From: Robert_Cocking@mindlink.bc.ca (Robert Cocking)
Subject: Federal Interview Styles
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: can
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 22:25:20 GMT

I recently posted a question inquiring into the job interview
practices of the Canadian federal government and was asked to post
the responses for the enlightenment of my fellow readers.

Here goes....

Response #1,

>I've done two government interviews, both for student positions.
>The government being how it is, I suspect they're standard
>procedure.

>(1)My first interview was conducted over the phone (I being in
>Toronto, and the job in Ottawa).  I am told that there will
>ALWAYS be two people on the phone (or it'll be recorded).
>I'm not positive about the motivation for this, but it may
>be to help eliminate confusion about exactly what you say.
>(Or it could be that there at least two people involved in
>interviewing you...)

>(2)My second (and much less pleasant) interview, was one-on-one
>with the man who was to be my supervisor.  He had written,
>submitted to human resources and had approved a knowledge
>based test.  This was not fun.

Response #2,

>I was a manager of computing in a government research centre for
>11 years and have chaired several interviews.

>What they do depends on how close they follow regulations.
>There should be two or three people at the interview, a
>manager, a technical person, and someone from personnel.
>Not always.

>The candidate is asked three sets of questions.

>Set 1 is knowledge questions:programming languages,
>  operating systems, methods, and so forth.
>Set 2 is ability questions: what have you done, how
>  would you do something, how would you handle a
>  hypothetical situation
>Set 3 is suitablility for the position: can you
>  express yourself, are you polite and confident,
>  do you seem alert and cooperative, how do you
>  handle stressful questions, and so forth

>You are supposed to be scored on each question and have
>to get a minimum overall and in each set. Usually they
>keep the scoring subjective in order to weed out
>unacceptable candidates.

>Sometimes a written test is given to get the number of
>candidates to interview down to a reasonable number.
>Some of the canidates will qualify, some not. The position
>is offered first to the candidate who qualified highest.

Response #3, (Note: this is provincial, not federal)

>I had an interview with [the British Columbia] Provincial Gov't
>once at last August. The interview was conducted by 2 managers (1
>from internal & 1 from external), 2 directors, and 1 staff. I had
>to do an 20min oral presentation on a pre-giving topic to them
>before the real questioning period started.  They had a book
>(about 10 pages) of questions to ask you and there were many
>detailed questions within or realated to your working field.
>I found out that those questions were harder than my master
>thesis. So, you should get a complete job description from the
>human resources before going to the interview.

Response #4,

>I was intervied by Supply & Services Cda in early Dec for a
>computing position. Adjust everyting following to have a
>geological twist, for your situation. The interview style is
>different (in my paltry experience) from "industry" interviews.
>It was almost like a gentle, high-level Software Engineering quiz
>- what are some principles of Swe Eng, what is CASE all about,
>what are the differences between Swe Eng approaches A, B, C. Then
>some interesting "scenario" questions: Problem x has come up -
>like, "someone calls you from another dept to say that a program
>(for which you are responsible re: maintenance) that is run
>regularly on Friday afternoons to produce a report for person Z
>on Monday morning, has aborted, badly. What do you do?" A few of
>those scenario things. Think fast, on your toes. Also they spoke
>of their training programmes & plans they have for future
>structural changes in their department or what-have-you, &
>expected intelligent feedback/observations from you (at least they
>did from me).

>I'd say the interview was quite a relaxed atmosphere. The fellow
>was very pleasant, & it was muchly a "discussion/ideas"
>atmosphere.

Response #5,

>I just had an interview on Friday (Jan 15) with Statistics Canada.
>I could tell you lots about it, but suffice it to say they have
>a different approach than the private companies I have interviewed
>with.  It was set up so all candidates were asked the exact same
>questions, and the interviewers had no flexibility to account for
>the obvious answers in my case.  I could almost see them ticking
>off boxes on their form when I said certain things taht they were
>waiting for... but they set it up well, considering this
>requirement to be so "equal".

So the results are rather inconclusive beyond the fact of the
knowledge-based exam.


--

Robert Cocking.......robert_cocking@mindlink.bc.ca

Xref: sparky can.jobs:930 misc.jobs.offered:16502