CAREER START : A SEARCH FOR GEMS IN THE ROUGH : Personnel managers have war stories: Job seekers who show up without a shirt, or bring their dog to the office.

If you are looking for a job, no doubt you have been told to be assertive. But being pushy did not help an applicant for a management trainee position who refused to reschedule an interview despite a power outage.

“I conducted a 25-minute interview with this individual in total darkness,” AnaMaria Buranasakorn recalled of the meeting, which took place several years ago when she was vice president for human resources at Valley Federal Savings & Loan Assn.

The applicant didn’t give an explanation for his stubbornness beyond the fact that he had scheduled the appointment for 3 p.m. and “I think he just wanted to have the interview, period,” she said.

He got the interview, but he didn’t get the job.

Buranasakorn, now a personnel director at KTTV in Los Angeles, a Fox Broadcasting Co. affiliate, says many applicants may be getting bad advice from workshops that urge people to be assertive. “People don’t always know what assertive is, so they’ll be aggressive.”

Finding a job is hard work, but it’s not easy on the other side of the desk either. Some personnel managers interview hundreds of job candidates every month, and they have many war stories to tell.

At Universal Studios Hollywood, where about 5,000 applicants apply each year for about 60 openings, job hunters sometimes get creative. Michael Sington, director of studio guide training, said half the people applying for guide positions lie about or exaggerate their experience. Some forget what part they claimed to have played on their resumes. He said others boast substantial roles in films when they have only worked as extras.

Sington said the applicant pool is largely made up of struggling actors who are desperate to get the $5.75-per-hour job, which is regarded as a way to break into the entertainment business. “It’s so common that if you knocked out everyone that exaggerated on their resume, you wouldn’t hire anyone, especially actors,” Sington said.

One applicant sent a videotape, which featured him giving a guided tour of his house. Another sent a gift-wrapped shoe to Sington’s office with a note saying that he wanted to “get his foot in the door.” Sington said, “As gimmicky as these things sound, they do get our attention.”

But even Sington admits that a successful job candidate needs more than a good gimmick to land the job. Guides need the ability to stand up and entertain a group of tourists. “You got it or you don’t.”

At Pacific Bell, Carla Haywood, who has been a Los Angeles placement manager for three years, interviews about 320 people a month. She says applicants often disqualify themselves by denying that they have worked previously for the company. Once they falsify records, those candidates are automatically disqualified.

On the other hand, some applicants can be too candid.

Last fall, Anne Hanson, human resources director for the Beverly Hilton hotel, interviewed a man who had recently moved to Los Angeles. When asked why he’d moved, he answered: “For a girl. Doesn’t that say everything?”

It said all the wrong things to Hanson. “Placing more emphasis on your personal life,” rather than on your professional life, “is not what the employer wants to hear,” Hanson said.

Personal confessions during job interviews are not unusual. While at Valley Federal, Buranasakorn interviewed a woman who told a long personal story about an argument with a boyfriend and the death of her mother.

Thirty minutes into the interview, the woman was “in hysterics,” said Buranasakorn, who admits to having shed a few tears herself. As it turned out, the woman was not mentally stable.

“A small, little personal touch is always welcome. But you don’t want the interview to turn into a counseling session,” Buranasakorn said.

And when it comes to wardrobe selection, many job hunters display terrible judgment.

Take the case of a woman who showed up for an interview at the posh Beverly Hilton in a black spandex exercise outfit with a midriff top. Despite her inappropriately casual dress, Hanson said she liked the woman, who was applying for a job as a bartender.

Hanson asked her to dress more conservatively for her second interview. “She came in Levi’s and a T-shirt for her next interview,” Hanson said. “You know that’s the best they’re ever going to look.” She didn’t get the job.

John Yamin, a partner at the restaurant chain Louise’s Trattoria, remembers when a man wearing a leather jacket, jeans and no shirt walked into the Melrose Avenue restaurant in Los Angeles.

The shirtless man told Yamin that he wanted the job because he heard servers at Louise’s Trattoria really raked in tips. But Yamin would rather that the job, which can pull in $200 in tips on a good night, go to someone with a genuine interest in the restaurant.

“I really like it when a prospective employee comes up and says, ‘I was in your restaurant the other day, and I had dinner, and I’d really like to work here,’ ” Yamin said. The shirtless wonder didn’t get hired.

Personnel directors stress the importance of arriving on time.

Barry H. Marshall, regional vice president for Kelly Services, said he refuses to meet with a job candidate who is more than 15 minutes late for an interview.

But on rare occasions, arriving late is actually a plus. Buranasakorn told of one applicant who got hopelessly lost before an interview at KTTV. He had started an interview with a manager in another building on the lot before they both realized that the applicant was in the wrong place, talking to the wrong person, Buranasakorn said.

After 40 minutes, “he was escorted back to the office and the apologies were made,” Buranasakorn said. She offered him a clerical job in part because the incident made him stick out in her mind.

The good news for job-seekers is that personnel managers seem to like meeting people. In December, Hanson spent a week interviewing about 70 people to staff a new Hilton hotel in Long Beach. “It’s a little bit exhilarating to interview that many people because you get excited when you find people who are good,” she said.

And then there are the strange interviews.

Buranasakorn still remembers the woman who brought her dog to an interview at Valley Federal and demanded that Buranasakorn’s assistant interview her canine for a position as security guard.

Neither the dog nor the woman was hired.