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.

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.

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.

Telephone interview is where in you are interviewed over a telephone for the job. The telephonic method is a strategy followed by companies to fill up any immediate small vacancies or those of very higher post. This is also done to recruit candidates recommended by those already in some post of the company. This saves company from tedious campus recruitment and other costs to fill up the limited vacancies or immediate requirements.

I've been a Personal Branding coach for a large part of my working life. I've had the privilege of working with a group of men and women who in many ways have been my teachers.

When I began my retail fashion business in the late 70s, the branding aspect of my business focused on what I now describe as Outer Branding. Outer Branding includes attire, grooming, our physicality and the way we communicate verbally.

Today we’re going to uncover what makes you uniquely you. We’re going to go through your vision, purpose, values, goals, and extract the core of your personal brand.

This worksheet is a slightly adapted version of the original by Meg Guiseppi, a good friend of mine and a leading Personal Branding Expert for executives.

Companies have long understood the power of branding. They spend millions of dollars a year making a brand promise to customers that goes beyond the technical and physical attributes of a particular product. They build an identity that customers feel safe choosing over the competition.

So, what four specific takeaways can you get from corporate branding, and how can you apply it to yourself?