I had a candidate I’d hired over the phone (we were desperate for instructors as we had a surge in enrollment). She was relocating from across the country. I needed her to come by and fill out pre-hire paperwork. We’d agreed that she would be at the office at around 11 a.m. but it wasn’t a strict deadline and didn’t initially mind that she was running behind schedule.
But then “a few minutes” became “Oh by the way I’m lost and I’m almost out of gas, and oh by the way, I’m not sure I have any cash or method of payment to actually purchase gas. So like, where is your office again?” (Are you fucking kidding me?)
My response: “It’s downtown. Can’t miss the skyscrapers.”
Her: “Oh, wow, I think I’m like a long way from there because I’m in some town that’s like…I don’t know.”
(How the fuck did you get a master’s degree? How the fuck did you get out of junior high let alone earn a master’s?)
So, about two or three hours later, she actually does arrive at my office. I didn’t ask how she managed to pay for parking, which ran about $15 per hour at the time.
As she’s filling out her paperwork, I asked her just a few questions about her transition to a new city and trying to keep it light. She then starts talking about how half her family is dysfunctional and her older brother is in prison – the kinda shit we all share before a first day on the job, right?
I was praying that there would be a last straw, something that would give me an excuse to write her an email so that I could credibly not hire her. She delivered. She couldn’t be bothered to complete e-learning modules. I could tell she had access; she just didn’t do it. She emailed me a few days after the window for completing the courses had ended but I just didn’t respond. Bullet dodged.
I’ve been interviewing candidates for around 15 years. I am given a list of questions a lot more than I am ever given answers to those questions. i.e, there isn’t really a method to score an answer to “tell me about a time where you failed.”
Usually I just like to talk to the person for an hour about what the job is about, dig into that person’s experience, and see if there is a good fit. I’m sure that method has a fair amount of bias and other flaws.
The interview method du jour seems to be 30 minutes of the “STAR” method (Amazon is a big fan of this) - Situation, Task, Action, Result.
Interviewers don’t really need to “cover their ass”. Candidates typically go through multiple rounds and sometimes people just don’t work out. Usually for reasons that have nothing to do with the interview process.
Most of it is bullshit anyway. There is a whole industry dedicated to trying to help people game the interview process, but in reality it’s a lot more unstructured and ad-hoc than people realize. Typically you will meet with HR, who is in no way qualified to judge your ability to do the job in question. You’ll meet with a couple of harried mid-level managers or directors with no formal training in interviewing. Then you’ll meet with the head of your group who is just making sure he likes you and doesn’t really care as you’ll be some harried mid-level managers or directors problem on a day to day basis.
I got a very similar question. In my previous job at a bank call center, I got 80 or more calls a day. I could not really remember a specifc example. But was able in a couple of seconds I remembered I got a call once from someone in South America who went to a bank’s ATM and wondered why it didn’t work. Had a hard time explaining to her that even though it was the same bank name, it was a completely different entity. She may as well have been at a bank with a completley different name. So I just told the interviewer that I went out of my way to help her even though it wasn’t my job, but I did so to protect the company name when that person came back to the US.
Well, she was interviewing right behind me, and they knew it. They commented about it at the end of my interview and I told them “Well, if it comes down to the two of us, I’ll give you 100%; she’ll give you 150%.” I think it confused them.
My only performance review was interesting. My department head asked “What are your career goals with this company?” I replied “I’m 30 years older than you are, and I work here part-time in semi-retirement. What do you think my goals are?” I was kept on.
Don’t lose sight of this: HR stands for Human Resources, which they are unable to distinguish from Coal Resources and Timber Resources.
Most interviewers are not “good interviewers” because they aren’t trained to interview people and it’s generally not their primary job (and, as I mentioned, if interviewing IS their primary job, they probably don’t really know much about the position they are interviewing the candidate for).
Now granted, my interview experience is largely confined to the type of work I do and the sort of jobs I get interviews for - basically mid to senior level management positions in large consulting firms like Deloitte or Cognizant or professional services (iow “consulting”) groups within technology companies (that mostly hire mid to senior level managers from large consulting firms). And what they tend to look for is “smart” people with the background and look and manner of speaking who can appear to speak intelligently and abstractly about complex topics and managing teams and clients.
Of course, the interview process is probably very different if I were interviewing for a more technical engineering role where I might get asked a lot of detailed technical questions. Or if I were interviewing for an executive level position where they would want to know my vision for leading the group and growing the business.
Then again, maybe not.
Yeah…I have no idea if that’s a good answer or not.
You know, that sounds like a stupid question - but you really never know. I was once on an interview panel where the others on the panel had come up with the list of questions. One of the questions was " What are your three greatest weaknesses?" I was the only person on the panel who had held the job we were interviewing for , and there were a few specific qualities I was looking for. I wanted someone who wasn’t afraid of confrontation* and who could think on their feet , as there would be many decisions that had to be made quickly. When asked the question about weaknesses, one candidate said she avoided confrontation and couldn’t make decisions quickly. I’m not saying she would have been chosen with a different answer to that question- but once we heard that answer, the other questions didn’t matter.
It was to act as a non-attorney prosecutor at administrative hearings- confrontation is part of the job.
In my experience, my best interviews have always been conducted by people who do the job I’m being interviewed for, or one similar to it, and the worst interviews have been from people (usually administration of some sort) who don’t do that job. The absolute worst interview I ever had was with six administrators, only one of which had had any teaching experience, and that was with kindergarten (for a high school position).
You know that and I know that, but a new candidate taking the exam wouldn’t be aware of that.
And I was responding to the post that added to the answer, which multiple choice exams don’t allow for unless they include “none of the above”. One has to answer with the given choices.
I have taken a ton of civil service exams, including after already being on the job. Many of the test include false dichotomy questions in which it insist the four choices offered are the only choices in real life when they are not. You have to pick the best answer of those presented but that doesn’t mean that is the best answer in real life. Certainly most of the questions aren’t like that, but some are.
I always loved the “you are transporting a jail inmate to the state prison when you come across a terrible auto accident with multiple injuries” question. Every answer choice had something in it that violated the policy of the agency I was already working for.
As to job exams. I’ve often said that you can’t successfully take a test if you’re much smarter than the person who wrote it. You’ll see all the stupid shit they included but never noticed.
As you say, “Pick the least bad answer from this list” questions are often the very worst.
Many times, HR gives a supervisor the list of questions to ask. This is so there is uniformity in the hiring process. This was the case at one place I worked. I looked over the questions and saw right away that many of them were the bullshit “what kind of animal are you” type. When I raised eyebrows at this, the HR director told me “You have to ask everyone the same questions.” So I went back to my office, crossed out all of the stupid ones and only asked the ones that had relevance. When HR tried to give me grief, I pointed out that I had asked all of the applicants the same questions, just not ALL the questions. She went away muttering.
It was just a spontaneous reaction. I’d go for 1) if I had the question on a test. But in real life, if a supervisor told me to go out alone with a crew of prisoners without a radio or firearm and without a partner, I’d like to think that I’d explain that doing so could put me in the position where I’d have to choose one of those not-very-satisfactory options, and wouldn’t it be better if I had a partner or radio, so that that situation could be avoided (I don’t think a firearm would help at all in this situation).
I didn’t almost blow an interview question, I completely blew it.
I interviewed for an Assistant Director of Public Relations position at a local college. The initial interview with the PR Director went swimmingly. I then had an interview with the President of the college. At the time I was working at a radio station in a town some 40 miles away. I didn’t live there. I lived in the town where the college was located. Out of the blue he asked me the population of the town in which the radio station was located. I didn’t know, which he gave the PR Director as his reasoning for rejecting my application.
It wasn’t actually the easiest question but I probably should have known the answer. I should point out, however, that he rejected everyone else who interviewed on similarly flimsy grounds. They ended-up hiring the least experienced (and cheapest) candidate, which is what I think he wanted to do in the first place.
Well, she was interviewing right behind me, and they knew it. They commented about it at the end of my interview and I told them “Well, if it comes down to the two of us, I’ll give you 100%; she’ll give you 150%.” I think it confused them.