She kept tearing the piece of wrinkled scrap paper into smaller squares. Another tear. Another shape. Incredible.
I made a conscious note to ease up on her with my interview questions.
So what type of work environment do you prefer?
There you go. That's a freebie. I smiled and tethered my inner monster interviewer persona on a tight leash.
Umm. Another tear. An open work environment? She left it with a vague, slightly hopeful upward accent, as if she was throwing it out there to see if I would like that answer.
I nodded, in my best professional nod, holding back my natural tendency to put people at ease by filling in the silences and empathizing about their childhood/ relationship/ work.
And what kind of supervisor do you work best with? I sipped my panda cup slowly to buy her some time to think.
Somebody who gives me freedom to design? She looked towards the corner of our conference room for an escape plan and found none. All of a sudden, something somehow snapped somewhere.
She buried her honest round face with both her hands and wailed I'm just not emotionally well enough to handle this!
I looked up, startled by the unexpected change in conversation temperature.
My previous boss used to stand behind me and watch what I was designing and it would just send me into a panic and I would blank out. He told me to suck it up and keep working. I thought I had gotten over this, but today I realize that I haven't! I'm so sorry! I should have just stayed home with my baby. I'm just not emotionally equipped to do this!
Her shoulders heaved up and down with alarming frequency. I scrambled to put my cup down and reached out to pat her awkwardly. I told her that it's normal to feel nervous during an interview and that I didn't think any of those things about her. I gave up my interviewer facade and just spoke calm and confidence to her. Handing over her previous designs, I pointed out the highlights she should later emphasize to the HR director.
After she regained the courage to put her hands down and let me see her face again, I sipped at my panda cup and finished my water. It was only 11:14 am and I had already reached my 8 cups of water quota that day. I patted her once again and summoned HR.
She was 35.
-----
I did five interviews yesterday. All were incredibly memorable for different reasons.
I'm young enough in my career that I remember very well the panic I felt when gearing up for yet another skype interview and limiting the fiddling to under the table and resisting the urge to fix the runaway strand of hair when the suits were asking you, weighing you, and finding you wanting with each seemingly innocuous question.
Now that I'm sitting on the other side of the table though, I realize that while interviewers are evaluating for potential crippling weaknesses, most of them (myself included) do want to find the good in the interviewee. They are not trying to fail you despite the professional distance they maintain. Most often, apart from just experience and capability, interviewers look for the flash of personality, the surprising honesty, the refreshing confidence, the reason why they would want to sit next to you on a 14 hour flight. So as I've been telling some of my job-seeking friends who are so naturally brilliant to begin with - don't let what you think interviewers want to see obscure the "you" who would get the job. Give the interviewers a little credit and believe that they are nice human beings and see them as somebody you just met at a party who just genuinely want to know you better. Then treat them as your best friend's mom who tends to ask way too many questions when you're eating cookies in her kitchen. It might even end up being a "fun" experience.
Oh, and stop tearing at pieces of scrap paper. You never know if the interviewer has recently launched a "reuse our paper" campaign at the office or not.
I made a conscious note to ease up on her with my interview questions.
So what type of work environment do you prefer?
There you go. That's a freebie. I smiled and tethered my inner monster interviewer persona on a tight leash.
Umm. Another tear. An open work environment? She left it with a vague, slightly hopeful upward accent, as if she was throwing it out there to see if I would like that answer.
I nodded, in my best professional nod, holding back my natural tendency to put people at ease by filling in the silences and empathizing about their childhood/ relationship/ work.
And what kind of supervisor do you work best with? I sipped my panda cup slowly to buy her some time to think.
Somebody who gives me freedom to design? She looked towards the corner of our conference room for an escape plan and found none. All of a sudden, something somehow snapped somewhere.
She buried her honest round face with both her hands and wailed I'm just not emotionally well enough to handle this!
I looked up, startled by the unexpected change in conversation temperature.
My previous boss used to stand behind me and watch what I was designing and it would just send me into a panic and I would blank out. He told me to suck it up and keep working. I thought I had gotten over this, but today I realize that I haven't! I'm so sorry! I should have just stayed home with my baby. I'm just not emotionally equipped to do this!
Her shoulders heaved up and down with alarming frequency. I scrambled to put my cup down and reached out to pat her awkwardly. I told her that it's normal to feel nervous during an interview and that I didn't think any of those things about her. I gave up my interviewer facade and just spoke calm and confidence to her. Handing over her previous designs, I pointed out the highlights she should later emphasize to the HR director.
After she regained the courage to put her hands down and let me see her face again, I sipped at my panda cup and finished my water. It was only 11:14 am and I had already reached my 8 cups of water quota that day. I patted her once again and summoned HR.
She was 35.
-----
I did five interviews yesterday. All were incredibly memorable for different reasons.
I'm young enough in my career that I remember very well the panic I felt when gearing up for yet another skype interview and limiting the fiddling to under the table and resisting the urge to fix the runaway strand of hair when the suits were asking you, weighing you, and finding you wanting with each seemingly innocuous question.
Now that I'm sitting on the other side of the table though, I realize that while interviewers are evaluating for potential crippling weaknesses, most of them (myself included) do want to find the good in the interviewee. They are not trying to fail you despite the professional distance they maintain. Most often, apart from just experience and capability, interviewers look for the flash of personality, the surprising honesty, the refreshing confidence, the reason why they would want to sit next to you on a 14 hour flight. So as I've been telling some of my job-seeking friends who are so naturally brilliant to begin with - don't let what you think interviewers want to see obscure the "you" who would get the job. Give the interviewers a little credit and believe that they are nice human beings and see them as somebody you just met at a party who just genuinely want to know you better. Then treat them as your best friend's mom who tends to ask way too many questions when you're eating cookies in her kitchen. It might even end up being a "fun" experience.
Oh, and stop tearing at pieces of scrap paper. You never know if the interviewer has recently launched a "reuse our paper" campaign at the office or not.
I interviewed her and we laughed through the whole thing.
Now we're each other's biggest cheerleader during the
company ping pong tournaments.
1 comment:
Miss you, Sisi! This post is extremely useful to people in my stage of life! Yes, I should think that interviewers are good human beings from now, haha - Emma
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