Occasionally, I meet acquaintances who are scheduled for an interview in order to take a new job with a firm and have thought that most people think that the interview is a situation for a battle of wits between the panel and the outnumbered interviewee.For that reason, I have asked myself whether the human resource consultants and the interview panels really consider whether these situations enable them to get the best responses from those that they seek to recruit.
One must trust Lucy Kellaway to bust the myth and expose the emptiness of the fads that come with everyone trying to prepare for interviews in either the Microsoft or the Google way. In this very deep article in the Irish Times, she exposes why firms are mistaken in asking odd questions in the guise of getting the best out of the interviewees.As she states, if the founders of Google are the best in their class, it is unlikely that many people know much more about any subjects that they do. For that reason, to ask an interview to teach them is either a sign of arrogance or a misunderstanding about what person they are searching for. To be honest, I am not surprised that Larry Page gets bored during interviewing for most of them are frankly unable to tell him much that would impress him. That he gets frustrated by this is what surprises me instead.
It is also possible that the interviewees are not impressive because they are over-prepared to answer questions that they have read from guide books purporting to educate them to state smart answers. And so my free advise is to loosen up and ask these interviewees to reduce their knowledge to about 500 words or less. This may tell one more about a person because people who care to write clearly and coherently are bound to be very keen workers and excel in new tasks too. This may not be a perfect system for hiring new workers for a corporation with billions of US dollars in revenue but it is far better than asking questions that allow people to regurgitate what the "How To" books say.
One must trust Lucy Kellaway to bust the myth and expose the emptiness of the fads that come with everyone trying to prepare for interviews in either the Microsoft or the Google way. In this very deep article in the Irish Times, she exposes why firms are mistaken in asking odd questions in the guise of getting the best out of the interviewees.As she states, if the founders of Google are the best in their class, it is unlikely that many people know much more about any subjects that they do. For that reason, to ask an interview to teach them is either a sign of arrogance or a misunderstanding about what person they are searching for. To be honest, I am not surprised that Larry Page gets bored during interviewing for most of them are frankly unable to tell him much that would impress him. That he gets frustrated by this is what surprises me instead.
It is also possible that the interviewees are not impressive because they are over-prepared to answer questions that they have read from guide books purporting to educate them to state smart answers. And so my free advise is to loosen up and ask these interviewees to reduce their knowledge to about 500 words or less. This may tell one more about a person because people who care to write clearly and coherently are bound to be very keen workers and excel in new tasks too. This may not be a perfect system for hiring new workers for a corporation with billions of US dollars in revenue but it is far better than asking questions that allow people to regurgitate what the "How To" books say.
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