Personal Career Development: Interview Exercise

I did the interview exercise with E, someone who is not a member of the class but who has been in management positions and on both sides of the interview before. My experience with interviewing was much more limited. I have been interviewed several times for part-time positions, but I have never interviewed anyone nor, before this class, given much thought as to what questions I would ask. For my interview with E, I chose questions from the lists posted on Blackboard and on the Career Services website.

I learned more from the discussion I had with E after the interviews than I did from the exercise itself. E emphasized that the purpose of the interview wasn’t to gather data not on the resume–that could be done in other, more verifiable ways. Instead, the interview was to get a feel for the candidate’s personality and whether they had the personal qualities for the job. That much I knew, but E and I then talked about how to craft interview questions or answer interview questions to really ask or answer the question behind the question. E compared it to a trial lawyer questioning a witness. Each question the lawyer asks is designed so that the witness’s answer make some sort of point. As an example, we broke down the ad for a Technology Initiatives Librarian, starting with the description “energetic.” While interviewing someone for that position, I would want to pay attention to how enthusiastically they answered questions and to ask questions to learn whether they sought out projects and offered input or whether they waited for instructions from a manager. Likewise, were I interviewed for this position, I would want to make sure I expressed enthusiasm for working at the library and taking initiative on projects and so on. (Of course, if I am not energetic or interested in coordinating others, close reading of a job ad can help me realize that this is not the position for me before I go through the process of applying).

E also gave me examples of questions an interviewer might ask to learn how the interviewee responded to different situations. E suggested that an interviewer might ask if I’d read a recent article published about the library to see how much research I had done prior to the interviewer. An interviewer might purposely be early or late to see how I reacted (was I there and ready to go? did I blame or take out my anger on the receptionist?) or ask me a purposely confusing question. When the topic of illegal questions came up, E pointed out that there were a number of ways interviewers could get the information without actually asking an illegal question point-blank. As a hypothetical example (not necessarily one an interviewer would ever ask), instead of asking how old I was, E asked me where I was on 9/11 and then where I was when the Discovery blew up. Though this might be an odd question in an interview, E told me there was nothing illegal about it.

E and I also did a kind of reverse interview, in which I asked questions and E showed me how I could answer them in an interview. E also suggested possible interview questions and then helped me come up with answers to them. What I learned here was staying on message. E compared it to being interviewed by the media or perhaps a presidential debate (although E did suggest that I try not to be quite so blatantly on message as candidates are). If I didn’t have an answer to a particular question such as “Tell me about a crisis situation and how you dealt with it,” I could reframe the question slightly by answering, “One particularly stressful situation was…”

Talking with E about how interviews work and the range of questions from typical interview questions to “questions” that take place before the interview begins taught me a lot about both sides of the interview. As an interviewee, I have a better idea of how to prepare for interviews and how to give answers that will help demonstrate why I am the best person for the job. As an interviewer, I now know more about how to ask questions that will give me the information I want (the question behind the question) so that I can find the best candidate.