Everyone knows a good job interview goes in two directions \u2014 the potential hire is learning as much about the organization as organization learns about the candidate.<\/p>\n
Yet often the questions that get swapped around come from very different places. The organization reps, in trying to gauge the qualifications and character of the candidate, attempt to draw these out through very practical questions like \u201cexplain to me how you accomplished X when you were at position Y\u201d or \u201cgive us an example of one time you encountered problem Z and what you did about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in the other direction, the candidate, seeking to understanding what lies behind the veil, asks more general questions like \u201cwhat would make a person most successful in this role\u201d and \u201cwhat methods of communication do you typically use in coordinating your projects here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The above are useful questions, and come from reasonable standpoints. But there is a more common ground on which both the interviewer and interviewee stand, and it can be used as a platform to find connections (or lack of them) that might otherwise be missed.<\/p>\n
For instance:<\/p>\n
\nWhat makes a really good day at work for you? How about a really bad day?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Important elements emerge here, like personality traits, frustrations, heartfelt desires and even ethics. For the candidate\u2019s benefit, some of the true workings of the organization become implicitly revealed \u2014 if the interviewers choose to mention one particularly rough day when they lost a long-time client, its a potential insight that the organization is client-focused. For the organization\u2019s side, if the candidate mentions a day when he felt everyone was against him at work, maybe his interpersonal skills need to be scrutinized.<\/p>\n
These are not \u201cend of the line\u201d questions and answers, but they can yield insight that straightforward questions miss. More importantly, you may find a true correspondence of values between the two parties \u2014 and that\u2019s a huge deal, often signifying a potentially high-value and long-term relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone knows a good job interview goes in two directions \u2014 the potential hire is learning as much about the organization as organization learns about the candidate. Yet often the questions that get swapped around come from very different places. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career","category-communication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2081,"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions\/2081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mberlove.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}