Thoughts on Interviewing

My first thought is that this is not the ideal post to show to a potential employer. :)

Ruth, Xiaomei, and I had a practice interview session on Thursday evening. Because there were three of us, each person got to experience the process as an interviewee, an interviewer, and an observer. The chance to be an observer was really helpful, as both interviewers and interviewees were nervous. Just as in a real interview situation, we didn’t know each other that well and wanted to make a good impression!

It soon became clear that each of us had prepared for the session differently. Ruth, who was actually in the process of applying for a job, had made copies of her resume for us to look at. Xiaomei had printed off a list of common interview questions and thought about the job she was hypothetically interviewing for. I spent most of my preparation time reading through lists of questions and writing down the ones I felt were the best for employers and job applicants to ask. I do think that I learned a lot about Ruth from listening to her answers to my questions. On the other hand, because I did not spend very much time reviewing what my answers to these questions were, I sort of panicked when Xiaomei said, “Tell me about yourself.” As Ruth pointed out during our discussion, I probably could have led off with something better than a list of my degrees. You can tell I’m coming from an academic background. :)

Each of us noticed different things during our time as observers. (We brought them up at the time, so I am not going behind anyone’s back here!) Ruth noticed the emphasis Xiaomei and I placed on educational background. I noticed the other two saying that the job would be good for them, rather than that they would bring a lot to the job. Xiaomei pointed out that she and I hardly smiled at all, whereas Ruth spent the whole time smiling. All of these observations were useful feedback; but they also made me think that 1. there are hundreds of little aspects to a job interview that you need to keep remembering; and 2. while different employers are going to pay close attention to different aspects of your presentation, you don’t know which aspects they will choose to emphasize, so you still have to be great at all of them. Really, job interviews are pieces of performance art.

I noticed that I started to answer questions (for example, “What would you do if a parent came in to complain that their child had checked out an offensive book?”) before I knew quite where I was going with the answer. My initial responses aren’t wrong, per se, but they’re not as good as the answer I finally arrive at. This again would suggest that I could benefit from more preparation time. It might also suggest that I should pause longer before I start to answer. But sometimes it’s as though I worked my way to the Best Answer by going through the So-So Answers, and I’d rather end on a high note than take a long time thinking and still not answer well.

As far as the smiling goes - I think I sometimes handle stressful public situations by acting much, much calmer than I am - not only calmer than I am in the interview situation, but calmer than I am under normal circumstances. My voice gets quieter, my intonation is flatter/less variable - I sound kind of like a therapist. This assumed calm is not incompatible with smiling. It does make it hard to sound enthusiastic and energetic, though. I will have to think about this issue some more.

Final observation: At one point while I was being the interviewer, I realized that I wasn’t really listening to what my interviewee was saying, not because she was boring, but because I was deciding how the interview was going and thinking about what I was going to ask her next. If real employers “blank out” like that a lot - and why wouldn’t they? they’re interviewing more people, for a much longer time, than I was! - then it is even more important to emphasize your strengths at the very beginning of the interview, keep your answers relatively short, and find a way (perhaps in the questions you ask?) to re-emphasize your strengths at the end.