Had My First Interview

[Omega]

I applied to my accounting society thinking it would be the same bullshit high school clubs, but it was way more legit. I made it past their preliminary rounds and initial screenings. I got to the final round and had an interview. We had three upperclassmen question us and gauge our abilities and there would be two students being interviewed at the same time.

Anyways, interviews aren't as bad as I expected them to be. The way the media misconstrues them and even the general populous, I expected to find myself profusely sweating from every pore and orifice in my body. The questions were pretty typical, I should have prepared for the interview ahead of time by answering the basic questions, but I had rigidity.

In any case, they asked us:

1. Tell us about yourself and anything interesting.
2. What was the hardest decision you had to make and how did you solve it? Or overcome the problem.
3. Greatest weakness?
4. If you could be an animal, which one would it be? and why?
5. Would any previous bosses say you'd go that extra mile? If yes, please elaborate.
6. Are you applying to any other internships?
7. Any questions?

Like, the girl who was being interviewed with me, you could tell she had practiced because her replies weren't as organic and fluid. Like, the animal question caught her by surprised and she used parrot, which was retarded and her interview kinda went downhill from there. Like, unless you're socially crippled or emotionally stunted, interviews aren't terrible. I came up with answers on the spot without much reflexion and I think I did fine.

In any case, now that I have this experience under my belt, I gotta improve my answers for future interviews.

1. The first one is pretty easy for me since i've lived in four countries for extended periods of time and speak four languages fluently dabbled in a lot of sports (soccer, tennis, and ballet), played a fair share of instruments (piano for about 8 years, alto sax for 4, and I sang for 2) and done other shit.

2. I think I have a unique take on it since when it came down to selecting a university and having my parents support my decision, it was pretty hard. I had to do a ton of research in order to get them to believe uni of toronto was better than uva and so forth.

3. This one almost got me since I couldn't easily muster up a "weakness." But I eventually realized they had my resume. So I could go balls out. I told them I was too interested in shit. That always bogged me down since I always try to read several books at the same time, join tons of clubs and stuff. I mean, I won numerous awards in MUN (local, state, and international level) and science olympiad (state level) and ton of other stuff. So all in all, i think it was a pretty good weakness to have.

4. i said elephants because they are big, powerful, and roam the savanna unmolested, but they are also extremely intelligent. It's the best of both world. And they have a fucking trunk! How cool is that?!

5. I've held a ton of leadership positions and volunteer about 256 hours during my high school summers at a senior center where I organized table tennis and billiard tournaments and shit. this one was pretty easy.

6. I said no. I wanted to gain admittance to this prestigious and highly selective club, especially since I wanted to be an accountant.

7. I asked them a few token questions about the organization. I conducted research before hand, so i asked specific questions that indicated I did research.


Anywho, if you think some of those answers were weak or stupid, feel free to rip on them. any kind of criticism is fine since I want to have the sexiest, most pleasing answers, lol.

[Loki]

The difficulty with interviews isn't that there will be a "gotcha" moment that will make the guy dismiss you out of hand. It's that the interviewer will take note of bad answers without letting you know you're giving bad answers. They'll be nice to you until the very end, at which point they'll let you know that you screwed up (if you read between the lines).

[Omega]

Is it a good sign or bad sign if they barely wrote anything down? I saw them furiously scribbling down at the very beginning, then they didn't write anything down until the very end. And i'm assuming it was when I said, "i'm only applying to this internship" while the girl said she was applying to four.

[Loki]

It depends.

[Ominous Gamer]

If the animal question caught her by surprise, I wouldn't claim she overly practiced for the interview. Its one of the more common bullshit questions interviewers ask to gauge the response you witnessed, and to get some sort of insight into the personality of someone. Along the same lines as the question about going the extra mile and "whats your greatest weakness".

For example, your weakness response had a good short reply, not sure how that would have panned out if you elaborated to them like you did here. Your animal response with the elephant could be seen as a turn off (you mentioned might before bright), but if you honestly said the line about the trunk, you're golden.

[CitizenCain]

The difficulty with interviews isn't that there will be a "gotcha" moment that will make the guy dismiss you out of hand. It's that the interviewer will take note of bad answers without letting you know you're giving bad answers. They'll be nice to you until the very end, at which point they'll let you know that you screwed up (if you read between the lines).

Well, that and the whole fact that every place wants slightly different answers, and no, they won't come out and tell you what those differences are, nor is there a reliable way to find out until after the interview when they let you know you screwed up (or not).

Or at least, so it goes for jobs worth having... maybe there is a standard set of "correct answers" for mindless, minimum wage jobs, but there sure aren't in IT/IS/CS.

[Catgrrl]

The "weakness" question is always the one I see people falter with. When I had to interview people for the part-time positions in the lab, that was one of the questions on our list. I always felt bad listening to 15 seconds of complete silence as the applicants would think and think and think....listing strengths are easy and weaknesses are hard to reflect upon. I hate asking it and hate being asked. I always just say "I'm a perfectionist and I hate to fail." Boy, have I learned how much that weakness has bit me in the ass the last 2 years.

Elephants are my mom's favorite animal

[Lebanese Dragon]

Anyways, interviews aren't as bad as I expected them to be. The way the media misconstrues them and even the general populous, I expected to find myself profusely sweating from every pore and orifice in my body. The questions were pretty typical, I should have prepared for the interview ahead of time by answering the basic questions, but I had rigidity.

When more's on the line, and you're competing verse other people... and you don't know what little snip it that you're interviewer might want to hear, then interviews are a little bit of a bigger deal. However, this was a great experience for you, and I'm glad you seemed to enjoy it, definitely going in confident and competently is a great way to come off in an interview. Good luck getting into the club or whatever.

I'm a perfectionist and I hate to fail."

That's basically what I say, even though it's not true... lol. I do like to get things done right, but I realize often there's a lot of room for error in achieving certain tasks, and I don't feel inclined to absolutely maximize the efficiency of getting it done, if the end result is the same.

[Loki]

Well, that and the whole fact that every place wants slightly different answers, and no, they won't come out and tell you what those differences are, nor is there a reliable way to find out until after the interview when they let you know you screwed up (or not).

Or at least, so it goes for jobs worth having... maybe there is a standard set of "correct answers" for mindless, minimum wage jobs, but there sure aren't in IT/IS/CS.

I have noticed that. Despite being something approaching a meritocracy, I never cease to be amazed by the inability of Western society to actually define merit. HR departments are particularly bad, eliminating applications for reasons irrelevant to the job, inconsistently deciding whether they want resumes to look in a certain way, for certain key words to appear, for people to say certain things, etc. And as you say, there's no way to know what a given HR person wants.

And I really don't understand why it's acceptable to say that working too hard or being a perfectionist is one's main flaw. It's clearly a non-answer. Why ask a question you don't want a proper answer to?

[CitizenCain]

I have noticed that. Despite being something approaching a meritocracy, I never cease to be amazed by the inability of Western society to actually define merit. HR departments are particularly bad, eliminating applications for reasons irrelevant to the job, inconsistently deciding whether they want resumes to look in a certain way, for certain key words to appear, for people to say certain things, etc. And as you say, there's no way to know what a given HR person wants.

Right, and a lot of that, in my experience is that the people doing the hiring interviews don't have a fucking clue about the jobs they're hiring for. I've had similarly useless interviews with execs (CEO, COO, CIO, CSO) where it's just so obviously a waste of everyone's fucking time because they don't even know what questions to ask... but if they can't eliminate candidates based on relevant reasons, well, irrelevant reasons are what you're left with.

And I really don't understand why it's acceptable to say that working too hard or being a perfectionist is one's main flaw. It's clearly a non-answer.

Not really, no. Being a perfectionist often means working on projects or tasks well past the point of diminishing returns, and/or a problem accepting that "good enough" is the point where you move on to the next thing in the queue. In jobs where you get a lot of stuff thrown into the queue on a regular basis, that's actually a really big weakness, and for example, a reason I'd reject a candidate for IT work. You could literally spend forever on any given (well, most) IT task, perfecting and optimizing whatever, and if you can't accept "good enough," you're in the wrong career field.

Working too hard, does kind of blur the lines wrt "non-answer," but burn-out risk maybe... not self-aware or introspective too, I guess. Meh. I always thought the "weakness(es)" questions were stupid bullshit, given that the point in an interview is to put your best foot forward, so all you're going to get with questions like that are bullshit answers anyway.

Seriously, if people answered that honestly, you wouldn't have any incompetents or people with glaringly obvious personality defects in the corporate world, but incompetents with massive personality defects make up a majority of the American workforce. An interviewer is supposed to be able to figure out what blemishes a candidate's concealing anyway, and all that asking the question does is tell everyone what you're trying to find, making it easier to hide. Like I've said, HR doesn't actually *do* anything. Glorified paper shufflers.

[Flixy]

Your first interview sounds better like my first proper interview (I did have some unimportant ones before, but then there was nothing on the line).

It was for a summer class at the Boston Consultancy Group, for one week in Rome. My CV and motivation letter were apparently interesting enough to get me invited, so that's good. Then I had a computer test of one hour (I think I aced it), followed by two one-hour interviews, one on one with one of their consultants. First interview went well, second not so much.

I will say they went a lot beyond the 'standard' questions. For example, the weakness one was replaced with 'If I would ask your friends about three strengths and three weaknesses you have, what would they be?'. Since I mentioned teamwork in my motivation letter, they of course asked me about experiences there, problems I had encountered, and how I solved them. And they went through some case studies with me, of course. I have never heard the animal question before to be honest, but I think for me the obvious answer would be a cat

In the end, I was called on my phone, and told I didn't make the summer class. But they thoguht I was interesting, blabla, and they'd like me to apply to later things. I thought that was just a general line of bullshit not to make me feel bad, but later I spoke to someone else who was turned down, who just got an email saying he didn't make it. Guess I didn't do all that bad in the end then All in all it was a very valuable experience.

About the weakness question: I work too hard, or I'm a perfectionist, that's just a cliché. I wouldn't believe it if someone told me that in an interview, it's the most positive weakness one could possibly imagine. I usually name weaknesses I have that I am aware of, and am improving. For example, I used to be very shy, and still sometimes am, which is of course not so good in a meeting when you have to share your thoughts. But I am improving on it, and it's going a lot better. I like to think they appreciate someone recognising their own shortcomings, and working to improve those. Plus, it's completely true so I feel more comfortable telling it

This all reminds me of a conversation I had with someone working at ING in New York, when I visited them. He wasn't really speaking for ING at that time, we were dropping by and shown around because he used to go to college with one of my teachers at university, and we were interested. So in no way was it one of those official, standard tours, way less formal. Anyway, he was Dutch, and was mentioning how he actually preferred hiring Dutch people. Not because Dutch people are that much better or anything (though a Dutch university degree is roughly equivalent to one from a US top university). His problem was that in the US, most people had gone thruogh too many job interview and CV writing trainings. They all gave the same answers, and answered what they thought you wanted to hear. He said that over here, most people still came to job interviews prepared, but under the assumption that if they are good enough for the job, they will get it. So they would be more honest, and not answer with the standard question. He was pretty annoyed by how hard it was to seperate the good from the bad pretending to be good, because hardly anyone is honest at interviews anymore. Of course, job interview trainings etc are increasingly popular here too, because it does give you an edge.

Edit: I have never had a conversation with someone from HR, without someone from the department/job I would end up also being present. Is that uncommon over there? I mean, it's hard to ask useful questions for a specific job if the interviewer doesn't know that specific job..

[CitizenCain]

I have never heard the animal question before to be honest, but I think for me the obvious answer would be a cat

Amen. Sleep 16 hours a day, find a nice, soft sunny spot to laze around in, occasionally get up to eat or fuck or kill something... who wouldn't want that life?

Anyway, he was Dutch, and was mentioning how he actually preferred hiring Dutch people. Not because Dutch people are that much better or anything (though a Dutch university degree is roughly equivalent to one from a US top university). His problem was that in the US, most people had gone thruogh too many job interview and CV writing trainings. They all gave the same answers, and answered what they thought you wanted to hear.

Yeah, this is on of those things "everyone" does that I just don't get. As in, that's a great way to get a job you can't do or won't want or will end up ostracized by your co-workers at, etc. Seems like a lot of that's due to BS government regulations like equal employment laws and so on, but could be just good ol' human stupidity too... not that there isn't a lot of overlap between the two categories, mind you.

Edit: I have never had a conversation with someone from HR, without someone from the department/job I would end up also being present. Is that uncommon over there? I mean, it's hard to ask useful questions for a specific job if the interviewer doesn't know that specific job..

Happens a fair bit in my experience. The good organizations use some HR monkey to hire for entry-level positions where you can just go down a check-list (or hire anyone with a pulse for) and for first interviews where they ask scripted questions provided to them, to filter out people who don't know the basics from the people it's worth having meet with the appropriate department. Or I see a lot of that in IT and related fields (QA/test, programming/development, etc.), at least. Of course, the bad organizations may just funnel you through HR all the way, which is one of the ways to tell whether or not the organization you're interviewing with knows what it's doing, at least for "technology" jobs.

If you're on your final interview and the chick across from you is squinting at a piece of paper, asking you about the U.S.S.R.'s bin [usr/bin/ -> Linux/UNIX] and "sea hash" [C# -> pronounced "C sharp"] the proper response is to walk out when she finally gets around to confirming you have at least 5 years experience with something that's been in existence for two years [duh, the fucking year it was introduced is even in the name of product, dipshit]. True story - and what really slays me is that some other dumb bastard probably lied to get a miserable job like that with that clueless organization.

[GGT]

The interview was for....acceptance into an accounting "society" internship? Did I read that right?

The animal question sounds stupid, like Barbara Walters asking important figures what kind of tree they are.

One of the best questions I was asked in an (employment) interview was: How do you deal with stress? How do you differentiate between short-term and long-term stress, and how do you treat them differently?