I pit myself for being lousy at coming up with good answers quickly. I had a job interview earlier this week for a ridiculous amount of money (50% more than I’m making now in a lousy job market), *and *would have allowed me move to back to California. And I think I blew it. A day later of course I came up with much better answers for most of the questions. I’m good at my job, but I tend to be pretty deliberate when it comes to addressing problems. I like to do some research, talk to key people, think through possible pitfalls, etc. All of which I think is the right way to do my job, but is exactly the opposite of what you need to do to sound competent in an interview.
This is also a pretty lousy pit thread. I forgot to call anybody a fuckwit.
Not sure what questions they asked or what kind of job you have, but for me when I interview unless I’m asking a question to determine a specific skill, I’m more interested in the approach you take to answering a question than the exact answer.
I’d rather hear I’d take these steps to gather information and weigh these factors any day than “I’d do blank.”
For next time: when asked to recount a specific career challenge from your past and how you overcame it, do *not * say you were promoted after you drugged, dismembered, and buried your dickhead boss in the desert.
An interview is generally NOT a series of skill testing questions, all of which have “right” answers.
Think of it as more like a conversation, where BOTH parties are trying to see if the fit in this job would be good for everyone.
You can certainly prepare for an interview in advance. I suggest you do research about the organization, try to talk to some key people before the interview, and think through some possible questions.
It sounds like you did not do much preparation work in advance of this interview, if you think you had to come up with good answers quickly (off the top of your head?)
Practice a lot. But on the plus side, I’ve hired several people that were obviously outstanding but sucked at interviewing. To me as the hiring manager, it was a plus, because I knew they were good and unlikely to work for me and then successfully interview elsewhere later. Seriously.
I did all of that. I did more research for this interview than I’ve ever done for a job before. The guy caught me with a few questions that I hadn’t heard before and I wasn’t prepared for. A few were excellent questions that made me think the guy really knew what *he *was doing, and if I had been working there, I would have said ‘let me get back to you in a week with a comprehensive proposal’. I wouldn’t generally wing it with a smart guy on an important question, but that’s what I had to do.
My answers weren’t terrible. He even said he wanted to do a follow up interview, but I don’t really believe him.
That said, I’m not trying to make excuses. As the OP said, I blew it. I think I’d be good at the job, but if I had been on the other side of the desk I would not have been impressed with my performance.
I am often on the other side of the desk and I can assure you that your assessment of how you performed is in all likelihood not very accurate. You have to remember that half of the people interviewed may as well walk in the room, punch the interviewer in the face and walk out, because they will totally fuck it up. If you aren’t one of them you still have a shot.
To me that seems to be a sign that you may be a bad manager or work for a bad group/company. I don’t want people working for me simply because they are too pathetic to work anywhere else. I want them working for me because they want to be here.
WRT the OP, there is no one right answer because every interviewer is different. The most important thing in any interview is connecting with the person conducting the interview. They need to feel after talking with you for an hour that not only do you know your shit, but that you are someone they would want to work with and will fit in with the culture of the group.
Also an interview is a two-way street. I’ve gone on interviews and conducted ones where both of us knew after 30 seconds that it wasn’t going to be a good fit.
The only way you would suck at a job interview is if you didn’t learn from this one.
Did you learn something? If so then you DO NOT SUCK. Period.
If you knew you made a mistake and instead of admitting it, blamed the interviewer than you would suck.
This doesn’t seem like the case.
We are all in the worse economy since the Great Depression. Remember now what matters isn’t the right answers but a lot of things. For every job, there will be someone with your skills, your education, and your “right answers”
You’re going to have to develop a way of making the interviewer LIKE you so he wants to pick you. This is VERY hard and it takes practice.
Remember you are no worse off right now than you were before the interview. And you appear to have learned something. So you don’t suck.
What happened happened, you learned from it move on.
Remember just because something good didn’t happen to you today, doesn’t mean that something good won’t happen to you tomorrow.
If you said any of this during the interview you probably don’t suck at all. This sounds like someone who knows what they’re doing and has a good solid plan for getting it done properly.
Maybe it was because the job market in China is different or my initial post was too glib. I think I said that candidates that “were *outstanding *but had poor interview skills.” That said, recognizing that someone would be a great fit that happens to be a poor interviewer means I don’t generally count the interview skills as part of the hiring decision. And if they suck at interviewing, it’s just that much harder for them to move elsewhere, which I think is at least neutral or a plus when it comes to comparing candidates. I don’t view it as a negative (of course unless the position is such that it’s a critical skill).
As a hiring manager, I could care less if someone is a good interviewee, and warning lights go off when someone is waaaaaaay too smooth as an interviewee but doesn’t know their shit about the job backwards and forwards.
Eg, “tell me about a weakness?”
“Well, I think a strength can be a weakness. For example, sometimes I concentrate too much on doing the best job possible, and that may be overkill on occaision.”
You misread (intentionally?) what he said, which was not that the candidates were “pathetic” but were not especially skilled at the dog-and-pony show required for a traditional interview.
I’m not pathetic at interviewing, but I’m not a golden boy… my employers took a chance on me and I think have been pleased with the results. Some of my co-workers were said to be “terrible” in their interview, but have proven to be excellent workers.
Not to say that one shouldn’t strive to impress at an interview, but there are people out there who can dazzle in the interview process because they’re extremely skilled at telling you what you want to hear---- and then it’s all downhill from there.
This is true and thanks for the post. I’m actually not feeling that bad about it, except that the top end of the salary range I was looking for, my ‘wouldn’t it be great if’ salary, was the bottom of their range. And the office was in the heart of San Francisco, where I’ve always wanted to live and could actually afford with this job.
I’m already working on writing better answers for some of the questions I didn’t think I nailed, and if I get a follow up interview I intend to rock it next time.
I get what you’re saying, but I think what you are really looking for are candidates who are technically competant with a good work ethic but aren’t your super-slick bullshit artists.
I think an effective interview should be designed to effectively determine if the candidate has the relevant skills and is a good fit for the position. The interview process should be able to see through candidates who are effective bullshit artists but lack the basic knowledge the job requires.
When I think of “suck at interviewing” I think of candidates who make lack confidence, are inarticulate or lack professional presence. IOW, they are incapable of communicating their skills and value to the group.
A great tip I use for the stupid questions they will ask, like what you disliked in your last job, what is your weakest area, things like that, is to say the training provided was not good and resulted in problems doing the job right.
This puts the blame not on you but on the previous job managers, just what you want to do. It makes you looking like you want to do a great job and are motivated and want to do it right. You can also use this as why you left some jobs and stuff like that, again it puts the blame not on you for any issues. It worked well at my job interviews.
What areas do I need improvment in, answer I need good training so to do a job right.
