Preface: these are based on my personal pet peeves over the course of three Fort leaders. Your mileage may vary.

1. Never turn down an opportunity to meet with someone in the cabal, especially a leader, when that person offers up his or her time. It doesn't really matter that you're about to get a rank; when someone asks, you drop what you're doing and go talk to them.

2. If the person interviewing you has to quit before the interview is completed, or tells you to do some task before meeting with him again, don't whine about it. In general, try to avoid whining...ever.

3. Try to avoid conducting yourself in the interview any differently than you normally conduct yourself. This applies especially to "novel" speech patterns. I've had people talk to me in faux "Middle English", in "dumb giant speak", and "scottish dwarf speak" only to have the accent mostly vanish after that.

4. Try to avoid excessively vague and cliched phrases. This is especially a problem for Fortress interviews, where people talk about wanting to "defend the Light". "Defend the light?" Huh? What, do photons need defending? Some group of people apparently believe that to get inducted into Fortress you need to spout "good-aligned mumbo jumbo" nonstop. Trust me, that's not the case. Personally, I much prefer it when people speak to me in concrete terms, without a bunch of grandiose melodrama.

5. Don't try to suck up to the person interviewing you by fawning over them and generally showering praise on them. I mean, sure, you can and should act respectful, but some people go overboard to an obscene degree. I guess it's possible this approach might "work" on some people, but when it doesn't work it really makes you to come across as annoying and manipulative.

6. Don't remark at how well geared the person interviewing you is, even if they happen to be decked. This may be less applicable if you're interviewing for an evil cabal. For Fort, though, if someone looked at me and "whistled" to indicate their approval of what I was wearing...it just made them seem like a gear-whore.

7. When you're asked, "Why do you want to be a {insert cabal} member?" don't take that as an invitation to basically do a one-way "dump" of your entire role. Remember that you're having a conversation. Frequently I've had people launch into extremely long and involved histories of their character's entire life, when really all I wanted to know is why they want to be a Squire. Sure, maybe some of that history is relevant, but can't it be summarized somehow? With some, it almost seemed like they'd prepared the whole thing beforehand, and had a script that was emitting it line-by-line according to some time interval.

And with specific regards to Fort (and #4), NEVER use the sword and shield analogy. Ever.

That's just lazy "RP". There aren't necessarily any "right" answers to a question. But there ARE "wrong" answers. That's a wrong one, and will immediately turn me off to your character.

My interviews usually start out with the pretty simple "Why". And if you impress me with that, I'm usually satisfied. But if you just try to say what you think I want to hear, then I'm gonna try to make things a little difficult, just so we both can flesh out your character a little bit.

Oh, and if I'm a leader, and you tell me you're too busy to talk to me, you will NOT get inducted. Period. (Exception being if you're actually logging off within the next couple minutes) As a leader, there's a lot of demands on my time. If you blow me off, then what are you going to do when I ask you to come defend? Or to raid, or whatever else?

4. Try to avoid excessively vague and cliched phrases. This is especially a problem for Fortress interviews, where people talk about wanting to "defend the Light". "Defend the light?" Huh? What, do photons need defending? Some group of people apparently believe that to get inducted into Fortress you need to spout "good-aligned mumbo jumbo" nonstop. Trust me, that's not the case. Personally, I much prefer it when people speak to me in concrete terms, without a bunch of grandiose melodrama.

While I agree with you, and this tip may have been good advice while you were the leader of Fort, generally speaking spouting this same kind of cliche crap usually works VERY well with regards to Fort.

Other cabals tend to differ, but it's been my experience that when it comes to Fort, the same "good-aligned mumbo jumbo" is like the Fort secret handshake. Toss in the ol' sword and shield analogy and BAM, induct.

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7. When you're asked, "Why do you want to be a {insert cabal} member?" don't take that as an invitation to basically do a one-way "dump" of your entire role. Remember that you're having a conversation. Frequently I've had people launch into extremely long and involved histories of their character's entire life, when really all I wanted to know is why they want to be a Squire. Sure, maybe some of that history is relevant, but can't it be summarized somehow? With some, it almost seemed like they'd prepared the whole thing beforehand, and had a script that was emitting it line-by-line according to some time interval.

I feel quite hit by that one... ^^ I often fall into that category, in one sence or another, either that, or I sorta force the conversation in a direction where I can just spout it out.

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.