Interviewing Your Friend – Practicing the Art of Interviewing

haha!

My great friend and former co-worker and I were both laid off from the same company at the same time. This had many advantages:

• I knew I had a lunch partner
• we sent each other job postings that were in our respective cities
• we had a sounding board

and some disadvantages

• sometimes we were both woed at the same time
• neither understood COBRA
• neither one of us could bear to look at our resumes

Most recently the advantages of having worked together for so long and to both be going through the interviewing process has become more evident and appreciated. We’ve started practicing our interviewing skills by role-playing: one of us is the interviewer, the other the interviewee. Our job responsibilities were quite similar in our past roles and we also had a pretty good idea of each other’s strengths and weaknesses so having this sort of immediate feedback is super.

Some of the questions we have challenged each other with are:

Describing your job role or responsibilities. You would be surprised how much you forget. We both were in our roles for over 8 years and during that time the scope, tools, teams, goals and technical environment changed immensely. Having someone to say, “You forgot about this, or don’t you remember having to present to the VP of Marketing, remember the roll-out of that new tool you helped lead” is really valuable.  Another important advantage is that while you may struggle to toot your own horn, we’ve been really good at reminding the other that “you know, you did a great job of leading that or don’t forget how you had to synthesize all those different requests”.

How do you handle a missed deadline? This question brings up tons of memories and incidences but mostly of deadlines met. The answer we both toyed with was simply accepting responsibility and then figuring out how to fix it. Honestly, we never missed a deadline, even with all the launches, product releases or infrastructure upgrades but things happen and accepting a downturn and moving to resolve it seems like the most honest answer to give.

What did you like about your last job? What didn’t you like? Both of us loved the innovative spirit of the place: new technology, brilliant people and the optimism of working with great technology. We both realized how easy it was to identify what we loved about Sun and to be fair, it wasn’t that difficult to pinpoint what we didn’t like – the year on year layoffs. I don’t think an interviewer could fault someone for revealing they didn’t like layoffs but then if you haven’t been through something like that perhaps it may be difficult to understand. Although, I’ve never had a broken bone (thank goodness)  I can pretty much imagine it probably isn’t pleasant.

Gawd, this is fugly!

The tough part about interviewing a buddy is that it can be hard to get into character and not only remain in character but not laugh and respond with “Did you really mean to say “Um, you know” before answering each question?” The upside is that we can help each other fill out the story of our careers, provide other examples of accomplishment and remind each other that we’ve got a lot of great experience and there are great opportunities out there. We can also compare notes on interviewing attire and if you have been into Macy’s recently  you may understand how difficult it is to find something reasonably professional that doesn’t look like somthing your grandma would wear to church. I mean look at this image to the left, it’s absolutely appalling. I’m not sure what the beads are supposed to do other than offer you an alternative to gassing yourself.

My advice on preparing for an interview – find a co-worker/friend and ask them to sit in as the interviewer and ask you the tough questions.  You’ll get great feedback and become more comfortable answering questions about your past roles and responsibilities and they’ll remind you of some of the great things you did!

The Interview – Top 5 Interviewing Questions

Nope. This is all I have to offer.

I’ve been sending out quite a few resumes and thanks to the fine folks over at Right Management I am getting some call backs. If only that was all it took to get a great new job. But, of course, it isn’t. You have to interview. I can’t quite decide which is less painful or more effective: the in-face interview or the on-phone interview.

The in-face interview gives you the advantage of seeing the look of confusion on their faces as you try and explain what you have been doing with yourself over your career.  You can also pick up on subtle verbal cues, like: deep sighs, someone getting up and leaving, the raised-eyebrow exchanges between interviewers and know you have rattled on far, far too long.

The on-phone interview gives you the chance to interview in your jim-jams while eating.

Regardless of where the interview takes place, there are certain questions used to vet potential employees and identify those that would make a good fit and those that are fit for, well, anywhere but where they have just sent their resume. I have compiled a list of my top interview questions.

Question 1 – If you are having a conflict with someone on the team how do you handle it?

Of course, we all say “What conflict? There’s no conflict. We’re all professionals here, working towards a common goal”. But we all also know, because we have worked with them, that some people must have lied through their teeth when they answered this question.  We’ve all witnessed the take-downs, the hostile manoeuvrings, the open wounds on people’s back and that was just to get a better position in the cafeteria line.

Question 2 – Where do you see your career in 5 years?

This is a doozy because we all to some degree, unless you’re an amoeba, have ambition, love challenges, have self-esteem, knowledge we want to share, expertise we would like to learn and desire to do well in our chosen professions. And so framing where all this ambition or drive will lead is hard within the context of an environment that has seen the greatest economical, global, environmental, financial upheaval in a generation. (I don’t want to get too carried away that “my time’ is the most innovative, fast-moving, changing era ever because I suspect the move from the Stone Age to the Iron Age was perceived as pretty revolutionary). I know that I’d like to work in a challenging, collaborative, innovative environment that has integrity and I don’t see that changing in 5 years.

Question 3 – How do you handle multiple priorities?

This is the big ONE! You want to work in their fast-paced, demanding environment, so they want to know how are you going to handle someone in your cube wanting something stat, when you have someone on hold needing that information right now,  and it’s 5pm  and you have to pick up your kids from school. (I don’t have kids but I’m trying to create a scene here). And I can tell you right now, the wrong answer is to say “just start rerouting your calls to your co-worker”.  I can tell you that because I tried it; I thought it was funny. I larfed all the way out the door and back into the unemployment line.  To be honest, I have worked in many fast-paced environments and I found that communicating with my co-workers and clients seemed to work most often. There was the occasional lunatic, scary person but everyone knew they were a little dramatic and had lied on Question 1.

Question 4: How familiar are you with the new technology that they just released 15 minutes after you got in here?

I guess because I work in high tech the bar is set pretty high to keep informed of the latest and greatest. There really is no other way around this one as it’s somewhat your professional responsibility to keep up to date on new trends and technologies. So, while I may be able to work within your content management system, I probably cannot sync that with your database and while I am able to analyze your Web metrics activity, I cannot build you a Web application. Nope, not even an iPhone app. I know there are people out there, who can do it all. I know. I have worked with some pretty amazing people.

Question 5: Do you mind working on a Web site for adult entertainment?

huh?

So, those are my Top 5 Interviewing Questions. I have only had four interviews, so I suspect I’ll have to add to this list. Although, hopefully I’ll find an opportunity that fits.

The Recession Bargain: Two Jobs for One Person

Cool! You're Hired!

Well, that was quick. I just had an interview for what I thought was a Business Analyst position, with emphasis on Web skills. Actually, the job posting was for a System Analyst but the job description was for a Business Analyst. Very nice woman, who interviewed me, said that the company complained that they (the recruiters) kept interviewing business analyst, which made sense in light of the description. Nevertheless, the conversation was short and pleasant. I’m not disappointed but I think this is happening a lot lately.

I know companies are struggling and our recovery has been a series of fits and starts but a LAMP expert requires a different set of skills than say a visual designer or an SEO expert and probably should not be part of the same job opening. It seems like companies are polling each of their departments and asking them what type of help they could use, then they are taking those request, putting them into a jargon blender, mixing in a 6-month contract marinade and serving up these salvos on monster.com and indeed.com. But I completely understand, I mean if I could write the description for the perfect spouse or vacation, it probably would include some contradictory requirements (sorry hubby), like “wanted: introspective artist, who craves solitude but who can also be the life of any party”

The contract thing is interesting. It seems like a new tactic in hiring, where they can hire you for 6 months without benefits, let you go, then hire the next cat for another 6 months and on and on. This may be additional motivation for someone thinking of starting a small-business. If you are going to be working contract to contract without a guarantee of renewal then what’s the difference between that and working for yourself.

I’m really not sure what the answer is. It’s a tough time for businesses, which impacts all of us on some level. If the direction is small business then what can be done to support that transition. I read an interesting article from Robert Reich called a A new wave of entrepreneurs, or a growing class of the anxiously self-employed? and it did strike a chord.  But then I thought does it matter? I think everyone is anxious on some level and maybe, just maybe, if we can work through this and build something positive and profitable from it, perhaps we’ll be better off (you choose your ally-word- financially, personally,etc) on the other side.