GrizzWife’s been unemployed since July 2000 and is now getting back into the job market.
A little history…
She has several years experience in the travel agency industry. She was put on disability July 2000 with a difficult pregnancy. Hospitalized in Sep 2000. Her company went out of business shortly after she went into hospital. Gave birth to our (FABULOUS!) son 9 weeks early. Stayed at home w/him for several months so as not to have to put him in daycare and expose his little lungs to awful viruses. The positions in the travel industry take a downturn early this year due to airline commission cutbacks, along with a slump in the rest of the economy. Since Sept 11th, many of our travel-agency employeed friends have lost their jobs or have had their hours cut back.
So GrizzWife is exploring her options in other fields. She’s got an interview set up for a position where she’d be handling internal customer-service calls, and she’s nervous. Having not had to interview for several years, she’s worried about the types of questions she’d be asked, etc. She says that she doesn’t interview well, although she’s a well spoken college graduate and very intelligent.
Here’s my question to you, fellow Dopers…
Tell me about your most recent interview(s). For what job did you apply? What questions were asked? Was it more of a conversation or did they fire questions at you and expect answers? Did you have to take a test? Did you meet with anyone other than the interviewer?
Well, I would certainly wish her luck. It’s not that great out there. I’ve been looking since June of this year, and in total I’ve had about the same amount of interviews that I had in a three-week period in '00.
But that’s not the question. I’m an editor / tech writer, so interviews generally require an editing & writing test and/or examination of samples and clips I bring along. I try to bring more than they ask for in these cases.
The last one I went was for a marketing writer position - it was for a very small company in the suburbs, and paid well. The interview was shockingly brief - probably ten minutes, tops, right after a half-hour writing test. The questions were very bare - I had to summarize my skills and goals, more or less.
I gave him various samples on the side, and asked him about the direction/market of the business. After, he indicated he would get back to me in two days, and would likely hire the best writing sample he received. (He hadn’t read mine at this point.)
Fair 'nough. Still felt like I was half-thrown out. I’m used to two-hour ordeals with cross-questioning by several people.
A day later I recieved an email in which he included the ‘winning’ sample. Mildly insulting, since I followed his instructions to the letter, and the ‘winner’ didn’t (it was twice as long as he’d indicated the word limit was, and rather overblown). I assume that he simply didn’t know what he wanted until it stumbled in front of him. (I’m sort of glad, because I couldn’t write that way every day.)
Read from that what you will, but I feel my potential employers have the upper hand these days - they can afford to be quirky and picky, whereas two years ago I could turn stuff down.
The interviews I’ve had over the years were all so different … sometimes it was just one or two people, sometimes it was scads. The questions depended on the person who was doing the interview - HR people will ask different ones than direct supervisors or colleagues.
Probably the only questions you can typically count on are going to be about why you want that particular job and why you left your previous employment. I’ve been asked those every single time. Since the position your wife is going for is a customer-service job, they may also present her with some scenarios and ask her how she would respond if she encountered something similar. The job I am in now also has a pretty large internal customer service component to it, and my direct supervisor asked me a series of “if this happens, what would you do?” questions.
I know it will be hard for your wife not to be nervous if she really wants this job, but she should remember that simply getting an interview is a really good sign of serious interest on the part of the employer. If she is pleasant, confident and positive in her attitude, that should do. Heaven knows that’s how I BS’d my way into this job last year. I’d been in my previous job for 12 years and hadn’t interviewed for anything else the whole time, so it certainly wasn’t a question of having any recent practice.
If it helps your wife any, tell her that the interviewers often make it up as they go along.
's true – for a few months in mid 2000, I got tapped to interview potential (engineering) candidates for a dot-com I was working at. I got a list of technical questions to choose from, but I sometimes made up a few of my own as well. And the non-technical questions were whatever popped into my head at the time, with “What are your hobbies?” being a popular one.
Don’t know how “professional” interviewers would work, but I don’t think there really are such beasts.
