3 Interviewing Lessons Learned While Out on the Job Search

In the last 2 weeks, I’ve had several interviews of such vastly different styles, I thought sharing some perspectives might help you in your job search. For example, I’ve learned to discern what questions I need to ask up front before going to the interview location. While it is gratifying to be asked to interviews these days, any interview should still have a reasonable return on time and energy, given I need to focus all my time and energy on finding and landing a job.

 

One of the three interviews is definitely a nomination for the comedy category. This firm had posted for some rather engaging and fun marketing positions involving local products for the local market. So I submitted my resume thinking a local position would be ideal given my young sons, allowing me to simplify my commuting/care-giving situation. Within 3 days, a very, very happy person called me about my “perfect” background for their jobs. She called herself a recruiter for this company and said she was working with the hiring managers to screen the resumes, and mine had made the cut. It sounded reasonable, so I accepted her suggested time and date and waited to receive driving directions by email.

 

Red Flag #1: The word “perfect” for the job -- really nobody is perfect.

 

Red Flag #2: The directions were very poor and not really written to be sure a candidate would find the firm.

 

Red Flag #3: This is a big one. The recruiter was sitting in the company’s reception area, busy making personal calls while I waited for the actual interviewer.

 

Red Flag #4: The application form resembled an ancient mimeograph machine copy (do these machines even still exist?) and looked very unprofessional.

 

Red Flag #5: This is the last one, and pretty big at that -- the style of the interviewer. Both in a fashion sense and professional approach, the interview was a comedy of errors on the interviewer’s part. As always, I was dressed appropriately in my best interview suit with a resume in hand and a list of prepared questions for the interviewer. The interviewer could barely tell me her name and had zero answers about the firm’s business model for marketing their local products. I rephrased the questions several times and was only told I needed to stay “glued to my cell phone” so they could invite me back to an open house.

 

Interviewing Lesson Learned: On the phone, I should have clarified the job description I was interviewing for. That in itself would have ferreted out this firm’s nonsense approach, because they would have been equally as evasive on the phone as in person. Fortunately, I found the humor in this interview and it hadn’t been such a far drive for me.

 

The next interview was a very serious one at a regional, well-respected firm that drives multimillion-dollar building projects. All the preparation was done by an external recruiter who was very professional and excellent in following up to set the stage for the interview. The top HR person interviewed me for twice as long as the allotted time. It was a solid dialogue about my accomplishments and the benefits I could bring to this firm. However, at one point in the dialogue, the HR person mentioned he liked and had fun interviewing all sorts of people given the diversity of dialogues he could have with the job seekers.

 

Interviewing Lesson Learned: While it is nice to have a good dialogue with the interviewer, it has to be for a specific end result in landing a position. Hopefully, landing a job with this firm continues to be an option and I wasn’t just the half-time entertainer.

 

The third lesson learned came from a recent interview with a national firm that has local offices specializing in consumer products. The interview was set up as very casual, but professional. I was asked to bring any public domain materials of work that demonstrated a track record of success. I was prepared in all aspects. But it turned out the hiring manager only had a 15-minute “screening” type of interview in mind and just wanted to focus on a reality check of working with customers and consumers. The next steps are the actual further interviews to begin in a few weeks.

 

Interviewing Lesson Learned: I should have asked on the phone about the time allotted for this interview or how long I needed to plan for my parking space.

 

What lessons have you learned and are now incorporating into your future interviewing experiences? Any that have made a key difference when you leveraged a lesson learned?

 

For more job interview tips, check out Monster’s Interview Advice.

 

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