The job interview is the most important first impression you can ever make. Within a couple of minutes, the interviewer is making a snap decision about you. And depending on that first impression, they are looking to support their judgment.

This doesn't mean that it is impossible to turn around a person's opinion if you get off on the wrong foot. A good interviewer will weight all of your merits throughout the interview. In this case, remain positive and do your best in any given situation.

However, these five faux pas make it nearly impossible to recover from the negative first impression:

You share your expertise both as information and tools communicated in print or in person, or as products and services you offer to others.

How do experts communicate their expertise?

Conor Neill, a professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, addressed the foundations of expertise-based personal brands in a thought-provoking recent Rhetorical Journey blog post, What Makes An Expert Different?

Funny job interview answers take pride of place in our once a month humorous article on employment issues, next week we return with a serious post on how to explain to interviewers why you have been fired or laid off in your previous job, until then have a blast reading through some of these answers and be sure not to include any in your interview.

This is the first ebook by Fortune 500 recruiters that gives job seekers an inside look at what it takes to get a job.

Inside you’ll find a forward by Jack Mollen, Executive Vice President of Human Resources at EMC; en pages of recruiter tips, with each page profiling a different recruiter; and recommended resources.

With 400 million registered users, Facebook is a great place to find a job. For more than a few cavalier souls, it's a great place to lose one, too.

Also see How Facebook Ruined My Career.

In my posts leading up to this one, I have shown you ways to build a stronger online personal branding platform by using social media profiles and basic search engine optimization techniques. Everything has been predicated on your being able to earn some listings in the top-ten Google search results for your name. This is relatively easy for unique or not-so-common names, like mine. (Do you think my parents planned it that way?)

But what do you do if your name doesn't stand out from the pack? What if you share a name with a celebrity or an infamous criminal? What if yourname.com is already taken? What if the Google search results for your name are so crowded, you'll never crack the top-10 without shelling out a lot of cash to buy links?

Don't worry. Even with what seems like a house of cards stacked against you, there are still ways to carve out your personal brand niche.

Today’s job climate demands one to be different in order to stand out from the crowd. Being different is absolutely key and it means you must be creative. Below are 4 creative ideas to help get you thinking about approaches to get you in the door to your next gig.

Remember, once you get in the door – keep the creativity coming! This could mean asking the hiring manager to have your interview over lunch, or even a beer after work. Use your own ideas – just remember to be different and stand out!

Layoffs, bankruptcies and rising unemployment - the past two years have been an especially traumatic time to be looking for a new job. Given that you may have been looking for work for this long or even longer, you need to be aware of schemes used to collect information that may later prove detrimental.

The interview is a classic point of stress for most job seekers, and with good cause. Many firms like asking indirect questions that make it hard to judge what information they're really fishing looking for.

Of course, interviewers don't want anyone to know the motivation behind their method of questioning, or else potential job candidates could easily game the system. For this reason, most firms ask slightly different questions and have their own method of interviewing. Today, we explore twelve common indirect questions that employers often ask and the motivation behind them.

Brian Ward lost his job on a Friday afternoon. Eleven days later he had a new one. With nearly 1 in 10 people out of work and the typical job search lasting 12 weeks, how did the Cleveland-based software architect pull it off? In a phrase: online social networking.