OMG: I hate job interviews

[AMCRambler]

I think perhaps that this was kind of a pre-interview. Like the other people are saying, personality test, how you handle yourself, behavioral, all that. Pass that interview and they call you back for a second in which they get more in detail about your experience. Seems like a good way to thin the pack if you've got a lot of applications.

 

[yllus]

Come on man, those are fun questions. The only one I'd have trouble with is, "Tell me a joke." The only one that comes to mind is dirty, and I've never bothered to memorize an orally-deliverable clean joke.

 

[Danman]

At my previous job, we had a lot of trouble with our Helpdesk IT staff. When we started interviewing for more helpdesk staff, we would throw "behavioral-type" questions to the interviewee. The problem is, majority of IT people don't have sufficient social skills. That's why we started doing this, and it did work (for the most part).

 

[AbsolutDealage]

Originally posted by: HotChic

Originally posted by: AbsolutDealage
Unless I was desperate for a job, I think I would blow off those kinds of questions. I think that you can determine a person's social demeanor without having to ask them a bunch of BS questions like that. Having a simple conversation with them should be enough to determine whether or not they will fit in.

Ever done any hiring? Ever gotten stuck with a complete idiot who seemed nice enough in the half hour interview?

I am not the decision maker, but our boss generally looks to us to filter out the "social element" when it comes to new hires in the group. None of us go in there asking those BS questions that you read in some HR handbook... we ask technical questions intermixed with small talk and that seems to work just fine.

 

[zoiks]

Originally posted by: AgentJean

Originally posted by: Hyperlite
eh that sucks. kinda threw you a curveball...i know, its hard to come up with random stuff like that on the spot.

A curveball is bad enough when playing baseball.
It's even worse when your expecting to play football.


At least he didn't ask me for a one of my favorite quotes.

Here's a combination.

Knock knock.
Who's there!
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

 

[AbsolutDealage]

Originally posted by: yowolabi

Originally posted by: AbsolutDealage
Unless I was desperate for a job, I think I would blow off those kinds of questions. I think that you can determine a person's social demeanor without having to ask them a bunch of BS questions like that. Having a simple conversation with them should be enough to determine whether or not they will fit in.

It's not enough, hence the questions. People are prepared for the standard questions they'll get. You'll be able to get rid of the obvious losers, but you won't be able to tell the people apart who have done some preparation. If you would blow your chance at a job because you were unwilling to answer a few non standard questions, you are exactly the type of person those questions are supposed to filter out.

I don't think that's true. In fact, I think if I asked everyone in my department whether or not they thought those questions were complete BS, they would agree with me. Asking some kind of pre-determined question to guage social skills is not going to tell you anything. Just because I don't go around memorizing jokes does not mean that I won't fit in... it just means I wouldn't be a good standup comedian, nothing more.

I think asking interesting and difficult technical questions is a much better guage. You get to see their problem solving skills, you get to see their ability to deal with pressure, and you get to guage social behavior by talking through the problem with them. That's much better than "If you were a flower, what kind of flower would you be?".

 

[oogabooga]

the accomplishments one is one i've been asked at a wide variety of jobs. the joke one is a little rough because well.. lets be honest it's hard to come up with a joke on the spot that is presentable.

They wanted to see how you would react on the spot, and from the sounds of it... well next time show off you have some character and personality

 

[LegendKiller]

You have no idea about weird questions until you interview for higher-end finance positions...

You fielded those questions poorly. They give good indiciations of how you will handle dealing with people and how you view yourself and your viewpoint of your life.

I can easily name off 3 great accomplishments. You could have even prefaced a non-suckup version of "Getting to this type of job interview is a great accomplishment".

Heroes? Don't even have to be job related people. Pick somebody that you admire. Personally, I admire Colin Powell a lot. Raised poor, enlisted, OCS, then attained the highest position you can get to in the military area.

What about Warren Buffet? "I will give my kids enough money to do something but enough money to do nothing".


Jokes? Are they appropriate, corny, funny? Tie it to a humorous event in real life, doesn't even have to have a punch-line, just tell a good funny story.

 

[pontifex]

3 great accomplishments? i don't even have 1 great accomplishment, unless you consider graduating HS or some dumb tech school/program an accomplishment.

how many people have actually done anything truly great in their lives anyway? not that many.

who inspires me? no one really inspires me, especially for something i would be interviewing a job for.

 

[KrillBee]

Originally posted by: AgentJean
Ok, so I had a job interview today for this tech support position.
I was expecting to be racked over the coals with technical and customer service questions.

No! I was asked stuff like "Who inspires me and why." "Tell me a joke" "List 3 of your greatest accomplisments"

I couldn't think of a joke(nothing tastefull anyways) I could only list 1 of my greatest accoplishments and my insperiation was a genertic text book answer.

What does that have to do with my ability stop a server meltdown?


I kind of think I blew this interview
This looked like a good opportunity with some nice pay(a rarity in this area)

I prefer IT jobs who dont put their applicants through this kind of BS. Seriously, if the interview is too stupid just start walking. And leave a note with one of the company managers that the HR person working for them is an idiot.

The last person who hired me (and the rest of the teammates they hired) only asked about my previous work experience, and which subjects I was strong at in highschool, and about my strengths as a person.

The team got along great. We all liked each other's personalities.

 

[KrillBee]

Originally posted by: Danman
At my previous job, we had a lot of trouble with our Helpdesk IT staff. When we started interviewing for more helpdesk staff, we would throw "behavioral-type" questions to the interviewee. The problem is, majority of IT people don't have sufficient social skills. That's why we started doing this, and it did work (for the most part).

being able to tell someone a knock knock joke or your great accomplishments in life, arent considered social skills.

 

[SagaLore]

Those are good questions.

It weeds out the hypersmart techies who have no social skills and end up being the loners in a department that thing they know everything and everyone is against them.

 

[AbsolutDealage]

Originally posted by: KrillBee

Originally posted by: Danman
At my previous job, we had a lot of trouble with our Helpdesk IT staff. When we started interviewing for more helpdesk staff, we would throw "behavioral-type" questions to the interviewee. The problem is, majority of IT people don't have sufficient social skills. That's why we started doing this, and it did work (for the most part).

being able to tell someone a knock knock joke or your great accomplishments in life, arent considered social skills.

Unless it goes something like this:

"Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"This is a dumb interview question"...

 

[KrillBee]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
Those are good questions.

It weeds out the hypersmart techies who have no social skills and end up being the loners in a department that thing they know everything and everyone is against them.

the thing is, im not good on the spot with these types of questions, but i fit in very well socially with other IT workers. therefore, i think these interview questions suck, because they single good people like me out.

 

[KrillBee]

Originally posted by: AbsolutDealage

Originally posted by: KrillBee

Originally posted by: Danman
At my previous job, we had a lot of trouble with our Helpdesk IT staff. When we started interviewing for more helpdesk staff, we would throw "behavioral-type" questions to the interviewee. The problem is, majority of IT people don't have sufficient social skills. That's why we started doing this, and it did work (for the most part).

being able to tell someone a knock knock joke or your great accomplishments in life, arent considered social skills.

Unless it goes something like this:

"Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"This is a dumb interview question"...

lol!

its funny because if I was this picky about when I go in for job interviews, and if I asked for employers to give me these types of responses in return, i dont think anyone would appreciate it or hire me.

but its okay to badger the applicant.

 

[SoulAssassin]

Who was the person you interviewed with and what is their responsibility? It's very possible you interviewed first w an HR type person who's non-technical and the fun stuff comes later.

 

[KrillBee]

Originally posted by: oogabooga
the accomplishments one is one i've been asked at a wide variety of jobs. the joke one is a little rough because well.. lets be honest it's hard to come up with a joke on the spot that is presentable.

They wanted to see how you would react on the spot, and from the sounds of it... well next time show off you have some character and personality

the accomplishments question isnt fair either, because most of my accomplishments are small ones, its hard to think of big ones that stand out. i do little things each day that are important, but i dont remember what they were the next day, lol.

seriously the one way i could keep track of my accomplishments is if i had a journal or something specifically for that. and that would be weird.

 

[yowolabi]

Originally posted by: AbsolutDealage

Originally posted by: yowolabi

Originally posted by: AbsolutDealage
Unless I was desperate for a job, I think I would blow off those kinds of questions. I think that you can determine a person's social demeanor without having to ask them a bunch of BS questions like that. Having a simple conversation with them should be enough to determine whether or not they will fit in.

It's not enough, hence the questions. People are prepared for the standard questions they'll get. You'll be able to get rid of the obvious losers, but you won't be able to tell the people apart who have done some preparation. If you would blow your chance at a job because you were unwilling to answer a few non standard questions, you are exactly the type of person those questions are supposed to filter out.

I don't think that's true. In fact, I think if I asked everyone in my department whether or not they thought those questions were complete BS, they would agree with me. Asking some kind of pre-determined question to guage social skills is not going to tell you anything. Just because I don't go around memorizing jokes does not mean that I won't fit in... it just means I wouldn't be a good standup comedian, nothing more.

I think asking interesting and difficult technical questions is a much better guage. You get to see their problem solving skills, you get to see their ability to deal with pressure, and you get to guage social behavior by talking through the problem with them. That's much better than "If you were a flower, what kind of flower would you be?".

It's pretty irrelevant how your random poll would see it unless you were polling HR reps, though i'm willing to bet that some people in your department would get it. A lot of non-technical people would think the question "is your computer connected to the network" was irrelevant when calling about a computer they can't log into, but that doesn't make it true. Not being able to see the point doesn't mean it doesn't have one.

You don't seem to get that it's not about what joke you have memorized or if you can tell it like a comedian. It's about seeing how you respond to an unexpected situation and it's about being able to get better insight into someone's personality than asking them a stock question would do. Does the person shut down and not answer? Does he tell a XXX rated joke that's demeaning to women? Does he demonstrate that he's never told a joke in his life?

Technical questions are important also. There's nothing that says that being asked 3 non-standard questions somehow prevents you from asking technical things.

What will you do if I give you an assignment to do and you don't see the point, are you going to just blow it off too? If you would do that during something as important as an interview, then i would assume so.

 

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: Descartes
As someone responsible for a lot of hiring in IT, I think those are reasonable questions. Your response to them was not reasonable, in my opinion. Someone that doesn't know three note-worthy accomplishments would seem rather suspect to me. The joke question seems to be more about trying to determine your personality. My company has a lot of out-going people that like to have fun, and almost everyone could come up with a silly joke that would make everyone laugh in an instant. He just wanted to know if you would fit into the culture.

Seriously, there is a lot of technical talent floating around out there. Being technically proficient was enough a decade ago, but now people realize that it's really not the most important facet of someone's career; rather, how well you work with others and how you manage the social dynamic is paramount.

This is dead on.
More and more companies realize that there are plenty of talented tech workers and some of them have no people/social skills or common sense...as others have said.
Speaking from personal experience, I saw how one person with "mad skills" but the personality of a wet noodle wreaked havoc on a good crew. Those questions were all about "fit".

 

[AgentJean]

Originally posted by: KrillBee

the accomplishments question isnt fair either, because most of my accomplishments are small ones, its hard to think of big ones that stand out. i do little things each day that are important, but i dont remember what they were the next day, lol.

seriously the one way i could keep track of my accomplishments is if i had a journal or something specifically for that. and that would be weird.

Yeah, same here. The only "greatest accomplishment" I have is I paid my own college ticket. My parents didn't pay a dime. It's all on me. Other than that there isn't anything that stands out.

Giving the fact that i'm very modest in my feats, I classify nothing short of "world domination" as a "greatest accomplishment". I'm still working on that one

 

[ScottyB]

I went through a bunch of BS trying to get a job after college. After months of hassle with fvcktard companies who look at trivialities rather than skills, I got a job making $10/h where I only work on days that I feel like working. I didn't have to interview or do any sort of BS personality test.

 

[Shortcut]

Originally posted by: pontifex
3 great accomplishments? i don't even have 1 great accomplishment, unless you consider graduating HS or some dumb tech school/program an accomplishment.

how many people have actually done anything truly great in their lives anyway? not that many.

who inspires me? no one really inspires me, especially for something i would be interviewing a job for.

you'll learn quickly enough that your paycheck depends on your mastery of not voicing every negative and dumbsh1t thought on your mind.

 

[AgentJean]

Originally posted by: ScottyB
I went through a bunch of BS trying to get a job after college. After months of hassle with fvcktard companies who look at trivialities rather than skills, I got a job making $10/h where I only work on days that I feel like working. I didn't have to interview or do any sort of BS personality test.

Yeah but if you knew what these people are offering and if you knew the company(I worked for the company a few years ago in a different department), You woudn't want to just walk away.

"The souffle will either rise or it won't; there's not a damn thing you can do about it , so just sit back and see what happens.""

I need to follow that quote.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by: pontifex
3 great accomplishments? i don't even have 1 great accomplishment, unless you consider graduating HS or some dumb tech school/program an accomplishment.

how many people have actually done anything truly great in their lives anyway? not that many.

who inspires me? no one really inspires me, especially for something i would be interviewing a job for.

You actually sound quite depressed. Perhaps you should see a psychologist.

 

[Nerva]

Originally posted by: AgentJean

Originally posted by: Hyperlite
eh that sucks. kinda threw you a curveball...i know, its hard to come up with random stuff like that on the spot.

A curveball is bad enough when playing baseball.
It's even worse when your expecting to play football.


At least he didn't ask me for a one of my favorite quotes.

what is your favorite quote?

"BOOM HEADSHOT!!!"

"STFU NOOB"

"DIAF"

OR ???