Many of the recent job interviews I have had have started with a “this doesn’t need to be so formal/we just want to have a chat about the job/remember that this is a two-way process and you can also ask questions,” or words to that effect. One interviewer also mentioned that a job interview is an unnatural situation. However, as casual as the panel wants to be, it can sometimes feel like empty words – especially the ones about “two-way processes” – when your enquiry to HR about possible help with transport is met with something like, “we expect those who truly want to work with (for) us to find their own means of travelling to our offices”. I know that this does not apply to every potential employer (kind thanks to LTU who insisted on flying me to a gently-lobbed frisbee’s distance from the Arctic circle), and certainly not to every type of vacancy (hello senior staff), but for us minnows, it essentially means that it is up to us not only to prove our skills, but also to make an early pledge to only massage along the direction of hair growth (smooth things out), if we choose to pursue a post.
The reason that I mention ask and guess culture – in short, if you want something, do you 1) ask, with the understanding that both “yes” and “no” can be the final answer; 2) only ask if you are mostly certain that the answer will be “yes”, to save the person asked the consternation of maybe needing to say “no”, meaning you have to guess the answer beforehand – (a more detailed lowdown here) is because, in the world of “casual” job interviews/chats, no matter how chill the atmosphere is, the onus is even more on you to guess what will be the better answer. And this time, without straight-up interview questions to guide you. Don’t get me wrong, I find it easier to relax into a more casual interview, which should (theoretically?) enable more clear-headed thinking sooner, which in turn should lead to better performance. I do also appreciate the opportunity to actually talk to the staff outside the stiff frames of a Q&A, to “fulfill” my part of the two-way process, but barring them proving themselves to be terrible people (which I have not, and hope I won’t, encounter), the level of “chill” is still heavily weighted in their favour. This format of interview also allows for on-the-spot critique, which I like being able to address while I’m still there in the room, but here it is also a case of guessing the best answer.
House-keeping: if somebody feels that guessing a “best answer” is not being honest with yourself or the employer, the matter of fact is, all of your options could (and probably should, although I know people who swear by the tactic of “always lie”, and I completely understand that attitude) be truths. Eg you have numerous experiences that fit a skill they are looking for, so you have to choose one with the best context. “I am enough of a leadership person to manage a group of volunteers for [charity if choice] (sic)” vs “I was the trusted local dog-walker in my old neighbourhood for five years and I can wrangle any excited Doberman (also, clearly, sic)”. As for any ego-massaging you may have to do, that is still the world of the minnow.
We also have cases where guessing conks out entirely, like when a friend of a friend got rejected because the interviewers thought that their trousers looked like jeans.
And then we have the case where I had applied for a communications job at a university, and the feedback mentioned that I didn’t have enough financial experience (note: this was not for a business school). I had gone back and raked through the job description and candidate requirements, and nowhere had it mentioned financial administration. At that point, the sentiment was mostly one of, “what am I even trying to achieve in this system?” How could I have possibly guessed that one?
Happy Easter/April fools punks!
The Real World for Young People 