The art of interviewing
- 5 Comment
We have seen so many articles on tips and tricks we need to follow while appearing for an interview. But I have hardly seen any such thing for the interviewer. I guess, being on the other side of the table, the interviewer does enjoy certain privileges – so he doesn’t really need to know the Dos and Donts. And since I have been there at both sides of the tables, I can relate with the psyche of both.
Every interviewer has his/her own criterion for judging someone, and I am no exception to it. So you tend to have certain favorite topics when it came down to an interview. To be very frank, I had (and still have!) my own idiosyncrasies. I would look out for that common-sense - which is rarely common, for that street-smartness which I sadly find missing in most people, for that someone who can think out-of-box. Most of the times, I would try to keep things simple. And yet there have been instances where I felt I was a bit harsh on people.
And coming to the “favorite” questions – Oh I have quite a few. There’s one particular question which I would ask, at times just to rattle people and at times just to gauge the smartness quotient -
“Q: Give me reasons why you are NOT suitable for this position. If you can convince me, you are in.”
It’s a kind of catch 22 situation. You can’t just blurt about your drawbacks and you can’t evade this question either. But this is one question for me which can differentiate smart candidates from good candidates. And it may appear to be pretty out-of-context question, but for me it tells me lot of things about candidate – understanding of the expected role and responsibilities, confidence level, political correctness and that elusive out-of-box-thinking trait. And to be very frank, there can be no perfect answer to this question. And there can be n number of questions like this which provide challenges and opportunities to a candidate, instead of acting as a means to elicit some information.
All said and done, an interviewer also doesn’t expect 100% correct answers to all his questions - and there is absolutely no harm in accepting if one doesn’t know it. In the end, it’s not all about what you have got already- but also about what you “can” achieve and how effectively you can utilize it.
well to start off with ………….
nice way to judge the I Q level of the candidate……
as such this is a simple question to answer but its how you play with your words …………………
Really a good enough question to judge the I.Q & smartness of the candidate.. sometimes its really neccessary to judge this level of smartness & response time of candidates…its all about how to play with words to keep ball your court…
nice way to find IQ
I’m not sure I really see what this type of question accomplishes. I think there are much more effective ways to find out if a person is qualified for a job without resorting to trick questions. To be frank, if I were asked this type of question in an interview it would tell me more about the person asking than they would learn from any answer I would give. Measuring intelligence via test questions is a very difficult task. I don’t think it cant be determined from a few trick questions. I think you would do better to attempt to gauge the person’s grasp of the duties involved in the position and by looking at their past accomplishments.
Hi Brandon,
I do see where you are coming from, and yes - to be fair, to a certain extent I do agree with what you have said. But somehow I am not a firm believer in judging someone on the basis of 30-40 minutes of interview. As you said, past accomplishments and duties are important to see how the person fits into the job requirement. More important is credible means to verify the same. The pool of questions are more or less limited, and the interviewee is already in a “interview-taking” mode. What if you are stuck at two candidates both of whom you consider to be a “fit”. Probably you are looking at something which separates one from the other. For me, this “something” is the smartness or ‘out-of-box’ thinking [excuse me for this phrase - I know this appeared in the top 10 most cliched phrases in a survey soemtime back
]. Perhaps this is my way of checking that “something” extra, by giving the candidate the opportunity to differentiate himself/ herself.
Cheers,
Anirudh