First time interviewers, interviews in general and all the gas that goes with it.

I am not an interview expert. But I have given enough and more of them to understand the WTF nature of (some) interviewers, especially those interviewing the first time. Some worst case scenarios:

The first time interviewer type 1- Psychographics : This person has no idea what it takes to interview a person. He /she is so overwhelmed by the whole idea of interviewing someone for the first time, that they often take it as a personal vendetta against the poor soul sitting across them. Its more of a commemoration  and reminiscence of the first time they were interviewed when - they were attacked mercilessly. Years later now, the sides of the tables have changed. Its time to revel in the feeling of being the supreme being called the interviewer. So the main plan is to get the interviewee to squirm, go red in face, see them stammer, stutter, go blank. His/her purpose is achieved best if the interviewer can find a weakness to latch on to, and then go on questioning the person around it.

The first time interviewer type 2 – Psychographics: This person is shitting bricks, has no idea how to go about it, and is terrified by the CVs they have received for the job, especially of the one they need to interview, one of which seems far capable than him/her and ergo, intimidating. What kind of questions does this person ask? None- he ends up talking about himself, his job responsibilities, his achievements and by the fag end of the interview realizes what’s happening and in a flurry and suddenly acquired authoritative voice asks, go on, sell yourself to me.

The first time interviewer type 3- psychographics:

This person comes for an interview armed with the ‘ HR best practices’ questions. This person will ask these questions in this order: 1. Tell me something about yourself. 2. What are your strengths? 3. What have been your biggest achievements? 4. what will you do when…..blah blueh bleh (gives the interviewee a situation..most often it is a crisis management question or a question to check on the interviewee’s attitude) 5. Sell your self to me…..and this goes on

Note: the interviewer here is not one bit concerned about how the interviewee fares. This person is too busy drafting the next question in his mind for the interviewee. By the end of the interview the interviewer is more exhausted than the interviewee.

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So much for the first timers.

But besides them, I have issues with the way interviews are conducted at all. By the time a person is out of the complex web of psychometric related questions he/she has forgotten what job they had applied for. Apparently these psychometric tests give the employer a ‘sea’ of information about the applicant.

See, my point here is not that these questions are pointless. But i believe a lot has changed in the professional realm- people today come prepared with these questions. So chances are that (mostly), the answers they give are not the one they believe in one bit- but a forged, padded answer that bests suits the role advertised for. Especially for a question like ‘sell yourself’ .  When I was asked once, so in a situation where everything is going wrong, how would you react- did she expect me to say that I will probably be pulling my hair out, yelling and hating the job??

Don’t you think it makes more sense for the employer to put the interviewee at ease, and then try and understand from the applicant’s point of view  all the things he needs to understand.

Somehow, I don’t subscribe to the school that believes an interview is but a sales pitch.