they wanted work but just couldn't find it. One solution: volunteering part time. "Volunteering tells potential employers that you are an energetic, compassionate person who, even when faced with problems of your own, found the wherewithal to help others," says Burns, who blogs at karenburnsworkinggirl.com. Volunteering also says that you didn't let your skills go to waste.

Don't be careless—watch the small stuff. You forgot to fix the date on your résumé. You whiffed on the hiring manager's name when you showed up for the interview. The small stuff is not always a deal-breaker in other areas of life, but it often is when it comes to hiring, says Alison Green, a hiring manager for a Washington-area nonprofit. "When you're on a job search, a small blunder can take on far greater importance than it would in most contexts," Green says. "Here's what can happen in a hiring manager's head when a job candidate makes a noticeable mistake: 'She told me she was going to send me this writing sample Monday, but then she sent it on Tuesday without acknowledging the delay. This might be out of character for her; everyone screws up occasionally. But if I ignore this possible red flag and hire her, and then she turns out to be scattered and bad with deadlines, I'm going to be kicking myself for not having paid attention to this sign now.'"
Your résumé  must answer this question: Green, who blogs at askamanager.blogspot.com, spends a lot of time looking through résumés, and most of them "read like a series of job descriptions," just listing tasks and skills required in positions held by the applicant—and anyone else who held the same job. But that's not the information hiring managers need to make their decisions. Indeed, résumés that capture their attention offer more than that. "For each position, they answer the question: What did you accomplish in this job that someone else wouldn't have?" Green says. "Did you just go through the motions and turn in an acceptable, but not particularly star-quality, performance? Or did you do an unusually good job, one that impressed your boss and coworkers and made them devastated to lose you?"

Make sure you match the job description: If you were a 6-foot, 5-inch, 250-pound Frenchman with burly arms and a bushy beard, would you apply for the part of Little Orphan Annie on Broadway? However ridiculous that image is, every day in corporate America, thousands of managers shuffle through résumés that are totally unmatched to the position advertised. "If you don't have an accurate understanding of what the job is all about, your opinion of how well-matched you are will be based on an erroneous foundation," Green says.

Put your interviewer at ease: This is pretty counterintuitive. Most job seekers are prepared to follow the tone set by their interviewer. But that may not be your best plan. "A great many interviewers hate interviewing," says Michael Wade, a management consultant, who blogs at execupundit.com. "They know they're not good at it, and they are dealing with strangers and asking questions to fill a job with which they are unfamiliar." A job seeker can gain an edge by staying friendly, listening carefully, using body language to indicate amiability, and stressing that he or she gets along with colleagues, Wade says.

Plan before you pursue: Researchers at the University of Missouri recently studied the efforts of 327 job seekers, ages 20 to 40, and found that developing and following a plan at the beginning of a job search has a significant impact on its success. Similarly, Curt Rosengren, a career coach and blogger at curtrosengren.mapmaker.com, recommends setting "process goals" to keep you on track toward your larger career goals. "Process goals aren't big-picture objectives. They're 'roll up your sleeves and make it happen' objectives," Rosengren says. "Maybe you set a goal of making 10 phone calls a day or writing for two hours each day."

Take the less desirable job: The recession has shrunk opportunities in many fields, while maintaining or increasing the opportunities in others (think auto manufacturing versus nursing). That dichotomy has left many of the unemployed wondering how to break into a new industry. That's a tough goal anytime—and especially tough when the unemployment rate is 10.2 percent. Human resources expert Suzanne Lucas suggests that job seekers look for a job that no one else wants when trying to enter a new field. "If a position is hard to fill, they may be willing to hire you if you are willing to learn how to do the work, rather than requiring you to already be an expert," Lucas says.

Many job interviews these days are conducted by phone. It’s faster and cheaper for both job hirers and hunters. HR folks especially like it because it allows them to screen more applicants in less time. A phone interview may even be your first contact with a potential employer.

Phone interviews are not, however, the same as in-person interviews. So much human communication is non-verbal! You may need to acquire a few new skills to pull off a great job interview over the phone. To get you started, check out these phone interview do’s and don’ts:

DO:
    * Smile while you speak. It may feel silly, but smiling shows up in your voice.
    * Stand up. It removes pressure from your diaphragm and gives your voice more resonance.
    * Choose a quiet room. No dogs barking, kids whining, music playing, lawnmowers mowing, or TV blaring in the background.
    * Tape your résumé and whatever notes you'll use (say, lists of your accomplishments and strengths) on the wall so you can consult them without having to look down, which can muffle your voice.
    * Have pen and paper handy, along with your calendar (maybe they’ll want to schedule a follow-up!)
    * Remember that your interviewer can’t see you. If you pause to make a note, don’t let the silence stretch out. You might say, for example, “Just one second, please, while I write that down.”
    * If a switchboard operator or an assistant connects you to the interviewer, be nice to that person. Word gets around.
    * Whether you use a land or cell line, test your phone connection with a friend. Choose a phone you can hold to your ear comfortably. If you use a headset or speaker phone, make sure you are not unconsciously shouting.
    * Do a practice interview with your friend. Ask if you say “um” a lot (which is even more annoying on a phone than in real life), or if you speak too slowly or quickly, or if your voice is too loud or too soft. Taping yourself is another good way to get an idea of how you come off.
    * Try setting up a mirror in your phone-interview room. Sounds crazy, but having a human face to talk to may help you to speak with more passion and conviction. Try it!
    * If you have time, just before the call, take a series of long deep breaths. Say a few practice phrases, slowly and in a slightly deeper register than your normal voice.
    * Be prepared. A prospective employer may call when you least expect it. Yes, you can ask to reschedule at a more convenient time but showing you are flexible and can think on your feet is not a bad way to impress people. Keep your phone-interview area set up and ready to go.
    * Close the interview by trying to set up an in-person meeting. It’s that old sales technique of “asking for the sale.”

DON’T: (Most of these should go without saying but let’s say them anyway.)
    * Don’t eat, drink, chew gum, spit tobacco, smoke, sniffle, belch, or blow your nose. If you absolutely must sneeze, hold the phone as far away as possible, briefly apologize, and turn the conversation back to the interview. (Don’t say, “Whoa, what a honkin’ sneeze!”)
    * Don’t put your interviewer on hold to answer an incoming call.
    * Don’t talk to other people in the room. (Try to be alone when you’re interviewing.)
    * Don’t monopolize the conversation. This is also true for in-person interviews, but on the phone you lack visual cues to tell you when your listener is zoning out. Practice speaking in two-minute increments (use an egg timer, or the timer on your microwave).
    * Don’t interrupt. If you accidentally speak over your interviewer, quickly apologize and let him finish.
    * Don’t fail to realize that a phone interview is as formal as an in-person interview. A phone call may feel casual but—beware!—you are being judged and you need to sound professional. If it helps, try “dressing up” for your phone interview.

Good luck. Your next phone interview may be The One. Oh, and don’t forget to follow up with a thank-you note, just as you would after an in-person meeting.

1. “Tell me about yourself.”
    * DO: Talk about the ways that what you know and what you can do are perfectly suited to this job.
    * DON’T: Tell the interviewer your life story.
2. “Tell me something bad you’ve heard about our company.”
    * DO: You wouldn’t apply for a job at a company you disapproved of, would you? So you should be able to honestly answer that you haven’t heard anything negative about this place.
    * DON’T: Repeat gossip you might have heard.
3. “Why should I hire you?”
    * DO: Impress your interviewer with how much you know about the company’s requirements and then describe how you are the best person to meet those requirements.
    * DON’T: Get tripped up by a lack of prior research.
4. “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
    * DO: Talk about how your specific abilities, training, and experience will enable you to smoothly integrate with this company.
    * DON’T: Say that you have no idea.
5. “How would you react if I told you your interview so far was terrible?”
    * DO: Recognize that this is a test to see if you get flustered. Say, mildly, that you would ask for reasons why.
    * DON’T: Freak out. Remember, the interviewer said “if.”
6. “What’s the last book you read?”
    * DO: Mention a book that reflects well on you. Choose something by a reputable author that your interviewer has probably heard of.
    * DON’T: Name a book you haven’t actually read.
7. “Can you work under pressure?”
    * DO: Say that of course you can, and then relate a brief story about a time you did.
    * DON’T: Just say, "Yes I can." Provide a specific example.
8. “Who’s your hero?”
    * DO: Name a person who has inspired you and then describe specifically how this inspiration relates to your work.
    * DON’T: Get caught off-guard by what should really be a softball question. Come prepared with a good answer.
9. “Have you ever considered starting your own business?”
    * DO: Talk about how you are happiest and do your best work in a company that is amazingly similar to the one you’re applying at.
    * DON’T: Go on and on about how you’d love to be your own boss one day.
10. “If you won the lottery, would you still work?”
    * DO: Be honest and say you’d be thrilled to win the lottery; then add that even if you did you’d still seek out satisfying work, because work is what makes people happy.
    * DON’T: Say that you’d never work again (too honest) or that you’d just work for free (too BS-y).

Bottom line: It pays to think through in advance how you would handle some of the more common trick questions. In general, remember never to badmouth or blame others, especially past employers. Be careful not to betray your nervousness with jittery body language. Don’t lie or babble, or show frustration, impatience, disappointment, or anger.
The most important thing to remember is that hiring managers who ask these questions are far more interested in how you answer than what you answer. They just want to see how well you think on your feet. So even if a question completely flummoxes you, keep your cool, smile, and look ‘em in the eye.