The deam Interview

No matter how many years one has had been in the industry, no matter how many interviews he/she has braved, no matter how many interviews he/she has had taken; it still is a war of that one last breath of peace when it comes to giving an interview.

One of my acquaintances recently had to attend an interview and he had more than 10 years of experience. So when I was visiting him last week, I had to mock the interview panel as questions for his preparation. And all this time during the mock interview he was with his two year old son, trying make him sleep. Well that the best way to prepare for an interview while being under extreme stress. If you can live this you can survive any!

Now that he is geologist and the only thing I know about geology is the way it is spelled most of my questions were “What are your X strengths and weaknesses? Why do you think we should hire you? What makes you stand out from the other N people who have applied?”

More of the HR kind of questions; the only technical question I could ask was “What were your key learnings from the last job? What was the thing in the last job that you think were big, challenging both technically and resource wise and how did you solve then?”

Now that was something. Having been trained in “Interviewing skills” and “Enhanced interviewing skills” and given that I haven’t selected any of the candidates in so many interviews I have taken, and recommending background check for almost all the panel recommended for the next round of interview, I had my own comments on the answers.

Don’t say or stress on “I and hardworking, sincere. Blah Blah. These are all universal truths from any interview candidate. Try to build on your experience, how this varied experience makes you stand out from the crowd. Whatever your weaknesses, they should be the ones on which can work upon and if not then either you should not tell them or mask them as the ones which also work as your strengths.”

So the organization where he had the interview was the one in which his father had worked from the first day to the last day of his entire career. So invariably everybody, the higher ups, in particular knew the candidate, and knew just no casually but personally.

When the day of interview came, the panel had people, who were known to him since childhood, were a distant relative, or had known his cousins. Now that is what I call as a perfect interview panel. Even before you are bombarded with questions you are already comfortable. One of the many must things taught to me in my trainings “Interviews are tests, and like all tests this too makes the candidate envious. Try to make the candidate comfortable. When the candidate is nervous he/she won’t give his best shot.”

Best shot. I think here the candidate was playing on his home ground in front of his home crowd.

So the interview started. “How is your mom? How is your father?” And then the technical questions started.

Now isn’t that a dream interview?? And a scary one too, all those people who know you so well will get an insight on how deep or shallow your understanding of the subject is?