Most difficult interview technique

What is the hardest technique to achieve when interviewing for you?

Is overcoming the pressure the hardest? Or is answering the questions the correct way the hardest?

The hardest for me is to get my say in. Someone in another post said that it is hard to ask questions because everyone is ready to go at the end of the interview. This is what I'm talking about.

When I am interviewing I like to try and take their questions and just run with it. But sometimes they interrupt me with other questions changing topics before I can get what I really wanted to say in. Sometimes they ask too direct questions and/or talk too much. If someone asks me "Do you have experience with a file server?" I don't want my answer to be "yes I have 5 years". I want it to be a long winded explanation on what I do with file servers. But a lot of the time I'll start into a discussion and they will interrupt with a question I can't really respond well to and it kills the roll I was on.

I enjoy the interviews where it is 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 and they just ask really open ended questions so I can really give them a great feel for my knowledge. I don't want 15 people at a conference table trying to pry information out of me but never giving me the opportunity to just give it to them.

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Comments

undomiel

That was me who mentioned the questions problem.

Getting in questions at the end is hard, but it is even harder for me to come up with good questions and not just some lame questions about benefits or hours or such. But probably the hardest thing for me is doing an interview on the phone. I'm very distractable plus I pace a lot so sometimes I throw my breathing off. I also have problems hearing what is being said sometimes, especially when there is a thick accent involved. I am so much better at face to face interviews. I'm more nervous before, but I normally perform very well during. I'm also not much of a talker but can usually overcome that in the face to face as well.

rfult001

When dealing with HR they seem to like it short and non-technical. When dealing with the IT manager, you could spend hours going on about the technical stuff. This has been my experience working for the university. I have done other interviews where people are pricks because they want to feel more knowledgeable than you so they ask some obscure question like, "How would you script a program that can take a packet, encapsulate it, send it via TCP to another machine...in COBOL?"

I suppose keeping your cool and staying relaxed during the interview process is the hardest part.

liven

rfult001 wrote:

When dealing with HR they seem to like it short and non-technical. When dealing with the IT manager, you could spend hours going on about the technical stuff. This has been my experience working for the university. I have done other interviews where people are pricks because they want to feel more knowledgeable than you so they ask some obscure question like, "How would you script a program that can take a packet, encapsulate it, send it via TCP to another machine...in COBOL?"

I suppose keeping your cool and staying relaxed during the interview process is the hardest part.

a question like that in an interview is kinda BS. Well perhaps your interviewing for some sort of cobol networking posistion (if they even exist) and they want to make sure you know your stuff.

rfult001

Well to be fair I made that question up. I was just illustrating an interviewer being a pain in the butt. You know, the ones that ask ridiculous questions that they don't know the answers to just so they can sound technical.

drainey

The question may have been made up but it illustrates the point quite well. For me those kind of questions (unless actually related to the job) are a deal breaker if the interviewer is someone I would expect to have to interact with fairly often. I have had the "pleasure" of an insecure boss with a major inferiority complex and would prefer to skip that excitement in the future whenever possible.

As far as asking questions I try to find out what I can about the company and then ask them how they see IT benefitting them now and in the future. Their answer(s) can give you some real insite as to how the IT dept. is viewed within the corporation. I find that interviewers like to answers questions about the company and it future/direction. That sort of thing.

swabbies

I have a bit of a different take on this. I think sometimes the interviewer is asking the question to see how a person thinks. They realize that the person isn't going to know the answer, but critical thinking is what they are looking for. You can also tell how much overall knowledge a person has by how they answer. For instance in your question if the person responding states that they are going to encapsulate the packet with SHA or MD5 you know that they don't quite understand the difference between hash functions and encryption methods.
This is has been my experience interviewing at places like Microsoft and Google.

mamono

It is best to stay on topic as much as possible. I agree that many topics are derailed or side tracked by tangents.

During an interview, I was asked a general technology question. Having read the white paper on that topic, I started to talk about it holistically touching on each major point. The primary IT lead scoffed at me. I was shocked. He proclaimed there was no such thing and that I was fabricating all this in the middle of an interview. I felt stunned. His direct supervisor broke the ice and brought the topic back on track and I continued to go more into detail. His supervisor gave me his business card. I sent him a thank you as well as the Berkeley white paper document on that topic. I didn't want the lead's job, I just wanted to work with him because the position was a parallel position to his as a support role.

It was also a job role that I was really interested in because it would allow me to learn so much technology that I knew about, but didn't have much hands-on.

From my experience, it helps to research about the company you're interviewing for and come up with some preliminary questions of your own that pertain to the position being applied to. Slip them in when relevant. Allow the interview to be a two-way street, it shows confidence.

eMeS

swabbies wrote:

I have a bit of a different take on this. I think sometimes the interviewer is asking the question to see how a person thinks. They realize that the person isn't going to know the answer, but critical thinking is what they are looking for. You can also tell how much overall knowledge a person has by how they answer. For instance in your question if the person responding states that they are going to encapsulate the packet with SHA or MD5 you know that they don't quite understand the difference between hash functions and encryption methods.
This is has been my experience interviewing at places like Microsoft and Google.

I agree...although this question is fictional, the intent is to determine how the interviewee approaches solving the problem, and how they can bring their prior experience to bear on the problem.

In a question like this, the specific technology mentioned is often a red herring. A perfectly valid answer to a question like this that would score big points with most management types is to investigate the problem and then decide what is the right way to solve it, regardless of any specific technology.

MS

sir_creamy_

"How do you perform in a team environment when all other team members are incompetant fools?"

Turgon

Mishra wrote:

What is the hardest technique to achieve when interviewing for you?

Is overcoming the pressure the hardest? Or is answering the questions the correct way the hardest?

The hardest for me is to get my say in. Someone in another post said that it is hard to ask questions because everyone is ready to go at the end of the interview. This is what I'm talking about.

When I am interviewing I like to try and take their questions and just run with it. But sometimes they interrupt me with other questions changing topics before I can get what I really wanted to say in. Sometimes they ask too direct questions and/or talk too much. If someone asks me "Do you have experience with a file server?" I don't want my answer to be "yes I have 5 years". I want it to be a long winded explanation on what I do with file servers. But a lot of the time I'll start into a discussion and they will interrupt with a question I can't really respond well to and it kills the roll I was on.

I enjoy the interviews where it is 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 and they just ask really open ended questions so I can really give them a great feel for my knowledge. I don't want 15 people at a conference table trying to pry information out of me but never giving me the opportunity to just give it to them.

I think being peppered by questions by 15 different sides is kind of unrealistic. I recall my interview at Cambridge University and it was quite relaxed, just getting to the interview I had passed the bombardment requirement. It was more a case of them getting a measure of what I *could* do as much as what I *can* do at the time. In that sense your experience is important but also is your ability to convey that in a brief way. All the rest is detail!