I haven’t had too much experience with interviews so far in my professional career, I’ve mostly found jobs through connections to family or friends. That said, my current job had a professional job interview which I have mentioned before in the blog post we had related to job descriptions. Where the job description had failed for my current job, the interview had picked up the slack.
My interview was a group interview with three other people, and we were all introduced to the hiring team (which was the heads of each department) individually. As I mentioned last week, the job description really had no details about what we would be doing. Once we got to the interview however and got to meet the department heads they gave a clear introduction of who they are, what they do, and what they would expect us to do. I felt that this was a great thing to do, as it really helped me feel like I had a chance to understand each part of the organization, where I might fit in the best, and make myself stand out from the other candidates and establish some form of rapport with the department heads. The effectiveness of this tactic was also explored in this week’s lecture 4, where one of the major keys to conducting a good interview was to establish rapport with candidates so they feel more comfortable answering questions. This was definitely true in my case, as a lot of the stress I was experiencing was lifted once I was able to properly introduce myself.
The actual interview questions were interesting to me, and might be something that I would advise is done differently. Some of the questions felt a bit like personality based questions to get an idea of what culture you would be most comfortable in. These kinds of questions can be extremely advantageous, as explored in The Perfect Hire article this week where they state that personality tests are “better indicators of future career success.” As time has gone on in my position, I’ve realized how well these questions were utilized since it feels as though each person in my department thinks very similarly and views working with one another very well. That said, there were some questions that felt like they were part of the interview just to fill time or I suppose see how you answer a unique question that you might not have prepared for. I like the concept of these kinds of questions, as the typical “tell me about yourself” and “what are three ways your friends would describe you.” However, if there is too many questions that clearly have nothing to do with the position, I feel like it undermines the purpose.