Interviewing Hell. Interviewers ...some help please?

Personality conflicts will probably happen at any and all jobs. But, if it’s the most significant thing they can think of to talk about in an interview, I’d probably believe that it was they that suffered the problem and not the other person. And, of course, if they describe the other person in totally unreasonable terms (well, there was this one guy who was just such a jerk, everyone hated him, blah blah blah). I prefer dealing with folks who can see at least part of the other guys’ argument - use what we do here as a roadmap. Do you listen more to the person that takes one ideological viewpoint and refuses to concede that the other side has any merit at all? Didn’t think so…

Actually, that’s another good question to ask - “we assume that in any grouping of people, conflicts will arise, and workplaces are not immune from this. Describe, please, a conflict with a coworker that you’ve had, what happened and how it was resolved”.

(by the way, I DID have a client in a mock interview who answered the ‘what is your biggest fault’ “well, I used to thunk on peoples heads, but I don’t do that anymore”)

RE: Gut vs. Brain - I’ve been burned on both. Took the ‘gut’ response person once, we liked her just fine 'til she stole some company checks and cashed 'em… the ‘head’ response I took drove me crackers within 45 days, so got rid of him and took the other gut person.

Sooooo based on that, um, It’s all a crap shoot anyhow. I’d be a bit more leery of my gut 'cause I sure can like some jerks! (present company of course excluded). I can like some one really well, but still find them a difficult co worker - the issues are more like ‘can they do the job, do they have the work ethic I want, will they get along well enough with others here’

Just a quick suggestion before I run off to work…

I have interviewed many, many people over the last 5 years or so. It sounds like the job you are interviewing is one which is not suitable for a person fresh out of college. But maybe kinda fresh. Anyhow.

There is one thing on the resume that I especially look for. Because if I see this thing, and know that it is true, then I know that I have a responsible, extremely hard-working, deadline-oriented person here. One who will take things seriously. And for all the people we hired that had this, 100% of them turned out to be the “Star” performers of the company. People who outperform their job requirements by so much it’s not even funny.

That is:

“Worked full-time to pay for college throughout school.”

IME, people who have had to work more than 20 or so hours a week while in school and still managed to graduate with anything near a 3.0 average are people that know how to get the job done, and how to balance priorities. They are people who are so used to hard work that having to pull one all-nighter a week, or 20 unpaid overtime hours, seems like a vacation to them.

This is not to say that you can judge someone who did not have to do this sort of thing at all. But, like I said, IME the people that have done this are people you want to grab.

Of course, I am also highly biased. As I worked 40 hours a week throughout all of Engineering School. And I was a “Star Performer” until this last year, when depression finally destroyed my work performance. So, YMMV.

I have designed interview questions before and always include at least one impossible question (i.e. one that it is technically possible they will have to deal with, but it is very unlikely they will no the answer to). There are always going to be situations where an employee does not know what to do, how they handle this can be very important.
I also like to have the following types of question:
A ‘what are your weaknesses/ what are your goals’ type question, with a hook of possible training to try and keep the answers honest.
“We, as an organisation have a strong commitment to developing the people who work with as to the best of their potential, if you were offered this position what areas would you like to gain further knowledge in”.
A question that involves a debatable position. In the type of position you are interviewing for something along the lines of “What are your feelings on centralised verses distributed computing”.
Finally ask your current team for a couple of questions they wont asked it will make them feel like part of the process and may provide useful questions after
all they have to work with whomever you hire as well.

I’ve spent a lot of time in HR (stop throwing rocks! ouch! I’m a good guy, really!) and as such have been involved in interviewing, hiring, and supervising various people over the years.

Here’s the thing: You want to find out how somebody will be as an employee, but you can’t ask directly. (For example, “What have you done that pissed off previous co-workers?”) So you have to be somewhat elliptical. But by the same token, you don’t want to try to blatantly trick the person into talking about stuff, because being deceptive is a hallmark of assholeness.

Instead, I prefer an open-ended question that invites people to talk about things, that leaves an open door if they choose to walk through it, that seems to give them permission to show you exactly the sort of stuff you want to know. That’s very difficult, because, in all my years of doing this, I have to say that interviews are generally not very effective in terms of candidate selection. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, interviews are the worst way of hiring people except for all the others.

Anyway, one excellent question I’ve developed goes like this: “Tell me about a project you worked on that didn’t go the way you wanted, and why you think that happened.” (This is similar to the sorts of things delphica is getting at above.)

The keys I look for in the response are as follows:
[ul][li]Blames others, or takes responsibility? Sometimes, things are out of your control. More often, though, it’s easy to push responsibility onto other people. You learn a lot about a person this way; do they go off on a tangent, talking about how some other person was “out to get me”? Do they get angry?[/li][li]What did they learn? If they don’t get into this themselves, then definitely ask it as a followup: “Okay, so, if you had it to do over, what would you have done differently?” Good candidates will have rethought their strategy, and will be able to give details; better candidates will actually have a real-life example of this new approach. Bad candidates will say things like “I’d avoid that jerkoff” or “I wouldn’t do it at all because it sucked.”[/li][li]Do they have more than one example? We all have disappointments in our careers, but if the candidate has a whole string of them, you, as an objective observer, may be able to see that the common thread in all the examples is, in fact, the candidate himself. It’s an especially big red flag if the person says, “Oh, there are so many,” or if at the end of the first example, they say, “Oh, and here’s another one,” followed by a third one. Again, you’re looking for how they learn and grow from mistakes.[/ul][/li]I also make a huge point of leaving about a quarter of the allotted time at the end to ask, “Do you have any questions for me?” Smart candidates will ask about management policies, how the company responds to new ideas and directions, and the like. They may also ask you how you like working there, turning the interview around. A candidate who asks about fast promotions, raises, etc., may be a short-sighted careerist or climber, or they may just be ambitious. I cast a dim eye at candidates who don’t have any questions for me, or whose questions are uninspired or smart-alecky. Basically, when you give this opportunity, the best candidates will have lots of specific questions about the work environment, company (or department) direction, strategy, and the like.

I also think the “what kind of tree are you” questions are a waste of time, but you might be able to use a variation as an interesting icebreaker: “What’s the weirdest or most difficult interview question you’ve gotten?” If you’re lucky, this will actually tell you something useful, if you get someone who dismissively references a past question you actually thought was valuable. If you use the icebreaker question early on, you can also make note of any of your questions that are similar to the one the candidate didn’t appreciate. If you’re really sneaky, you can bring back that very question in a slightly reworded way, just to see how they respond.

Anyway, in general, you want questions that invite specific past examples, rather than loose hypotheticals. The latter are easiest to BS through; the former tend to be connected to actual memories and trigger real emotional and intellectual responses. Hope this helps.

First of all, if an employer asks you “what kind of tree would you like to be”, the only correct answer is “A Los Angeles sperm tree”.

Secondly, you probably will want to re-watch the Monty Python Careers Advisory Board sketch.

Thirdly - I think people have already mentioned something similar, but I would ask “Why do you want to leave your current position”, “What kind of job are you looking for” and “Why would you want to work for our company?” Especially the second question might help you determine if the job would be a good fit for the applicant. If the person says “What I like most solving technical problems and debugging programs”, and the job is a team leader or management job, then it might not be a good fit.

I just had two more interviews for a total of 4. Apparently there was miscommunication about what “in a week” meant.

Good God, what are they teaching people? I had my first interview at 13 (I applied at a comic book store) and knew not to behave like some of these people. (Note: All candidates are being referred to as “He” regardless of gender, and I’m fudging some of the details, just in case)

First interview, great. The interview was a little too short, but great overall, I was very impressed.

Interview 2. As mentioned above. Loud, brash, gave a vague backhanded insult of previous job, badly underdressed (tee-shirt/jeans), said a few four letter words (but apologized) while we were talking. But…somehow, good (crap I hate what I’m about to say) ‘vibes’. Friendly, enthusiastic, asked intelligent questions back, etc. I suspect “managing” him is gonna be a lot of work, but possibly worth it. Mixed.

Today, however. (HR people, feel free to say “Welcome to My world” as I suspect this is what you deal with every day) :

Interview 3: Slick. Very, very slick. Creepy-slick. Politician-slick. Kept trying to run the interview. Had to tell him several times “I’ll certainly answer that, but I’d prefer hearing your answer to the question first.”. Explained that he could “restructure” our department and organize us. Um…He hasn’t been in our department. All he knows is what I say in my little “Here’s what we do” two minute speech. And he called back (about 3 hours after the interview) before I left work asking when I could “tell him his start date”. I hadn’t hired him. I hadn’t even offered. I end all interviews with something like “I have several other interviews before I can make a decision. I’ll let you know in a week or so.” (So far, only #1 thanked me for “taking the time to interview [him]”.)

Interview 4: This one’s just weird. I thought the pre-screens are supposed to weed out the weirdos (I’m gonna ask HR what they were thinking). Per the pre-screen, this candidate apparently got violent (threw stuff) with his last employer after the candidate’s boss yelled at the candidate. The boss was yelling at the candidate after the candidate called his ex-boss a four-letter word. He put this on the application under “Reason for leaving last job” (including the actual word used!)

When I asked the question about likes at last job he said he liked not having to deal with customers much. His dislikes at hs previous job were, well, everything and everyone. He didn’t like “being told what to do”. He told me the hours he was willing to work. (A pre-req is that you’re available from 6 am - 9 pm). When asked him if he had any questions about the job, he wanted to know if he could have time off so he could go to various sporting events. He didn’t ask in general, he wanted specific days off (and not a “I have an engagement on x date. I’ve purchased tickets. If you hire me, I wanted to let you know I can’t work that day.” which I’d have been ok with. No, he just said “I like going to sports events. You’ll have to work around it.”) And he wiped his nose on his arm [yuk face]. I almost wonder if the HR department is testing me, somehow.

Ummm…I’ve got 2 positions available. #1 impressed me enough that I’m comfortable offering it to him. #2-4 though. :rolleyes:

Fenris

any chance you can repost the position?

I agree #3 is very bad. They teach that kind of crap in, well, somewhere, cause I’ve certainly seen it quite a bit. Had one newly graduated person who told me that her particular strength was ‘being able to go into places where folks had worked for 10 years and showing them better ways of doing things’. I didn’t send her on for the second interview (I was much nicer than your HR dept)

and yea, #4 is not a good risk, but you knew that.

#2 - you have good (snicker) vibes about, but there’s enough there to warrant some level of concern. Like I said is there any chance they can re post it? or have you scan the notes and apps from the ones HR rejected ?

UGH! This is the almost the diametric opposite to the type of person I want to have working for me. I see this a lot, especially from the so-called “upper crust” interviewees. These are the ones from Princeton or MIT with a 3.8 or higher GPA, that come in to an interview cold and try to tell me how my business processes can be improved. Oh yes, I also love it when they tell me how their professor/graduate advisor/dark overlord is a “World Expert” on my field, and knows so much more about it than I do. And, of course, has imparted all his or her mystic knowledge to them…so wouldn’t I be lucky to have them working for me? :rolleyes:

Gee. Must 've been the same guy. (Although, I think on general priciples, I’d hire anyone who listed a “Dark Overlord” as a reference.:))

I’ve been thinking about this interview all night. It’s still bugging me. Who in the world would this impress? What was he trying to accomplish? When is it ever smart to insult the interviewer, the potentintial boss and the prospective company?

He also made a comment during the interview to the effect of “Well, in most interviews, I’m asked about my background. Let me tell you about my career-path(?)” (He didn’t say career-path but I don’t remember the exact phrase. It was similar). I explained that I’d seen his resume, and I knew what I needed to find out from that. But I’d really like him to answer the question about the upset customer. It took two tries to get him to condescend to respond. His answer was vague.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m new at management or what, but I kept getting the feeling that he thought he was applying for MY job.

Y’know, as little fun as this is, I’m learning a hell of a lot. I suspect, the next time I’m at a job interview as the interviewee, I’m going to wow the interviewer. (Hell, judging from my sample set, if I show up and I’m NOT wearing a tee-shirt saying “Klingons Hate Fat Chicks”, I’ll wow 'em)

#4 bugged me too, but mostly because I’m wondering if it was a HR set-up or test or something. I can’t see how he got past the pre-screening interview. I may, if I can figure out a tactful way to do it, ask what the hell HR was thinking when they passed #4 along to me.

And just a “Thanks!” to everyone! I appreciate all the help, feedback and sounding-board action.

Fenris

Yeah, that won’t be a problem, and since I’m hireing one of the candidates, I won’t get (I hope) a reputation for being impossible to please. I think I’m going to pass on #2 as well. If I add up pros vs cons, he keeps just barely falling short of “pro”.

Fenris

Yes, there are people who are impressed by that type of interviewee. What’s scarier, is that there are trainers who teach that sort of ‘confident’ approach in interviews.

and #4 being a set up? perhaps, but trust me, I’ve seen worse. (the guy who wore a blue jean jacket with sequined “F**K” spelled out in large letters on the back, body odor extrordinare, a guy who said he left his last job 'cause the boss was ripping him off on hours and money, told me that he was fired for swearing at his boss, etc).

best of luck, looking forward to the follow up.

**
Bleah. That’s all I have to say to interviewers and trainers of this ilk. Bleah. Confident is good. Assholeishly arrogant isn’t.

**

I meant set-up in the sense of “Let’s send this guy on to Fenris, rather than rejecting him outright. We can see how Fenris deals with him.”, not set up in the sense of hiring an actor. However, having written the preceeding out, I realize that it sounds weirdly paranoid and neither scenario makes a whole lotta sense.

Fenris

No, I agree that the ‘set up’ was "hunya, hunya, let’s see how Fenris deals with this character’. I was just assuring you that your HR dept ‘aint seen nuthin yet’. I could, of course, for a small fee, rectify this problem… :smiley:

Well, I put the advice in this thread to good use today.

So (a year after the fact) I advance each of you a high-five.
Just to add to the archive:

Silly Question: Filling out the brief (9 questions) multiple choice “personality inventory,” I found #9 to be a bit odd.

What would be a good excuse for a co-worker not* to make coffee?
&#160&#160&#160&#160&#160 A. He or she does not know how to use the coffeepot
&#160&#160&#160&#160&#160 B. Making coffee may cause his or her status to be lowered in the eyes of others
&#160&#160&#160&#160&#160 C. There is no good reason not to make coffee
&#160&#160&#160&#160&#160 D. None of the above*

I, of course, chose “C”.
Also, after the initial interview, I was lucky enough to get a second interview right away with the Department Director.

We had a nice chat, and he asked questions about my past experience and how I would react to certain situations. During our chat, I picked up on the fact that he was once a UNIX geek, and we talked for awhile about computer stuff that I’m too young, even at 35, to remember much about.

When the interview was coming to a close, I mentioned to him that I was relieved that he had chosen to not to ask the typical “what if” interview questions.

He sighed dramatically and said, “Well, OK-- David, if you were a tree, what kind would you be?”

“Pine,” I replied.

“Pine?” he asked. “Why would anybody want to be a Pine tree?”

“Because Pine is not Elm.”

He was still grinning as we shook hands in farewell, and I have a THIRD interview tomorrow (with the VP… I hope she’s as easygoing as the Director!)

-David