Job Interviews – from the other side of the table

[Zeus-cat]

So my boss asked a few of us to interview three people for an opening in our department. We split up into two teams of three each. My boss was on the other team; so we were the B team I guess. Two of the candidates were from outside the company and one was from another department in our building. I am not using any names as I recommended that we pass on all three.

Candidate #1
Seems like a decent guy, but his background isn’t really appropriate for what we need. Oh well, anyone can learn; I had to. The three of us take turns asking questions from the approved question list provided by corporate HR. Then it happens, I ask a generic question and I hit a nerve. He starts ranting about his current employer, the federal government. He is really torqued off about the sequester and that he has had to take a 20% pay cut and how much this has hurt him. My wife is affected by this too and I knew that they had just cut the number of days from 11 to 6. I tell him that my company cut our pay by 10% several years ago and kept it there for 9 months. That was a 7.5% pay cut over the year compared to his measly 2% pay cut. And no raises for the last few years either. He didn’t get my point.

He goes on to complain about how he had found the answer to this serious problem in 5 minutes, but they didn’t listen and spent over $250,000 to research the problem. They eventually came to the same answer he did. He said he couldn’t have loyalty to an organization that wasted all that money and then cut his pay. Really? You are interviewing with a Fortune 500 company and complaining about how you can’t respect an organization that makes dumb decisions? Dumb decisions is one of the things we do best!
Two huge interview mistakes; talking money and trashing an employer.

Candidate #2
This is the internal candidate. He knows his stuff and bangs out answers to all of our questions without hesitation. One problem, he never actually answers the questions we ask. He redirects all of our questions into something he wants to talk about. He used to do our kind of work at another company, but he has never done it for us. However, he wants to “take a stab at it”. Another problem is that in his current job he has completely screwed up a program that has now flowed to me. What a freakin’ mess he has handed off. And I also found out that he was really rude to one of the other guys on my interview team a few weeks ago (before he knew that we would interview him). Apparently they sat together at lunch and he asks my coworker what he did before he joined our group. My coworker tells him that he had been deployed to Afghanistan. So the candidate asks, “Oh, did you murder innocent civilians over there?” It turns out this guy is from a region of the world that has been in civil war for a long time and is a devout pacifist. I have no problem with pacifists, but why would you say something so rude to a coworker? And we make lots of parts for military applications; some of which he listed on his resume as his programs!

Candidate #3
He is a nice guy, but his background is completely wrong for us. He is also very soft spoken and timid. When we finally get him animated he starts talking about how great our company is; especially the nuclear work we do. Huh? Nuclear? I guess one of our divisions does that, but not ours. But he goes on and on about how his goal is to get into that division and work there! So why are you interviewing with us? He knows quite a bit about our nuclear work, but not a darn thing about what we do. It was obvious he was looking at the next job and not the one he was interviewing for.

So when you are on the interviewer side of the table things are fairly stress free. I mean, all we do is ask questions and evaluate the candidates. Which in these cases was thumbs down for all three. More interviews later this week; I hope they are better candidates and actually know what we do and answer questions intelligently. I know that is asking for a lot...

 

[shrox]

Last time I interviewed a candidate, he kept saying that he didn't know this or that, but his friend did. We should have interviewed his friend I guess.

 

[JStarStar]

1. Never talk money during an interview until an offer is on the table. Otherwise you are setting the ceiling for them to lowball you.

2. Never trash your former employer. Your prospective employer will quickly label you as a chronic malcontent and back-biter. Be very diplomatic about why you left. If your former company is a real horror show, they probably already know it.

3. Don't tell them what you would rather do besides the job for which you are interviewing. Talk about how you can accomplish the job they want you to do.

4) Never ever ever express a political viewpoint (unless the job itself is politically oriented). The guy you might think is a free-thinking liberal could turn out to be a strait-laced super-conservative and you tank your own chances in the interview.

 

[AfterBurners]

I have an interview today....glad it's a one on one and not a panel.

 

[Winston]

One problem, he never actually answers the questions we ask. He redirects all of our questions into something he wants to talk about.

You should have suggested to him that he's perfect for politics.

 

[AfterBurners]

1. Never talk money during an interview until an offer is on the table. Otherwise you are setting the ceiling for them to lowball you.

2. Never trash your former employer. Your prospective employer will quickly label you as a chronic malcontent and back-biter. Be very diplomatic about why you left. If your former company is a real horror show, they probably already know it.

3. Don't tell them what you would rather do besides the job for which you are interviewing. Talk about how you can accomplish the job they want you to do.

4) Never ever ever express a political viewpoint (unless the job itself is politically oriented). The guy you might think is a free-thinking liberal could turn out to be a strait-laced super-conservative and you tank your own chances in the interview.

Sadly it seems they base everything on personality than what you know and are capable of doing...

 

[cavecentral]

Teams involve personality. If people can't fit in, they are best of getting jobs where they are on their own or starting their own company. Hiring one person and disrupting the flow of 5 or 6 other people is a loss in productivity.

Skills vary. A resume should include enough info on skills to know what you are getting. If it isn't enough, they never make an interview. I interviewed people to either verify their skill set, cross reference their employment, access personality for a good fit, and see what value added they can provide and have provided in the past.

 

[fyrwrxz]

must be nice. I'm at the other end of the spectrum. Can you walk? And chew gum? Simultaneously? Number one wrong answer to the question "Why did you apply for this position?": ..."Umm, 'cuz I need a job?"

 

[AfterBurners]

must be nice. I'm at the other end of the spectrum. Can you walk? And chew gum? Simultaneously? Number one wrong answer to the question "Why did you apply for this position?": ..."Umm, 'cuz I need a job?"

Yeah no kidding... gone are the days where you could get a job just walking in off the street. Now you have to jump through so many f***ing hoops and kiss everyone's a$$ to get a job!! What a joke. I've been on a few panel interviews and I nailed the interview and got the job...other panel interviews seemed more like a interrogation than an actual interview.

 

[cavecentral]

Yeah no kidding... gone are the days where you could get a job just walking in off the street. Now you have to jump through so many f***ing hoops and kiss everyone's a$$ to get a job!! What a joke. I've been on a few panel interviews and I nailed the interview and got the job...other panel interviews seemed more like a interrogation than an actual interview.

Depends on how many people apply for the job. You gotta be percieved as the best. If they have 1 opening, interview 50 people, they might find 6 they would hire. If you are one of them, you still might not get the job.

Never worked for that big of a company.

I have interviewed for 1 job, interviewed 3 people - none were qualified. Luckily the 4th was or I would have been forced to take the best of the unqualified.

Been on the other end too. Trying to compete with people woth better degrees, more experience, for the same job abd same pay when times were worse in my industry.

 

[AfterBurners]

Depends on how many people apply for the job. You gotta be percieved as the best. If they have 1 opening, interview 50 people, they might find 6 they would hire. If you are one of them, you still might not get the job.

Never worked for that big of a company.

I have interviewed for 1 job, interviewed 3 people - none were qualified. Luckily the 4th was or I would have been forced to take the best of the unqualified.

Been on the other end too. Trying to compete with people woth better degrees, more experience, for the same job abd same pay when times were worse in my industry.

You're right! Sometimes it's just a real pain. I got an interview today. I'm the 3rd of 4 people interviewing for the position so I'll try to nail it and leave a lasting impression and hopefully the guy will forget the other two he interviewed in the morning.

 

[jsargevt]

Yeah no kidding... gone are the days where you could get a job just walking in off the street. Now you have to jump through so many f***ing hoops and kiss everyone's a$$ to get a job!! What a joke. I've been on a few panel interviews and I nailed the interview and got the job...other panel interviews seemed more like a interrogation than an actual interview.

You have NO IDEA what hoops we have to jump through just to get an approval to hire. The hoops that you have to jump through are nothing compared to what we need to do to get the request open. Add on that if you hire someone and they don't work out we can LOSE that position when you go to replace them. There is intense scrutiny to get the right person for the job the first time. Therefore, lots of hoops, interviews, interrogations. Add on that people lie on their resume (when did this become acceptable anyway??) the need to cross check and reference everything increases exponentially.

So it's not a joke that you have to do all this. Honestly, if you're not willing to do this you'll likely hate the job you're applying for.

 

[AfterBurners]

You have NO IDEA what hoops we have to jump through just to get an approval to hire. The hoops that you have to jump through are nothing compared to what we need to do to get the request open. Add on that if you hire someone and they don't work out we can LOSE that position when you go to replace them. There is intense scrutiny to get the right person for the job the first time. Therefore, lots of hoops, interviews, interrogations. Add on that people lie on their resume (when did this become acceptable anyway??) the need to cross check and reference everything increases exponentially.

So it's not a joke that you have to do all this. Honestly, if you're not willing to do this you'll likely hate the job you're applying for.

I do have an idea of what you go through. My girlfriend sits in on plenty interviews with her company. Her company will have a job fair and they will get maybe 800 applications. Out of those they narrow down to half and then another half and it keeps going until they get about 30. Point being they get down to maybe 30 they hire 18 and half of those people don't pass background and the ones that do get job some stay awhile and others don't bother to show for work or get fired because they exceeded the 16 absences that they are allowed per year. Oh yeah they do lie on their applications so yeah...I know what you talking a bout. Time consuming and also waste of resources and company monies.

Things have changed a lot.... it was never like this before. I think the recession of a few years ago had a lot to do with it too.

My attitude is I do my best at ever interview I go to. If I get the job great if not I really don't give s*** I don't waste my time and worry about it. I just move on and keep looking. There's plenty of jobs out there in what I do, but it's all about timing and jumping through the hoops. Applying for contract work I even have less a than a don't give s*** attitude about it.

 

[AlexK]

Teams involve personality. If people can't fit in, they are best of getting jobs where they are on their own or starting their own company. Hiring one person and disrupting the flow of 5 or 6 other people is a loss in productivity.

Skills vary. A resume should include enough info on skills to know what you are getting. If it isn't enough, they never make an interview. I interviewed people to either verify their skill set, cross reference their employment, access personality for a good fit, and see what value added they can provide and have provided in the past.

I would just be happy if they did away with robo-searches. Yes, I know you get a bazillion resumes per job, but we've swung too far - I've even seen resumes where they include things like "BNC connectors" as things they've worked on. And the commonly-searched-for words? In boldface. A resume isn't exactly readable when half the words are the 'trick' words to get past a robosearch, and the text is constantly alternating between regular and bold type. It's even worse for someone like myself who isn't working in the field stated on my BS. You can forget about getting an interview or even a second look at a company that robosearches if the position calls for "mechanical engineers" and your BS says something else. Advanced degrees are no help, either...

 

[Peter Olivola]

As an HR subcontractor for a technical support call center (not on the recruiting side,) I get to see a huge variety of work personalities. Our client's client has an expectation of a very high turnover rate, or at least it's high by my expectations and past experience. Voluntary termination runs about 67% of all attrition. So it would be fair to categorize us as a temporary/transition employer. The most common reason for involuntary termination is attendance related. The old saying about 90% of life is just showing up certainly applies. There's an interesting phenomenon related to this. We go through periods of not terminating people with spotty attendance and the overall attendance begins to be a problem. As soon as we get approval to cut the high absentees loose attendance improves both in numbers and seemingly overnight. It's not just employers who are adversely affected by poor attendance. It has a negative effective on employees as well.

 

[JPVegh]

I've yet to be in a job interview that I couldn't lie my way through. It just takes a little bit of research and a lot of charm. Though I probably shouldn't have taken that job as a brain surgeon.:wink:

 

[kenstarr]

The last person I will hire, doesn't need an interview. A swell employee that left for the summer and is back. It been fun being on the other side of the table. I'm excited to be leaving that table. You would think in a college town, at a grocery store, with the pay I could offer applicants would be pouring in. Nope. Tough time finding kids that can actually show up when scheduled. Oh we'll. one more week and I will be the low rung on the ladder at the new jerb!
Ken

 

[Sailorbill]

I would be glad if my employer would hire machine operators that could walk and chew gum. The unemployment rate here is 3.6% so the people that apply are the ones that are forced to, have been fired from everything they have ever tried and or really don't want a job.
They offered one temp a full time job and he went to his drug test drunk. They kept him on as a temp until they discovered the Mountain Dew he was drinking was mostly whiskey. :blush:
We have one full time employee that doesn't like to work over time and often calls in sick because it will reduce her food stamps and other benefits.
When we do get someone worth keeping they don't/won't pay enough to get them stay for very long. We are sort of like Wal~Mart there many people who can say "I worked there once upon a time." :eyeroll:
I could go on but I will regret it later. :sigh:

 

[jsargevt]

I do have an idea of what you go through. My girlfriend sits in on plenty interviews with her company. Her company will have a job fair and they will get maybe 800 applications. Out of those they narrow down to half and then another half and it keeps going until they get about 30. Point being they get down to maybe 30 they hire 18 and half of those people don't pass background and the ones that do get job some stay awhile and others don't bother to show for work or get fired because they exceeded the 16 absences that they are allowed per year. Oh yeah they do lie on their applications so yeah...I know what you talking a bout. Time consuming and also waste of resources and company monies.

then what the heck are you complaining about?

 

[AfterBurners]

then what the heck are you complaining about?

I just like to complain! On another note I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night.:rofl::rofl::rofl:

 

[Zeus-cat]

I've yet to be in a job interview that I couldn't lie my way through. It just takes a little bit of research and a lot of charm. Though I probably shouldn't have taken that job as a brain surgeon.:wink:

I must say you did a decent job on fixing my sub-dural hematoma. I haven't had annyyy sideee effectssss at allllllll sinnncee you uporateed on mey braain.

 

[les]

My best experience has been when someone left the company (generally not voluntarily) and then their resume comes back through a temp agency and they describe what they did when they worked for us originally. I have been amazed to see what they claimed they did before! Must be my old age - I never remember them doing those things :wink:

 

[hornet driver]

It seems my store will no longer let me interview candidates since I have not pushed one through yet! Hey, It's Walmart--you know--We hire warm bodies. Next time--if there is one --I'll just bring a mirror to make sure they are breathing-

 

[boomtube]

It is now a job just getting a job in fact there are college courses dedicated to that topic . From Wal-Marts “Mental Hygiene” test to the 5 page application form and multiple interviews for a PART TIME MINAMUM WAGE JOB AT “TACO Bell”.

I spoke to a friend of mine a year or so ago wherein he went to a job interview at a well known hi-tech company in the Silicon Valley. The human resource manager he had to interview with spoke ENGLISH so poorly he couldn’t be understood by my friend.

Needless to say he didn’t get the job.

And isn’t that a nice word? Human Resources; as if the people working for a company, except for the CEO crowd, are about as important as what brand of toilet paper is used in the men’s room.

Rant over; we now return to our regular programming.

 

[shrox]

...And isn’t that a nice word? Human Resources; as if the people working for a company, except for the CEO crowd, are about as important as what brand of toilet paper is used in the men’s room...

A recent financial report from a for profit prison had an interesting term, "organic opportunities". After reading further I realized the term meant "people".

That is the future of employment. Your best shot at a job will be prison labor.