From: hrtcu@usho52.hou281.chevron.com (R.T.Cutler)
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
Subject: Re: Interview Experiences?
Keywords: interview, acadmics, industry
Date: 22 Jul 92 21:20:40 GMT
Distribution: world, local
Organization: Chevron

In article <1992Jul22.035300.231@news.acns.nwu.edu>, drt@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Robert Toreki) writes:
|> 	I'm looking for people's experiences with job interviews.  My interest
|> is academia, but given the breadth of backgrounds and experiences, I'm sure
|> people want to hear something related to industry.  To keep things succinct
|> and rolling let's try to limit things to either an overall perspective or
|> focus on one or two that really stand out or are representative.  Some

OK, I'm glad to comment on that from two perspectives: interviewing and 
being interviewed.

I have been told by a recent hire that he was asked in several interviews
what his least successful experience was -- or his biggest failure, or
something like that.  I suggest it might be a good idea to have something 
ready along these lines, as I myself would have trouble thinking along these
lines "on-the-fly".  I have thought about this, and I think I would try to
come up with an example of a real, non-trivial unsuccessful experience about
which one is not exactly proud, but about which one can also identify the 
primary factors which contributed to the failure and can plausibly explore
different ways of approaching the problem, areas of expertize which would
have helped (and, one hopes, one has managed to pick up in the meantime),
or something else along those lines.  That is, accept responsibility and 
show how the negative experience can lead to positive results.

An anecdote: I recall a particularly hideous interview that I had once, long
ago, where some guy, at the end of a long exhausting day, started telling me
a bunch of fairly simple but totally unfamiliar facts about a physical system
with which I was totally unfamiliar.  I tried to listen politely and keep
myself from going to sleep (I was, at this point, as I said, exhausted).
All of a sudden, he stopped talking (or droning, as the case may be) about
this thing that I knew nothing about and cared less about, and said something
like "And now what do you think happens?"  So I was expected to continue
the analysis.  I woke up real fast, I can tell you, but I really had nothing
to say, other than that I had not the slightest idea.  

I didn't get the job.  I have no idea whether that interview was a critical
factor.

My advice, if you want it, is as follows:  if somebody starts droning on
about something that you have never heard of and seems to think you are
understanding what he is talking about (I don't mean talking in general
about what they do -- I mean talking in detail about a specific problem),
don't tune out, even if it is boring and you are exhausted.  Stop him and
get your arms around the stuff as it comes out, and make sure that you 
are in fact on top of what is being talked about if it appears that you
are expected to be.  If you ask dumb questions, so be it.  Don't wait to
be blind-sided.

Finally, about my own interviewing.  I have done a reasonable amount of
interviewing, have taken courses in it, and have tried various approaches.
What I almost always try to do at this point is to involve the person,
somehow, in a technical discussion about some technical issue about which
we both have some reasonable expertize.  Generally I'll try to be pretty
flexible about the subject and try to lead to the strength of the other 
person, but I want something where I am not totally ignorant.  The reason
is that I want to establish some technical give and take.  Get a sense of
the person.  

The other thing that I want to do is, if the person has previously worked 
in a team, I would like to find out what role that person played in the
team and how aware the person is and has been of that role.  If there
were a number of people involved, I would like to see that the person is
aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the people involved and of the
way in which the task or responsibilities are divided.  I am less interested
in whether the person played a dominant or important role than I am in 
whether the person understands clearly what the role was.

I have no idea how typical the approach indicated above is.  My guess, based
on my experience being interviewed and also from reading the reports of
interviewers, is that it might be about one in five, and that the more
typical interviews will be more structured and along the lines of exploring
areas of expertize and experience.  There is another type of interview that
focusses on motivation.  I have tried that, but find the results to be
a little slippery to get one's hands on.  I would estimate, however,
that perhaps as much as a third of one's interviews will have some sort
of motivational slant.
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers