I have a second interview for a job next week, which nowadays is as special as a Yeti sighting. I’m very grateful and would like to thank God, my mother and the Academy. Well maybe just Mom, who has been infinitely patient and gets HBO.
Interviewing is one of the few activities that you don’t get better at with practice. That’s because interviews are like snowflakes. All basically the same, yet all different.
My career path has meandered. A lot. As a result, I have been interviewed dozens upon dozens of times over the course of nearly 25 years for positions in several different sectors. What strikes me is how little the job seeking process has changed.
I now send resumes by e-mail and complete applications online and sometimes, although not often in my field, a computer processes my application. That’s it for new and improved. The interview has not evolved. I show up today–as I did in 1985 and 1993 and 2000–and either one person or a group of people asks me a bunch of questions, and no one leaves with a reliable sense of whether I will be a good fit for the job or the client or the supervisor or the workplace.
Can’t the rat race build a better mousetrap? Can’t it at least make some simple reforms? For example, can’t interviewers stop asking me yes/no questions that have only one right answer (“Do you work well under pressure?”), or questions that can’t be answered honestly (“Why did you leave your last job?”)? Can’t they stop asking me to “Name a time when (elaborate scenario here)”? I can’t. And I can’t make shit up on the spot. Is that they what ? Someone who can make shit up on the spot?
And how old do I have to be before they stop handing me applications that ask where I went to high school? Is this McDonalds? And what’s the research behind three references? Can my sweet mother who has HBO be one of them if she changes the way she answers her phone for a week?
I’ve heard an increasing number of job applications require financial information to allow them to perform a credit check on the applicant — as if one’s creditworthiness were an indicator of one’s ability to perform a job (unless that job is paying bills).
Never mind that those who have perfect credit records probably already have decent-paying jobs that provide them with sufficient salary to pay their bills, whereas the unemployed might just not have a spotless credit record, given that they have no income …