Why Is the Modern Interview Process So Inane?

[corpgator]

I just want to vent a little. It's as though there was some secret meeting of idiot managers and brainless HR reps who then brainstormed the absolute worst way to hire someone and decided that's what they would use.

What does sitting someone down in a room and asking them a bunch of questions have to do with how well they can do a job? In some situations, like I don't know, being an HR rep, they might be telling, but otherwise, it's bunk.

For instance, all of the tell me about a time when questions. I'm going to just start making up stories that never happened. Everyone is fudging to make themselves look better anyway, so why bother? What's your greatest weakness? Fa, that's just absurd. Especially for someone looking to get a technology job, how can they tell how well I'll manage a database or write code by how well they thought I answered some stupid psychology 101 question?

The worst is when you get to an interview and they say "there's been a change of plans, such and such won't be able to interview you, so JoeBlow will." Well great, thanks for wasting my time.

Or how about them saying we'll let you know and then you never hear back. If I took the time to come interview and send a follow up letter, you could at least have the common courtesy to write me back. It's not like you really have that much going on.

Or the 3rd and 4th and 5th interview. Again, wasting my time and theirs. Apparently, a lot of companies are just dragging out the process to say they are looking to hire people then never do. They could hire someone and fire the idiots doing recruiting and resume sorting and then profit by that person's actual real work.

What value do companies actual receive from an HR department than spends countless hours trying to find one person to fill a role and then never do or do so months later?

[wgbgator]

Think of the first dates you've been on. Did they tell you much about how a long term relationship would work, or did they just give you a sense of whether or not this is someone who is a lunatic that you never want to see again? Moreover, you don't always even get a sense of that, just whether you might want to see them again.

[MichiGator2002]

I find most of the interview process pretty dumb, too. It is mostly there to prove at this point... how well you interview, as though that is in itself a valuable job skill.

Some of it I put down to ever increasing need of ways to weed through our ever more overcredentialed society. Some I put down to HR justifying its existence. The best con out there though isn't the interview process you are describing, it is the (much more relevant in this economy) Retail Service Assessor. What a pointless POS that is.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Try tech/programming interviews. Most of our peers give these equally inane tests / logic puzzles that will show you very little about the quality of their work. We prefer to see real life examples.

The interview process serves primarily to see if you gel with the person, whether they make you feel uneasy or give you some indication that they might not get along well with others.

[gatorman_07732]

Corp, Lets just start with it's as competitive right now as its ever been. There are many qualified people that never get interviewed because companies get inundated with resumes. In terms of the questions they ask that you think have nothing to do with the job, many times certain questions are asked and judging by the responses they get decisions are made if that person fits into their specific corporate culture. There are the hard skills for the job which a person may have but if they don't possess the soft skills then they will pass. There is a lot to the interview process these days.

[Dreamliner]

I can only tell you that I just landed a job and the interview was fairly rigorous and very dynamic. It was roughly four hours long and featured lots of role-playing. In a sense, it was a means to discover how it might look like to work with each other.

[wgbgator]

On NPR they were saying you should have 2 resumes, the first being one that is pretty much meant to be machine scanned or OCR'd for certain key words. The second for one that humans will actually read.

[gatorman_07732]

Originally Posted by wgbgator

On NPR they were saying you should have 2 resumes, the first being one that is pretty much meant to be machine scanned or OCR'd for certain key words. The second for one that humans will actually read.

You can't make people struggle by reading the resume to decide if your qualified. They are completely inundated and are going to set aside the resumes that stick out at them to go over in detail. So depending on the job you're applying for those acronyms and/or buzz words really need to stick out in your Professional Summary and Professional Experience. The only purpose of a resume is to get an interview and you get one shot.

[Emmitto]

When I was in the interviewer role I used it to get an idea of the interviewee's general disposition and willingness to prepare. Those inane questions have obvious inane answers in most cases. If you stumbled on "greatest weskness" it's a red flag. You should be able to recite either a safe, canned response in your sleep or fire off a really impressive original answer. Otherwise, you didn't care enough to think it through for two minutes beforehand or you're terrible at thinking on the fly. Not good, either way.

The tests also generally have easy answers. If you deviate from them, you may be some sort of social deviant or simply not too sharp. You should be able to kill the tests that most employers use (there are exceptions.)

So while I agree that the process is largely inane, it's really setup to let the capable cruise by. Now as for five rounds of interviews, yeah, that's overkill unless you're talking about a really high level position. I preferred a second round, but at that point I had a solid opinion. I believe managers drag that process out to make it look like more work (fake work.) Many managers at many companies could go missing for months before anyone at work noticed. They have to invent importance in order to appear valuable.

[JerseyGator01]

The process is no deeper than a piece of paper/resume at most companies. It boggles my mind that HR pros are in most cases just gophers for management, which is why there are so few standards in the profession. I've been on perhaps 100 interviews in my life and I would say maybe 5 were thorough. Why is there so much testing through college but so little testing required after college?

I lost out on a promotion in my company to a friend who got the job two weeks after applying. The people in charge of the search, had they done ANY googling, would have quickly realized that we knew each other quite well. In essence, my friend had a few things in common with the person in charge of the search and that apparently was good enough even though her performance at her last company was pretty much a disaster.

It is way too easy to fire someone in this country which is probably why so few take the interview process seriously these days.

[g8orbill]

in todays world it is a crap shoot

[fredsanford]

Tell me about it.

I was laid off today for the third time in my "career."

Might be able to catch on another department, though.

[gatorman_07732]

Originally Posted by fredsanford

Tell me about it.

I was laid off today for the third time in my "career."

Might be able to catch on another department, though.

Sorry to hear that

[Tim85]

Originally Posted by fredsanford

Tell me about it.

I was laid off today for the third time in my "career."

Might be able to catch on another department, though.

Good luck out there. It's rough right now.

[JerseyGator01]

Sorry to hear that Fred. I lost two jobs, one a layoff, over six months (years ago). So much of it is based on style differences. One place thought I was too quiet, the other too much of a maverick. Again, it's so superficial.

And perhaps the stupidest rule out there is, "Don't say anything negative about your previous employer." Well, what if they were engaged in unethical activity that was the reason you were fired when you challenged them on it. Since you can terminate without cause, they obviously didn't give any reason. Or what if you're MLK, Jr. and you wind up working in your young days for the KKK?

HR people in most cases treat all terminations the same. Another stupid rule.

[gatordowneast]

I'm involved in the employment business working with national clients and I can tell you some have horrible processes which is why they hire us. Pfizer put one candidate through 12 interviews...12. If I'm a decent candidate I would tell them to kiss my ass after the third. Apple is almost as bad...they make the young kids do a You tube video about themselves. I could go on and on. Biggest issue many of these companies have is they have 23 year olds doing the intial resume scan. A 23 year old wouldn't know a good (whatever) if one bit em in the ass.

[gatordowneast]

For those of you that are older or more experienced, please do not use the word "Seasoned" when describing yourself. That is a synonym for "burned out" to most hiring managers. Use expressions like "Results oriented and Experienced". Seasoned...they are not hiring a steak!

[orangeblueorangeblue]

In other words "old and overpriced"

[Emmitto]

Originally Posted by JerseyGator01

Sorry to hear that Fred. I lost two jobs, one a layoff, over six months (years ago). So much of it is based on style differences. One place thought I was too quiet, the other too much of a maverick. Again, it's so superficial.

And perhaps the stupidest rule out there is, "Don't say anything negative about your previous employer." Well, what if they were engaged in unethical activity that was the reason you were fired when you challenged them on it. Since you can terminate without cause, they obviously didn't give any reason. Or what if you're MLK, Jr. and you wind up working in your young days for the KKK?

HR people in most cases treat all terminations the same. Another stupid rule.

Your prospective employer will say speaking ill of a previous employer indicates you're a chronic malcontent with a bad attitude.

I say it's all too often because they don't want you talking smack about them after your time with them ends in a similarly nasty way.

[corpgator]

Of course a lot of it is about networking and being ultra qualified. Google receives 1 million resumes a year, but if you're really good enough, they come find you.

I had a friend who Google flew out to visit with for an interview, but he then got pulled away on a special contracting assignment with the FBI to New York. I was picking up his mail for him while he was away and he got a letter from the NSA. He had me open it and it had an offer for him to start immediately at $100k per year. He works for the CIA now.

I guess I just need to learn to be a information security expert and become fluent in Korean.