Thursday, April 03, 2008

About interviews

The most important thing I've learned about interviewing for jobs as a result of my recent experiences with employment and graduate school applications is this:

If the position doesn't suit you well, then your likelihood of getting hired is slim to none and, even if you do get hired, your ability to do that job or your quality of life may suffer simply because the job isn't appropriate for you. The best way to gauge just how fitting you are to a particular position is honesty. When you're being interviewed, how often does it feel like you're lying? And not just embellishing your enthusiasm; I mean truly lying to the potential employer. For instance, a potential employer asked me a general question during an interview the other day that would've been easy for me had I not already planned my graduate school career. He asked, "Are you here for a job or a career?" I knew the answer he was looking for, but I hate lying. Therein lies the cognitive dissonance that caused me to pause long enough for him to assume my answer was "job" even if I said "career." In essence, when you lie to a potential employer for the sake of getting a job, you're not just lying to them; you're lying to yourself. After that interview, I realized I'm not that interested in getting another job, but I am interested in starting a new career, one which I am pursuing through grad school this summer.

I realize this information doesn't help in all circumstances, especially with an economic recession bearing down on us, but it's still important to consider when you're interviewing. Do you want the job desperately enough that you're willing to blatantly lie? Do you realize that such blatant lies in the initial hiring process are representative of your possible, eventual, exponential disdain for the job? And do you know this dishonest attitude hurts not just you but also everyone with whom you'd be working?

Just some thoughts worth pondering...

2 comments:

Michael said...

I like that the tags for this post include "hoes" and "recession". Good times.

It's true, you know. It's funny how often we lie and embellish to get what we want (a job), when 9 times out of 10 it's not a job we REALLY want anyway.

More importantly, does anyone have any tips for motivation on actually getting off our asses and hunting for jobs? I'm having great difficulty finding the wherewithal to do any searching after coming home from work. Ideally it would be best to search while off work, but then it feels like a waste of vacation time. Argh!

Thom said...

My best advice: Join one of those Web sites like Monster or CareerBuilder (my personal favorite) and set up a weekly query that'll come directly to your inbox every week. Then you can look over some of the most applicable jobs in the e-mail message when you get a chance without having to actually search.