Job interview Word Search

Did you know?

resume

Leonardo's job-seeking letter highlighted engineering before painting, giving the artist's famous talent a surprisingly late place in his own list of skills.

candidate

Office seekers in ancient Rome wore chalk-whitened togas, so candidatus, meaning white robed, became our word for a job hopeful.

employer

Ancient Egyptian tomb builders could be paid in bread and beer, making an employer's wages something workers could eat and drink.

salary

Salary's salt-related history doesn't prove Roman soldiers were paid in salt, despite the familiar story often repeated about its origin.

handshake

Quakers helped spread handshakes instead of bows, greeting men and women alike as a visible statement of equality rather than social rank.

reference

Einstein's father wrote to a professor seeking help with his son's job hunt, giving the physicist an unexpected advocate behind the scenes.

punctual

Punctual once meant having a sharp point, and only in the 1670s did it settle into meaning prompt.

vacancy

Vacancy, vacation and vacuum all grow from the Latin vacare, to be empty, so a vacancy is an empty seat.

experience

Einstein co-invented a refrigerator without moving parts, adding kitchen machinery to a career better remembered for equations about light, space, and time.

confidence

In one study, students claiming to recognize invented names gained high social status, making misplaced confidence look convincing to their own classmates.

application

Edison tested job applicants with general-knowledge questions about wood, mountains, and inventions, giving unfamiliar trivia a role in the search for employment.

interview

Interview comes from the French entrevue, to see each other, a reminder that both sides are sizing each other up.

qualification

Elizabeth Blackwell entered medical school after students voted to admit her as a joke, then earned the medical degree they hadn't expected.

probation

American probation grew partly from a Boston shoemaker who vouched for defendants, putting a craftsperson's volunteer work behind a familiar court procedure.

In their words