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So, I wanted to come and post about this:FAN OF NICKELBACK posted:—Phone (or screening Interview— Aside from the part about weeding out terrible candidates, this isn't true at all, at least for us. A little bit of background: I'm a software engineer, and my company is constantly hiring new engineers as we're growing. Part of what we (and really, just about every other tech company) do is to have a technical phone screen as the first step. You might speak to HR or a recruiter before you do the phone screen, but that's just to verify that you're a human etc. and doesn't have a bearing on your interview loop unless you admit to being a cannibal or something else egregious. When I (and others) do the phone screen, I'll have your resume and I'll ask you a question about your prior work history, but I'm only using that question as a starting point of a conversation. "So, your most recent job was with Spacely Sprockets working on Project Granola, and it looks like you were in charge of writing the Nut service. Lets talk about that. What kind of salting is commonly used for nuts in this scenario? (If you haven't answered this part with your last answer) OK, what type of salting did you decide to use for this project? Why did you use it? What's the benefit of this over using Iodized salt? Heat transfer? OK, that's a good reason, but what about the bitterness component? Of course, that's a perfectly reasonable solution and I'd probably do the same." The point of this isn't to see if you're confident, hear you smiling, or comment on your diction. The reason that I'm asking you this is to try to loosen you up before I start the proper interview, but that's not true, because I've already begun; the point of this is to see if you know what the gently caress you are talking about in regards to what you put on your resume. I'm not going to spend a long time on this part, but if you sound like you don't know what you're doing I'm either going to drill mercilessly into you to see if you're just having a brain fart, or if you genuinely don't know. If I'm brief here, it's either because you've convinced me that you know what you're talking about, or because you've convinced me that you do not, in which case the rest of the interview is pretty much a foregone conclusion (although I will perform it anyway for various reasons, and the off chance that you're just having an off few minutes on this part). I'm going to continue the phone screen by ignoring the rest of what you have on your resume, and ask you technology-specific questions that we require people who will be working here to actually know. Then, we're going to ask you to open up the shared editing session (e.g. collabedit.com, google docs, etc.), ask you a trivial coding question, and watch as you write it. Why? Why would we do this? Why would be such sadistic monsters? Why would we ignore your diction in lieu of your technical skills? The reason is that we have had so many people that can completely bullshit their way through a phone screen into an in-person interview round (which basically costs a collective man-day of company time), only to give us lines like "Sorry, I didn't realize that I would have to do coding for this, I didn't come prepared!" and obviously be hopelessly unqualified for the job. Our phone screen exists to weed out the terrible candidates, and this is important because about 90%+ (and I am not exaggerating) of the candidates we get will be utterly incompetent and unable to code first year university problems. Of those who we can trust to not try to eat a keyboard, probably 80% will not actually be competent up to the level that we want them to be for this level, and of those who meet that bar, some number will not be placed with us for various other reasons. I realize that this is something of a rant, but I'm really annoyed by the idea you're proposing that the phone screen is actually a personality test, when it's really a "is this person able to tie their shoes y/n if y is this person an engineer y/n" test. Pilkington posted:I have a friend that is currently looking for a job and getting a few interviews here and there. However, I worry that she may be losing points in the interview due to "speaking fob." By that I mean adding and leaving S's off of words, improper verb conjugation, etc. I feel like this is a subject that interviewers won't mention to an interviewee if they ask for feedback and I was looking for opinions from those with more experience on the subject. I'm not sure which field your friend is in, but in the software field we're generally willing to be accepting of mistakes like this as long as the person is able to communicate the point. That's really what we're looking for when we ask about communication skills; can the person get the point across in a way that the other person will understand correctly? Obviously, if they're applying for a public facing position it's a different story, but otherwise it's probably fine. Volmarias fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Aug 19, 2013 |
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Aug 19, 2013 06:12
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Volmarias posted:
Interviews for technical positions tend to be conducted quite differently.
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Aug 19, 2013 06:15
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Xandu posted:Interviews for technical positions tend to be conducted quite differently. Maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I'm assuming that if you're doing a phone screen for any position that isn't sales or customer facing, and earns more than $10/hr, the phone screen is to see if you're able to meet a bare minimum of competency more than to see if you're friendly. I'm happy to be proven wrong here.
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Aug 19, 2013 06:18
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Yes and no. I'd say most phone interviews I've had, for non-technical positions that aren't sales, want to know about my experience and background and will ask about my resume and if I have experience doing certain things, and the rest is personality/behavioral. Are you persuasive? Do you get along well with others? Tell me about a time you did x. What would you do in this situation... Things like that. At least half the time (more if I'm limiting it to big companies), it's conducted by an HR person or recruiter who isn't familiar enough with what I'd be doing to really dig deep into my competency, that's what the face to face interviews with potential managers or colleagues are for. So instead the interviewer is just going through my resume point by point (Oh I see you worked here, tell me about that. It says on your resume you speak another language, how fluent are you, etc) and then it really is the kind of vague questions I listed above. But I think a lot of it is that at least in the fields I've dealt with, you won't even get this initial phone screen if your resume sucks and you don't have the right experience. Programming might be different in that you can sort of bullshit your resume, but it's really easy to tell if you can't code, so you might as well use that as the screener.
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Aug 19, 2013 06:27
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Fair enough, although I don't think that programming is the only field where a candidate can effectively lie about or gloss over their accomplishments. Maybe I'm just lucky enough to have a job in a field where over 90% of the applicants can't effectively do skilled work.
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Aug 19, 2013 12:34
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Volmarias posted:So, I wanted to come and post about this: I'm not sure which part you are talking about that wasn't true, but I'm always looking for better ways of doing things. I'm having a hard time following which part you disagreed with, so here's how it came across to me so you can help me understand. To clarify, from my vantage, I mention what it's usually for and then go in detail as to what you should do to prepare for it (which I would think would leave anyone who was qualified extremely prepared to impress even you). It seemed like most of your disagreeing wasn't with the process as I outlined it, but with a general irritation due to unqualified candidates lazily flopping through your phone interviews. I'd clarify that this isn't a guide to being able to do a job, it's a guide to to best communicating that you're the right person to be hired for the skills which (I'd hope) you already have. Overall it seemed like you were saying that a phone interview is exactly what I described it as, but instead you have a more indepth almost-Skype interview portion at the end (which I cover separately). Did you fully read what I suggest under "How to successfully navigate a phone interview"? Did I misunderstand something you were saying?
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Aug 20, 2013 07:48
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FAN OF NICKELBACK posted:I'm not sure which part you are talking about that wasn't true, but I'm always looking for better ways of doing things. I'm having a hard time following which part you disagreed with, so here's how it came across to me so you can help me understand. Basically, my issue is with this: quote:• Purpose: It acts as a cost effective method of quickly (usually 10-30 minutes) ascertaining whether or not a candidate has the ability to communicate well while projecting enthusiasm and confidence without the benefit of their good looks or gestures. Some basic general questions and basic job related questions will be asked, but In most cases the intent isn’t picking good candidates so much as weeding out terrible candidates. and with the underlined statement. The focus of the interview isn't communication skills, per se. What I'm looking for is a candidate who is actually qualified for the position, and who possess at least the bare minimum of competence to move on to the next round. To give a little background as to why this is important, take a look at this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html. Imagine interviewing candidates for an accounting job, and finding out that over 95% of your applicants literally cannot perform basic addition. Forget enthusiasm and confidence, you need to find out if a candidate can count! This is the point I'm trying to make; the phone screen round isn't about seeing if the candidate sounds like a team player, it's about seeing if the candidate is even minimally competent, with the in-person part of the interview being a good place to assess their confidence, charisma, drive, etc. The instructions that you give imply that the best way to nail the phone screen part of the interview is to be confident and sound like a winner. It's not. The best way to nail the phone screen part of the interview is to know what you're even doing. I'm willing to give you a moment to rustle through your resume, but I'm not going to give you 30 minutes to pretend that you know how to count, when you refuse to tell me what 2+2 is. Edit: Derp, fixed formatting. Double edit: It's also not just finding about what the candidate has done, but whether what the candidate has done is actually grounded in reality. Take a look at the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The candidate writes down that they're a master at Ferbnozzling. Ok, great. I'm going to ask that candidate about Ferbnozzling, in detail. Are they someone who Ferbnozzled once by following tutorials, or did they write a Ferbnozzling library and become a subject matter expert? Volmarias fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Aug 20, 2013 |
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Aug 20, 2013 18:42
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You're still missing Fan of Nickelback's point, though: It's not a guide to getting a job, it's a guide to succeeding in interviews. Getting a job involves poo poo like being competent, interviewing well is a completely different skillset. What you're saying is "The most important thing is to be competent for the job you're interviewing for"; that's a given and not what's being discussed here at all. No matter how good you are at interviewing, if you're full of poo poo, you're full of poo poo. If you aren't, though, having your ducks in a row before the call helps tremendously. Plus I think you're referring mostly to technical interviews over the phone as opposed to the more traditional phone screening that's done by recruiters and HR.
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Aug 20, 2013 20:20
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It seems like your major gripe is with unqualified candidates passing through parts of the interview process. This thread isn't "How to trick your way into a job that you can't do!" which kind of seems like what you're arguing against. The OP just presumes that you actually have the job skills that you claim you do, and I don't recall anyone posting saying "Thanks, OP! I conned my way into a programming job despite not knowing how computers works thanks to your tips!"
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Aug 20, 2013 20:42
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I just got rejected for a position as a god drat part time teller at a credit union and I'm getting incredibly despondent. I'm a bit weak on retail experience but I have a bachelors in Finance, yet they seem to prefer college kids whose schedules they have to work around to me who has open availability. I've read through much of the first post and aside from not having examples about the qualities I'm listing I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong. I've only ever gotten one (seasonal) job from an interview, despite having had dozens of them. I don't know if I'm coming across as shy or what - I try to be more assertive each time and I have no trouble with eye contact. People tell me I don't smile. I'm just flustered as gently caress, this year I've already been rejected from even Mcdonalds, Walmart and Dollar General. he;lp
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Aug 20, 2013 21:44
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Why do some people majorly inflate their salary range? Is this from some sort of self-help internet publication or something? I just had a bachelor's degree CS student ask me for $80k a year plus benefits for an entry level coding job. I mean, does he think I'm going to counter with $10k and then we'd work to something reasonable, like we're haggling in a flea market or something? I just move on to the next guy.
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Aug 21, 2013 00:30
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Sivlan posted:Why do some people majorly inflate their salary range? Is this from some sort of self-help internet publication or something? I just had a bachelor's degree CS student ask me for $80k a year plus benefits for an entry level coding job. I mean, does he think I'm going to counter with $10k and then we'd work to something reasonable, like we're haggling in a flea market or something? Alternatively, why don't job listings have a salary range included? Seeing "based on experience" doesn't really help. Both sides are just waiting for the other to name a number first because whoever says a number first loses.
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Aug 21, 2013 00:34
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WampaLord posted:Alternatively, why don't job listings have a salary range included? Seeing "based on experience" doesn't really help. Both sides are just waiting for the other to name a number first because whoever says a number first loses. For huge companies, I imagine it's a matter of competition. Competitors can just read your listings and offer better for high value positions or, and this sucks for the candidates, decide that, "oh look, XYZ corp our direct competitors is only offering $24k for new entry-level hires, let's do the same." Instant wage fixing for replaceable/plentiful people. For small companies like mine it's because we have a really tight budget and want to get maximum value for our dollar. Candidates seem to think its a them vs the company thing when negotiating for their salary but, especially at small business levels, its more like a prioritization scheme. You're not thinking "okay, let's talk this rear end in a top hat down to $N a month." Rather you're trying to decide: "If I give this guy what he'll be okay with, I'll have to forego some equipment/conferences/etc., is he really worth it?" Or maybe: "This other guy wants less and is almost as good, can I make do with him? I could probably also afford part time help with what I save. Is this first guy worth 1.5 other people?" Flat out stating what the position would pay means people are going to ask for at least that much. You'd have to state a lower value instead and then you'd risk driving off good candidates who might actually be willing to work for that actual value you'd be willing to pay. To make this on-topic: if you're interviewing with a huge company, negotiate your salary but don't be ridiculous. You're still dealing with a busy staffing agent on the other end. He will either just ignore your offer and give you a low-ball offer, or just write you off entirely, if you ask for incredulous levels of salary. Also don't ask about pay at your technical interview (if you have one) as the engineers doing the interview have no idea what the company is willing to offer and don't even have the authority it discuss it. If you're applying to a small company, be reasonable. They likely have a super tight budget for hiring. They also won't want to do the whole back and forth negotiation thing that professional recruiters and staffers are willing to do because generally the people hiring also have a job that contributes materially to the company and the time they spend messing around with your demands is less time they have to actually work. If you really feel like you deserve a super high salary, go ahead and state it, but don't be surprised if they just say, "Thank you for you time" and move on. Alternatively, if their initial offer is much lower than what you want (like, $20k lower, but honestly this should never happen unless you have out of touch expectations or are applying to the wrong level of job), feel free to withdraw your application, they likely don't have much room to raise it anyhow. Lastly, if you're negotiating with my company, work for free. You can sleep on the reception couch and I will buy you frozen yogurt to eat and bring you a bucket of water (every day!) to wash with. Truly generous terms.
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Aug 21, 2013 01:31
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Volmarias posted:This is the point I'm trying to make; the phone screen round isn't about seeing if the candidate sounds like a team player, it's about seeing if the candidate is even minimally competent, with the in-person part of the interview being a good place to assess their confidence, charisma, drive, etc. The instructions that you give imply that the best way to nail the phone screen part of the interview is to be confident and sound like a winner. It's not. The best way to nail the phone screen part of the interview is to know what you're even doing. I'm willing to give you a moment to rustle through your resume, but I'm not going to give you 30 minutes to pretend that you know how to count, when you refuse to tell me what 2+2 is. For example, say you're deciding between two programming candidates. Candidate #1 codes a great solution solving for 2+2, but is clearly nervous and can hardly answer a question without stammering. Candidate #2 makes a similarly great solution for the problem, and also oozes confidence while clearly articulating his/her talking points. Both candidates make it past the phone interview, but candidate #2 leaves a much better impression going into the in-person interview. Obviously, you're looking for competent candidates; FON's advice applies when you're one of those candidates trying to get a job. You can't just assume you're the only candidate with the skills for the job and that's enough to get you in, you want to maximize your chances for success and be able to communicate that competence.
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Aug 21, 2013 03:21
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This has been discussed before but it can't be stressed enough: When interviewing, if your interviewer asks if you have any questions, HAVE SOME! Even if it's just "Can you tell me about the team I'd be a part of?" or "What would a day in the life of my job be?" I had yet another interview today where the person couldn't think of any questions for me. Nothing? I haven't even told you what the job is in my own words yet and you have no questions for me? I find that crazy.
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Aug 21, 2013 03:30
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WampaLord posted:Alternatively, why don't job listings have a salary range included? Seeing "based on experience" doesn't really help. Both sides are just waiting for the other to name a number first because whoever says a number first loses. Not really. The person offering the job in most cases knows what they will pay and wont offer to someone making far less or more. Much like someone who is looking for a job won't include salary ranges but they almost definitely have a low end they wont breach (I'm thinking of people who are valuable and in-demand here)
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Aug 21, 2013 06:16
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Sivlan posted:Why do some people majorly inflate their salary range? Is this from some sort of self-help internet publication or something? I just had a bachelor's degree CS student ask me for $80k a year plus benefits for an entry level coding job. I mean, does he think I'm going to counter with $10k and then we'd work to something reasonable, like we're haggling in a flea market or something?
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Aug 21, 2013 06:32
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I just applied for an attractive job via Monster.com. I had to set up an account in Monster before uploading my resume. I thought I was just creating a Monster.com account at that point so I skipped the 'Upload Cover Letter' step, knowing I'd want to write a custom letter for each job applied to. Well it turns out it actually submitted my application to the job with no cover letter. I'm pissed. But how hosed am I? I'm a very solid fit for this position, so maybe they'll overlook it?
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Aug 21, 2013 11:37
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Democratic Pirate posted:I think the advice FON is centered around helping you both 'talk the talk' and 'walk the walk.' Other people posted:OK, I'll concede. I guess I was just annoyed at the wording that implied that the personal interaction was the most important part of this step, rather than the "does this person hit the bare minimum of job competence" step. The only reason I bring it up is because we seem to get a lot of candidates who don't understand that, and think that we're only going to be asking them about their previous work history and maybe a couple of softballs. Objection retracted!
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Aug 21, 2013 16:21
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I wish I had more time for this thread, but objection still noted and I get the angle. This thread, and I should add this to the bold openers of the OP somehow, is useless to anyone who doesn't have/understand the core competencies of the job they're applying for. The struggle I originally had with something like that is because I don't want to confuse people into thinking that everything on a job posting is law and that someone with 1 year of experience shouldn't bother applying to a job that posts as "requiring" 5, for example. Edit: quote:The only reason I bring it up is because we seem to get a lot of candidates who don't understand that, and think that we're only going to be asking them about their previous work history and maybe a couple of softballs. I was just rereading some of this thread, and I think I am getting the original disconnect. The best way for me to explain it is that (outside of the shared-screen competency portion) even the questions you're talking about are softball questions to qualified candidates. For example, if an interviewer asked me "How would you employ Six Sigma to reduce customer complaints regarding product failures?" it would be a softball question--but it might be perceived as a grilling to a person who wasn't competent with Six Sigma. This guide is specifically written to help qualified candidates best explain why they are the most qualified, not to help anyone actually become more qualified for a particular position. FAN OF NICKELBACK fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Aug 25, 2013 |
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Aug 21, 2013 16:52
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me your dad posted:I just applied for an attractive job via Monster.com. I had to set up an account in Monster before uploading my resume. I thought I was just creating a Monster.com account at that point so I skipped the 'Upload Cover Letter' step, knowing I'd want to write a custom letter for each job applied to. When I was applying to jobs I didn't write a cover letter for a few of them and got a surprising number of callbacks. For the position I ended up accepting though, I did write a cover letter, and thank you letters for each round of interviews. So it depends on the company/person who is looking at things - some people may care, and some wont care. I do have an Objective at the top of my resume though - which may slightly negate the cover letter or lack thereof e: I do suggest looking for jobs through dice/monster/career builder - but trying to find the company website and applying through sending them your resume directly. I got 8 phone interviews through places I sent an e-mail with my resume to. YMMV obviously
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Aug 21, 2013 19:06
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me your dad posted:I just applied for an attractive job via Monster.com. I had to set up an account in Monster before uploading my resume. I thought I was just creating a Monster.com account at that point so I skipped the 'Upload Cover Letter' step, knowing I'd want to write a custom letter for each job applied to. I could have sworn Monster would let you upload a cover letter later. If not you could find the job on another site (almost all of the ones I have seen are on different sites but ymmv) and submit it there too with a cover letter. Also, don't get hung up about one application, send out tons.
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Aug 24, 2013 02:11
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I had a phone interview on Friday, that I originally was told would be 20-30min long. Cool, no problem. I studied/prepared. Felt ready for anything. Then, it ended up being only 10min long, and I'm not sure if I should be worried or not. I hear short = bad, but the lady only asked me very specific questions (why do you want to work for us/tell me about x current job/salary requirements/can you relocate/when can you start), she left almost no room for questions (I was able to fire one off), spoke a mile-a-minute, and told me I'd know sometime this week. Is this normal in any way? Should I write this job off?
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Aug 27, 2013 03:59
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StarSiren posted:I had a phone interview on Friday, that I originally was told would be 20-30min long. Cool, no problem. I studied/prepared. Felt ready for anything. Then, it ended up being only 10min long, and I'm not sure if I should be worried or not. I hear short = bad, but the lady only asked me very specific questions (why do you want to work for us/tell me about x current job/salary requirements/can you relocate/when can you start), she left almost no room for questions (I was able to fire one off), spoke a mile-a-minute, and told me I'd know sometime this week. This is pretty normal and I wouldn't be concerned. It's strange that she won't let you ask questions, so I'd be concerned about that in that it might be an indicator of what kind of company you'd work for.
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Aug 27, 2013 12:36
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I had an interview recently and one of the questions I asked was, "what's the difference between being on and being excellent in this position." The main interviewer on the panel refused to answer because there was a second, written section to the interview and he thought it would give too much away. I still think it is great advice to ask that question, but just wanted to tell everyone about that kind of odd response. The advice in the Op and throughout the thread is very good. Thanks to everyone who has contributed.
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Aug 27, 2013 16:10
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StarSiren posted:I had a phone interview on Friday, that I originally was told would be 20-30min long. Cool, no problem. I studied/prepared. Felt ready for anything. Then, it ended up being only 10min long, and I'm not sure if I should be worried or not. I hear short = bad, but the lady only asked me very specific questions (why do you want to work for us/tell me about x current job/salary requirements/can you relocate/when can you start), she left almost no room for questions (I was able to fire one off), spoke a mile-a-minute, and told me I'd know sometime this week. I wouldn't worry. I've had a few companies call me up, talk for 5 minutes and then call back a week later to schedule a real interview.
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Aug 27, 2013 17:55
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I wouldn't worry. I've had a few companies call me up, talk for 5 minutes and then call back a week later to schedule a real interview. Definitely comforting...Thanks, guys!
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Aug 28, 2013 00:08
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I've got a three person interview next week. Is it perceived as being creepy to check out the interviewer's Linkedin profile in advance to the interview? I wish Linkedin didn't notify a person six different ways when someone checks out a profile.
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Aug 29, 2013 11:14
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It shouldn't be viewed as creepy at all as long as you don't memorize the degrees of separation between the two of you and recite each one to the interviewer or anything. Well that and the other no-brainer stuff like suggesting a connection or using their connections to try to circumvent the interview process. Think of it like an extension of a business card; it's a public, professional database. If they even notice in the first place, they'd likely compliment you an putting extra effort into your preparation and desire to know the company better.
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Aug 29, 2013 15:16
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me your dad posted:I've got a three person interview next week. Is it perceived as being creepy to check out the interviewer's Linkedin profile in advance to the interview? It's creepy if you want to talk more about the interviewer's past jobs than you do about your own qualifications. I interviewed a candidate a bit ago (mentioned this in the Linked In thread) who totally creeped me out because he had all these questions about my career and I didn't know he looked me up on LinkedIn. If you have a couple specific questions about their work history, bringing it up like, "Oh, I saw on LinkedIn you worked for XYZ, [insert question]?" should be fine. Stuff like, "Oh man XYZ is AWESOME what was it like there?" would be out of place.
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Aug 29, 2013 18:21
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Thanks! My interest is just to find out who I'm dealing with in advance for the interview, and what their backgrounds are in case it's advantageous.
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Aug 29, 2013 19:46
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I'm going to be kind of cryptic, apologies if this post is confusing because of that. I work for a consumer goods company -- been working here for 3 months so far. An internal job was posted for an entry-level engineer position in a different branch of the company, working with products that I am really passionate about. I'm currently working with stuff that I don't care about at all and it is kind of a drain to work with. Anyways, my manager is totally cool with me moving to that side of the company, so I applied, and have a phone interview in the next few days. Unfortunately the side of the company I'm applying to is less successful than the one I'm in now, and the company has been selling off some of its assets related to that division. How do I go about asking the person I'm interviewing with (my potential future boss), in a polite way, if that division is in risk of being sold off soon and am I better off staying where I am and not wasting my time starting off there? "What do you think the future outlook of this division of the company is?" or something like that?
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Aug 29, 2013 20:46
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me your dad posted:Thanks! My interest is just to find out who I'm dealing with in advance for the interview, and what their backgrounds are in case it's advantageous. Just to echo everyone else, it's not creepy but don't go over board. I like to see that people are looking because it shows that they inquisitiveand at least somewhat resourceful. I'm not a huge fan of people sending connection requests pre-interview however, which happens. I don't even know you yet and we might hate each other!
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Aug 30, 2013 00:44
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corkskroo posted:Just to echo everyone else, it's not creepy but don't go over board. I like to see that people are looking because it shows that they inquisitiveand at least somewhat resourceful. I'm not a huge fan of people sending connection requests pre-interview however, which happens. I don't even know you yet and we might hate each other! I would never connect pre-interview, and I likely won't even bring it up that I looked them up. A brief look at one of the interviewers gave me some information that will be helpful in prepping. That's all I was hoping for. I was just worried that they'd see me browsing their profile and think it was weird.
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Aug 30, 2013 03:31
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Yup, you're good.
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Aug 30, 2013 11:15
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So what's the best answer if you've not run into a situation for one of the behavioral questions? For example, co-workers stealing or going behind boss's backs - neither of which I've ever experienced? Even the disagreement with a co-worker ones are hard for me to answer, since I tend to get along well with co-workers and the "disagreements" I have are simple stuff like hashing out why solution A is better than B - it's not like "yeah that one time they called me a bitch". Basically, what's the best way to say "Well I've never run into that, so I have no idea how I'd react." Just say that?
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Aug 30, 2013 19:04
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Urit posted:Basically, what's the best way to say "Well I've never run into that, so I have no idea how I'd react." Just say that? My sense is that you really have two options, 1. Say that you've been fortunate enough to never encounter that scenario (if it's one of those bad ones like disagreements with co-workers), but that if you did encounter that situation, you'd deal with it in a professional manner and do blah blah blah. 2. Say you've never encountered that exact scenario, but then share an anecdote of a similar scenario and you dealt with it. However I'm curious what the OP thinks, given quote:• How to answer behavioral questions: Directly and as a story. If you hear “Tell me about a time,” “Can you tell me when you,” or “Give me an example of” then you will answer with “About [time] ago at [company] I [did things] with [people’s actual names] and [the end result was]. What I learned from this was [lesson] and it’s something that I try to pass on by [whatever method] to [achieve results faster/help others avoid pratfalls/whatever].” If you instead start your reply with “I would” or “I think” or “What I usually” then just excuse yourself from the interview and apologize for being terrible at parsing questions unexpectedly asked in plain English. In today’s interviewing environment this is the most common type of interview question, and my last question is the response most people give.
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Aug 30, 2013 19:12
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Xandu posted:My sense is that you really have two options, I'd go with option 2 if possible. Don't stretch so far that it seems like you didn't understand the question, but if you can find any experience that illustrates how you handled an applicable situation it's always good to discuss it.
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Aug 30, 2013 21:28
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If you thought of your interview as resulting in a GPA, would you want a 0 or a 60% on one of the final exams? A very large number of interviews do actually end with a GPA. Prepare for a 1-10 or 1-5 scale. Ever answers is rated. Situation: You're boned; you have been asked about a time when you diffused a situation, but you've never done that. You need to prove you can do it to ensure that you are strong in the running, since they only ask about things related to the most necessary job skills. Resolution: Draw from experiences from these places, in this order. Never skip one down because you think you have a better answer in the next category unless you think you'll drop the interviewer's jaw. 1)Work experience within the last three months 2)Work experience within the last 2 years 3)work experience from any time in the past 4)Volunteer experience (soup kitchen crew, whatever) 4)HighSchool/College experience (whichever is more recent, make it good) 5)Experience with Family or Friends 6)"I haven't had experience with that, would you like to hear about [as similar a situation as possible]? 7)"I don't know" 8)WOW guild experience "I don't have any work experiences that I can draw off of, however I did have a situation with [whichever category you can talk to] that I can discuss. Would you be interested in that?" FAN OF NICKELBACK fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Aug 31, 2013 |
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Aug 31, 2013 01:06
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Okay so I read the OP but I didn't see anything addressing my question. At my last job, I quit due to severe harassment that was not being dealt with, and even death threats to my co-receptionist. I reported it three separate times as per our workplace violence and harassment training (report asap to your manager, management will put out the smoke before it becomes a fire; harassment/violence is serious). My co-receptionist also reported it. I believe nothing was done as we worked for a private college, and the harassers were the students (paying customers). We both handed in our two weeks notice. About a week later I was offered my job back, but I declined because I did not want to be put into that situation again. I left on what I consider a very positive note and I think them offering me my job back proves that. However, as I am now interviewing for new positions I have been having a difficult time with this. I've had some feedback stating they are "not impressed" regarding the reasons I left my last job. What is the best way to deal with this? TL;DR; I left my last job due to harassment, and interviewers don't like that. How do I better approach the "why did you leave your last job?" question.
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Aug 31, 2013 02:59
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