I get asked the same questions in every job interview: Can you use Microsoft Office? How are you with Adobe software? What do you know about social media?

As a young, Internet-savvy college student, I’m pretty comfortable with such topics. It’s the way of the future, after all, and I intend to go into the workforce with the right skills. Every day, companies are realizing the potential the Web offers them and are doing their best to capitalize on it.

Some are getting it right, and some are doing it wrong.

Over the past couple of years, it’s become increasingly apparent that, of the two major political parties, one in particular has no idea what it is doing when it comes to the Internet.

That party is the GOP.

Take, for example, the 2008 presidential campaign. It was during the summer of 2008 that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., looking to capitalize on the youth vote, released a video called “McCain Cribs Exclusive: The Straight-Talk Express.”

This four-and-a-half-minute Republican romp led supporters through the campaign bus’s hip features — flat-screen TVs and 22-inch rims.

Featuring the same video editing techniques as the MTV original, the video featured hip-hop beats and was narrated by a young urban staff member.

The embarrassment of that didn’t stop Republicans from trying to reach an Internet-savvy crowd.

After McCain lost the presidential election, the Republican National Committee decided to try its hand at getting to know the younger generation.

So the committee revamped its website, dressing the American flag with hydraulics and showcasing a blog written by party Chairman Michael Steele called “What Up.”

This approach was mocked relentlessly on “The Daily Show” and did nothing to improve the party’s image.

Fast-forward to the present day. You have a Republican party desperate to clean house in the midterm elections, but it needs a platform, something that captures the sentiments of a nation and pushes a conservative agenda.

So, in one of the party’s less brilliant moments, it devised a website called “America Speaking Out.”Modeled after popular user-generated content sites such as Reddit and Digg, it allows users to upload their ideas for a new policy agenda. These ideas are then voted up or down, the idea being that the best proposals will have the most votes.

That, of course, has not been the case.If Republicans understood anything about the Internet, they would realize it’s a dark, anonymous place where rules are not respected.

While some good patriots might have used the site to express their conservative ideas, many others ran amok on the message board, spewing both senseless nonsense and liberal ideology.

Reviewing the Republicans’ latest efforts to go mainstream, I’m more than a little disheartened.

Next time, they should check their efforts at social media with a college intern or an adolescent son. Maybe then their efforts wouldn’t blow up so royally.