My problem is that lately I’ve been applying to jobs offering just over minimum wage–and my previous job was $23/hr, but only 6 hours per week (and I worked an awful lot of hours I didn’t get paid for). I’m not comfortable leaving that spot blank (it always came up on applications). I did generally manage to explain that that wasn’t my expectation for this job, but only once actually got a job offer . . .
I was asked to please interview for an internal position that I was not interested in. They cajoled me into interviewing by explaining that the job was being re-defined, and that the job duties would all be different.
All of the interviewers asked me “So, what about this job interests you?”
Um, nothing? I’m not interested, remember? :smack:
Also, all of the interviewers though the job would be reporting to different supervisors, and none of their descriptions of the job duties matched, and the last one – who was the eventual supervisor – didn’t ask, but told me that I shouldn’t be interested in the job, since he thought it was useless.
Um, thanks? Still not interested, folks.
(no, I didn’t take that gem of a job offer)
I wonder if I would have been offered this job after this question…my first thought was “What else is going in the room? Is there an inspiration piece (couch, rug, etc.)? Who will be in this room, and what will it be used for? There’s not enough information!”
My second thought was, “Well, I could mix the red and blue for purple, and use the green–depending on the shade–as a boarder at the ceiling, or maybe even do horizontal stripes in alternating purple and green…”
Still, not enough information.
A smart applicant would put that on the resume. Far more frequent is the guy who couldn’t find a job. If that corresponds to a bad time in the industry, that’s fine, but I know someone who couldn’t find a tech job during the bubble, and that was a valid warning sign.
I saw an industrial video by John Cleese’s company, with several Pythons, where not asking about gaps was specifically considered a dumb thing to do.
A guy I work with used to ask candidates “What is the meaning of life?” If they answered “42”, he knew they would fit in just fine.
Nick at Ask the Headhunter agrees with you. One of his suggestions is that you can wonder why this company is considering the company you are leaving a great judge of your worth.
I don’t mind being asked about gaps, but I mind the question “Why couldn’t you find a job?” or “Why didn’t anyone hire you?” To some extent, I can answer by saying that I lack the experience people were looking for, and I have other internal answers. But on the other hand–if I knew what it was that made people not want to hire me, I’d have fixed it and already gotten a job. Or else I’d lie about it, wouldn’t I?
Of course, my attitude here probably shows part of why I’m presently underemployed after a significant employment gap.
One of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked with had an amazing resume and work record. Part of the “smart” aspect is that he never interviewed for a job he couldn’t do, because it would be a waste of his time. Final question on an interview:
“So, do you have any weaknesses?”
His answer:
“Kryptonite.”
Yes, but the dumb applicants provide you with useful information that allows you to remove them from consideration. And they do it. Sometimes there is like job-interview hypnosis or something that brings out the stupid.
I had someone ask me “Are you Lutheran?” when she heard I grew up in Minnesota. She didn’t mean any harm, but it was for whatever reason the first thing that came to her mind when she heard Minnesota. I think she was pretty new to interviewing and needed to learn to engage the brain before the mouth.
I was once asked if I was comfortable carrying something large and bulky as part of an interview for a supervisory position. I said sure and offered to demonstrate. I’m sure the male candidates (they hired a team of 3, the other 2 were guys) weren’t asked that question.
I actually ask everyone I’ve interviewed that question, because there are a surprisingly large number of people who ignore the “should be able to lift/carry 75lbs” portion of the job description. White collar systems administrator or not, I carry around a lot of computer equipment. =P
Ironically the only person who ever got indignant about carrying stuff for a white-collar job was a former Marine who probably could have carried me AND the 75lb computer.
Yeah, asking about lifting can definitely be an appropriate question. And if it’s appropriate, you need to ask everyone, because you never know when that ex-Marine actually has some big-time slipped-disk issue. But lifting was a trivial part of this job. As it turned out the lady who hired me was a nutter who wanted to hire a friend of hers, but the others on the team convinced her to hire me. Ultimately I think I would have been better off if she’d have given it to her friend…
Since all of the interviewing I’ve done has been for fairly small to very small companies, this is a very important question I ask. People wear more than one hat in a small company, and your answer can tell me a lot about what other responsibilities you might be interested in.
Not only this is question not inappropriate, but it’s really the whole point of the interview. While it might be a little blunt to come right out and ask it like this, there’s certainly nothing wrong with it.
“Living off my lottery winnings.”
Well, that is what I want to be doing. What I expect to be doing would be entirely different. Of course, it’s been thirty years since I’ve interviewed for a job, and back then I didn’t have to deal with that sort of question.
I think j666’s point was that that question was inappropriate, not in a legal sense, but in a logical sense, for the job of researcher.
Since the researcher’s whole reason d’etre (I don’t speak French) is to amass information in order for a well-informed decision to be made, a researcher would feel very uncomfortable making a decision based on no information. In that he knows nothing at all about the other candidates for the same position. So how he could say why he should be hired rather than any of the other candidates?
If you were applying for the job of overthinker, for example…
I’m trying to think of a good analogy, and coming up with nothing.
I can understand those in “normal” jobs, but I’ve been in consulting for the last 8 years. It’s a sector where people change jobs more often than a vagrant changes shirts. My last job ended in September of last year; I hadn’t had vacation in 3 years; I had spent the last year in a culture that was completely alien to mine. So I figured that, since I was planning on setting up my own company anyway and since January sees a lot of movement in the field, I’d take three months off, set up the company (which, having the paperwork ready beforehand, takes about a week) and then look again.
The incredulity of the agents when they asked what had I been doing since September and I answered “vacation, I hadn’t had any in 3 years” was palpable. “Vacation?” “Yes, a break” “But… nobody takes vacation.” “I’m strange that way.”
Back when I was at a law firm, I did on-campus interviewing of law students sometimes. One time, one of the early interviewees mentioned that she had been shopping for a car, and I happened to ask what kind, just conversationally. By the end of the day, rumor had gotten around to the interviewees still waiting that I was asking each one, “if you could be a car, which one would you be?” :smack:
One of the students who was eventually hired told me that story, and he joked that he was mildly disappointed that I hadn’t actually asked that, since he’d prepared an answer. I responded with some polite nothing (“Oh yes?”), and I think he was again a bit frustrated that I still wasn’t interested in his answer to that question. 
Weird. My husband took *six *months off after doing some consulting work, for pretty much the same reason: just because. And no one thought much about it. He mostly gave the answer that he wanted to catch up on some household remodeling (which was true; we remodeled three rooms of the house in the last six weeks of his break, but he spent most of the previous four playing World of Warcraft and D&D).
–bolding mine
And here we can see why the women were having to take time off.
I was once asked how I would respond to practical jokes.
I read somewhere about asking people, as an interview technique, “How would you redesign an elephant/camel/rhinocerous?” Like the paint question above I think the idea is just to see how the person being interviewed reacts.
One place asked me “Why do we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway?” :smack: I don’t remember what my reply was.
On my very first interview after leaving an extremely small town in rural Montana, the interviewers first question was “If I hire you, what will you be doing when you aren’t working?”
My first words were some pointless babbling about cows and horses and weed patrol. I was out of practice, what can I say?
Then I stopped, mid sentence, raised my eyebrow at him, and said “Having sex with my husband.” Long pause that I do hope was uncomfortable – for him. “What I do after work is nunyo, as long I do my job very well when I’m here, which would be far too often from the sounds of it. Thank you for your time today. Good-bye.” I did not laugh at the expression on his face until the outer door had closed completely behind me.
Two hours later, I declined his offer.
I was in a better mood the other times (before and after leaving that teensy little town) I have encountered that particular question. I usually answer “I have a large circle of close friends and family, many interests including cooking, entertaining, grandchildren, beige, literature, art, and horticulture.” I always decline those offers. I don’t want to work for anyone who thinks my answer to that question predicts my profitability for the company.