Interviews, some thoughts on them

When interviewing undergraduates it's largely about giving them lots of opportunities, within the relatively short time at one's disposal, to show you their intelligence etc. I've been thinking about job interviews recently, especially since an ex-DoSee told me what a shock she'd found it when doing the milkround to move to a totally different sort of interview, in which they were not interested in you as a person and did not feel any particular need to make you comfortable.

1. Do not lie in interviews. This is partly a moral thing because one shouldn't lie, but really I'm saying it because if you are feeling any need to lie it may indicate that you do not actually want the job; something is making you feel that it is a fake and wrong situation. I have only once lied in an interview. It was when I was an undergraduate and needed a summer job in Cambridge while I worked on my Part II dissertation on a manuscript in Trinity Library. I had an interview at the new Seattle Coffee Company cafe in the Waterstone's book shop (now Cult Clothing). This was at a time when cafes in bookshops were new to Cambridge, and slightly out there; plus it was years before Starbucks came to England, and we were all used to ordering a coffee like this: a large white coffee please, no sugar. Plus I didn't drink coffee at the time. During my interview they gave me a grande iced raspberry mochachino with whipped cream and asked me what I thought. Delicious, I lied. They gave me the job and sent me for training in London where exuberant Americans made us all wear plastic animal noses all day and told us we should always treat every customer as if they were wearing an animal nose. They seemed to think this was shorthand for "as if they were an exciting individual who's fun to be with", whereas really one would react with concerned pity, or perhaps icy courtesy if they looked like a public schoolboy. There was no harm done because it was only a summer job, and I met some interesting people there, and had a very mild flirtation with being cool.
The only other time I was not so much tempted to lie as presented with the opportunity to do so was at an interview for a job at a certain auction house. It was just three days after I had submitted my PhD and I was exhausted; I didn't want the job but an academic I hugely respect as a person had presented me with the advert with such kindly pleasure that I felt I must be wrong about it. As well as the interview we were each one by one set a Latin test, with a pretty nasty bit of St Augustine getting confused about what he is and how he can know what he is, and an original Elizabethan deed which I would guess I aced. Then we had to save our work on the computer provided in a particular folder. Where of course one found in serried ranks the answers of all the people who had already done the test. I did not open any of them, but the whole process filled me with a mild disgust. I'm very sorry for anyone who cheated off my answer on the Augustine, which I said was Anselm. It was not the happiest era of that auction house's life; and if someone were to tell me that candidates who did use other people's work were by no means frowned upon I could probably contain my amazement. They told me I was too academic, which was a polite way of expressing ...something, and then wouldn't pay my travel expenses, which was a bit rubbish of them.

2. Self-confident ebullience is a completely different thing from lying. My interview technique is to imagine myself only better, and then pretend to be that person. It works quite well when I pull it off, which isn't every time.

3. If you're being rude in an interview, again you probably don't really want the job. In one interview I ended up not only doing the set test but writing a long critique of it in the remaining available time, and later in the personal interview I put it to the interviewers that they didn't really know what they wanted. They didn't reply very convincingly, and they didn't give me the job. By that time I had come up with 5 reasons why I was allowed to turn it down if I was offered it. I was right about it, the whole project has been very bad for the blood pressure of everyone involved, and the person who did get the job had a miserable time and got out quickly. It's a shame because it was promising on paper.

4. When on the other side of the fence, i.e. interviewing not being interviewed, the thing that annoys me most is when fellow interviewers start talking without asking questions. I've been at plenty of interviews where the candidate can hardly get a word in edgeways.

5. Back to being interviewed: competencies-based interviewing, where every candidate is asked exactly the same questions and given a numerical mark on each answer which will later be tallied to give a total candidate score, with no opportunity for the interviewer to follow something up or ask about anything specific on the papers, is a dehumanising and unpleasant experience. I'm guessing it must be harder for the interviewer like that too -- can you imagine interviewing sixth-formers that way? It's only happened to me once, for a government employer, but it was wierd, especially since two of the three interviewers were people I count as personal friends. I didn't get the job, which was for the best in all practical ways, though I would have liked to have worked there.

6. The Church of England has this attitude to its clergy; they trust that for every vicar X there is a right job, and for every job Y there is a right vicar. Then in the interview they seek to discern whether vicar X and job Y are the two that fit together. Although it can't be quite like that in the non-vicar world it's still a good attitude to take into a job interview.