Cracking the interview code.

Post Reply New Topic

I work in health care, and I want to preface this by saying the only reason I'm on this web site is I've had a hard time understanding this social thing my whole life, and every time I read about autistic children's behavior, I think "Oops, I remember doing that for hours. Why didn't anyone catch that?"

I've made a LOT of progress since my early days of job interviews. I remember asking my mother before my first job interview (at a Pamida discount store in Minnesota) at age 15, "When I go in there and talk to the manager, am I supposed to turn off my personality? What am I supposed to do?" I honestly had no idea and I had to learn by the Bull-in-a-China-Shop method. Fortunately it's been a gigantic China shop.

I think managers want to know the following things:

A) Does this candidate talk crap about the his manager or co-workers or the company?
B) Is this candidate going to embarass me for hiring him?
C) Is this guy engaged in his work? Does he enjoy taking care of people or does he view people simply as big lumps of tissue that earn revenue for the department or hospital?

Haha it's not multiple choice!

I read Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Also Dr. Wayne Dyer's "Your Errogenous Zones."

I know everyone's on a journey with this. If I could do something about the one or two people at every job who decide to look at me funny and talk CRAP about me to everyone else, things would be perfect.

The size of that China shop seems to me to be inversely proportional to one's own age.



a) That can depend upon whether or not s/he already has a troublemaker on site.
b) That can depend upon how well s/he already has upper management snowed.
c) Corporations never have a conscience, but some do expect employess to act like they do ...
... and a qualified candidate will be able to see how that statement can be read in at least three ways and will be at least somewhat experienced in (or sadly willing to learn) situational ethics.

...

Last edited by Willard on 01 Sep 2010, 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know anything about your field, but when I interview these are my rules:

1. Don't bad mouth anyone from your current/previous jobs. If you have to reference a problem it's always better to call it a "personality conflict" than to say "yeah, it's hard to work with/for a moron" (which usually is the more honest answer).
2. Sell yourself and your knowledge/experience within the confines of questions asked.
3. Only answer questions that are asked. Don't offer information.
4. Smile and always maintain eye contact. If there's more than one person present make sure you give them eye contact even if you're not speaking to them or answering their questions.
5. Don't ask about money - let them offer the information unless a job offer has been made

There are fine tunes to the rules, but it depends on the position and job responsibilities. Yes, I am an over-analyst.