Job Interviews

There may be a lot on your mind when you front up for a job interview, but if you can analyse the people sitting around the table you might walk away with some quality information about the people you could be working for. Try to read the people on the panel. Analyse their mood. Watch how they interact with you and with each other. These people may work together and enjoy each other’s company, or they might hate each other’s guts. Look out for their body language, what they say, and how they say it. If they give anything away it may clarify your decision on whether you want to work there. Anyway, I’ve had some interesting experiences from both sides of the table.

I was at a Queensland university for a job interview a few years back, and on this occasion there must have been about eight or nine people siting around the table. That’s a lot of people for a middle-ranking job. One of the questions I was asked related to Executive Information Systems. I had a good idea of what this was about, having developed a very basic EIS myself. I also had a reasonable knowledge of these systems by talking to other people, who actually knew a lot about them. From what I could gather some were very good for specific purposes, but tended to be restrictive. Anyway, before I digress too much, back to the interview. I was asked a question along the lines of, “What do you know of Executive Information Systems?” There seemed to be an emphasis which raised my heckles: “What do you know of…” it seemed to me. I explained my background in what I thought was a more than adequate response, and felt an overwhelming desire to direct the same question to the person who asked it of me. His response was along the lines of, “I don’t really know, I was just asked to ask the question.” That’s not a bright thing to say, even if it is true. There is a moral here. Don’t engage anyone in dialogue unless you know something of the subject. There wasn’t a solitary person on the panel that I could relate to. They were all thoroughly unlikeable, and that might have come through in my interaction with them. If you don’t click with the people at the interview, you may be dropping yourself in trouble if you actually get the job. So, I didn’t particularly care if I offended anyone.

Another interview I went to was with an agency associated with a government department. A very laid back group of people were sitting in easy chairs around a large low coffee table. It was difficult to know who was chairing the panel; that may have been intentional. I was offered a coffee at the start of the interview, which was very social. They then proceeded to ask dumb questions. The coffee was piping hot, and I could barely drink it. It would have been better had there been somewhere to put it, but here I was juggling it on its saucer, on my lap, amidst the pile of papers I had. Could this have been a test? Moral: always refuse hot drinks; ask for water, if they offer you anything. And the dumbest of questions related to some legislation. One of them asked, “What can you tell us about sub-section 32 of the…(something or other) Act?” What? I was struck dumb. Were they kidding? Had I been more experienced I should have told this guy to pull his head in, but you don’t say that sort of thing at a job interview, particularly if you are inexperienced. You want the job, after all. More than likely this was the question that the person who had been lined up for the job had been made aware of. There was certainly nothing in the job ad that related to anything like that.

I once worked in a small statistics section with a staff of six. One of the staff members had resigned and their position was advertised. The appointment was for assistant to one of my co-workers, and I was asked to join the interview panel. The panel consisted of my colleague, my boss, and me. This was my first experience on an interview panel. I was keen to study every application and derive the short list carefully. I had to smile to myself when I was at one of the Sarina Russo training sessions, and was advised that employers spend only a few seconds scanning the cover page of an application with little more time on the CV.

There were quite a variety of applications. One that comes to mind was a very long letter from someone who described their work history in much more detail than was required, which was interwoven by their life experiences. It was almost a plea. He was selected for interview by my boss, possibly out of curiosity rather than anything, but he failed to turn up. The letter certainly caught our attention but left us wary as to whether he would have been suitable. Don’t write your life story in an application.

This particular position would have required more than basic IT skills, and we had quite a number of people apply who had masters or doctorate degrees. A stance we felt in regard to these applicants was that these people could no doubt cope with the job, but they would see the position as an interim one, possibly they would be bored, and would soon move on. After all, they were over qualified for the job. These applicants were generally discounted for that reason. This was wrong, and I feel sorry for being party to it. If you are more qualified for a job that you are considering, please consider this scenario, and consider writing your application in a less intimidating manner. It’s a difficult one, because you have no idea of who will be reading your application: skilled interviewers, or people like us.

We interviewed about seven candidates. I have to admit being engineer of a post-interview test. At the conclusion of the interview each candidate was given a list of questions. It was a pen and paper test. I had listed all the commands taken directly from the SPSS user manual table of contents. I asked the candidates to write a brief description of what each command meant. No one was expected to know them all. But it was surprising the number of people who claimed expertise in SPSS but could barely respond to any of them. There is nothing wrong with bolstering your experience in you application, but if you lie you might be caught out. Be careful.

There was a young woman who applied internally and was selected for interview. She provided a good application, interviewed well, performed well in the final SPSS test, and her referees spoke glowingly of her. She was definitely a prime candidate for the job, and I offered my opinion as such. However, an issue arose. The issue that eventually saw her being passed over was that she might have outshone her supervisor. I feel saddened that this individual’s chance slipped away due to her would-be supervisor worrying about feeling intimidated by her. There’s not much to be done about this, and I doubt if there is any real solution. All I’m doing here is alerting you to some of the issues in that hope that you will be better armed to deal with the interview experience. And of course the moral here is that if you are unsuccessful in wining the job you felt you should have got don’t be too disappointed as it may not have been your fault.

After brooding on this experience for a while it led me to become more assertive in stating my viewpoint in the few other occasions I’ve been on interview panels. The person we hired did an adequate job, but the other young woman could have been outstanding. I reconcile the experience by recalling that this particular place was one of the more troublesome environments in which I’ve ever worked, and perhaps her missing out on the job was a good thing for her.