5.6 An Interview Story

The Interview

Many of us have or will sit in a waiting room with our best clothes on awaiting a job (or school) interview. You can feel your palms sweat and thoughts race as you wait for your name to be called. You look around at the office environment and imagine yourself walking through those doors every day. People walk by and smile, and overall, you have a really good first impression of the organization. You hope they like you. You tell yourself to remember to smile while recalling all of your experience that makes you the perfect person for this job. A moment of self-doubt may occur, as you wonder about the abilities of the other people being interviewed and hope you have more experience and make a better impression than they do. You hear your name, stand up, and give a firm handshake to the HR manager. The interview has begun.

As she walks you back to a conference room, you think you see encouraging smiles as you pass by people. She asks you to take a seat and then tells you what the interview process will be like. She then asks the first question, “Tell me about yourself.” As you start discussing your experience, you feel yourself start to relax, just a little bit. After the interview is finished, she asks you to take a cognitive test. After which, you feel pretty good about your results. She tells you she will be doing reference checks and will let you know by early next week.

Leading up to this interview, the hiring manager may have reviewed hundreds of resumes and developed the criteria she would use for the selection of the right person for the job. She has probably planned a time-line for hiring, developed hiring criteria, determined a compensation package for the job, and enlisted the help of other managers to interview candidates. She may have even performed several phone interviews before bringing only a few of the best candidates in for interviews. She likely had certain qualities in mind that she is hoping you or another candidate would possess. As you can see, a significant amount of work goes into the process of hiring someone, with selection being an important step in that process. A hiring process done correctly is time-consuming and precise. The interviewer should already have questions determined and should be ready to sell the organization to the candidate as well. This chapter will discuss the main components of the selection process.

Here is how Dwight, from The Office, chooses to tackle his interviews:

“5.6 An Interview Story” from Human Resources Management – 3rd Edition by Debra Patterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.