A Clean Canvas!

I was having a discussion with a friend over the weekend. We were exchanging notes on the most hilarious campus interviews we have been part of either as an interviewee or an interviewer.

Here are excerpts from 2 such interviews:

Interview 1

Panelist 1: Are you an extrovert?

Interviewee: I am an extrovert.

Panelist 2 (to himself): Which dud would tell you a no? Every interviewee who has undergone some form of interview preparation would proclaim himself to be a people’s person. And hello - what happened to non – leading questions?

Panelist 1: How do you say that? Prove it!

Interviewee: {Has a weird expression on his face which is a combination of intrigue, shock, disbelief and deep concentration}.

Panelist 2 (to himself): Wow! What a deep and insightful question? Would the interviewee now pull his chair closer to us? I hope not!

Interview 2

Panelist 1: What is your favourite book?

Interviewee: Book XYZ

Panelist 1: So what does it tell me about you?

Panelist 2 (to himself): That he is a geek! What else do you expect to hear?

Talks like these abound, especially when interview of a fresher is being taken. It reminds me one of the famous quotes I use to describe aimless interviews:

“A blind man asking a deaf person to show him the picture.” J.

What do you think the candidate goes through when asked such questions? (and here I let loose a bit of my rhyming abilities J)

“He fumbles and then mumbles, follows it up with bumbles and stumbles and finally expectantly tumbles. All this while the heart of one panelist crumbles while the brains of the other panelist rumble.”

This according to me is a manifestation of a lack of clarity on what to select a candidate on. Now when it comes to an experienced candidate, we have the canvas of prior work experience to fall back upon, viz: similarity of work experience or industry, our judgement on the candidate’s performance on the job, etc. This happens to be a large canvas on which we can let our biases loose (e.g: Retainability of this candidate may be an issue, this candidate is not committed or serious) and it also allows us to camouflage our lack of clarity on what we should be hiring a candidate for. But when it comes to interviewing a fresher we don’t have this camouflage at our disposal and in the face of lack of clarity, even the best of us, tend to fumble (and pretty obviously at that).

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Sourav