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Interviews: what to ask... and how not to act. Discuss...

Steve Bridger

It's Friday... so two articles I read this week which I thought I'd share. While I've picked out the bullet points, you will find the 'meat on the bones' behind the two links.

10 Qualities Recruiters Never Want to See in Candidates

1. Vagueness
2. A Lack of Loyalty
3. Indifference
4. Excessive Agreeability
5. Disorganisation
6. Abrasiveness
7. Arrogance
8. Verbosity
9. Ignorance About the Company
10. A Lack of Professionalism

...and

5 Questions You Should Ask at Your Next Job Interview

1. “How will you measure the success of the person in this position?”

2. “What are some of the challenges you expect the person in this position to face?”

3. “Thinking back to people you’ve seen do this work previously, what differentiated the ones who were good from the ones who were really great at it?”

4. Ask the question you really care about.

5. “What’s your timeline for next steps?”

Do you have anything to add?

Parents
  • Racism? Had that from a candidate once (completely unselfconsciously). Also one candidate (for a very junior position) rigged out in a Chanel suit (I am unfortunately not qualified to judge whether fake or real) looking down her nose at the recruiting manager, whose job involved looking after building / facilities, because she happened to be wearing jeans that day to clear out a store room. So I'd add snobbishness to the above list. And overt sexual displays, eg very low cut and/or see through tops, very short skirts combined with very high heels and associated "wriggling" of assets. Although I suppose this could count as "lack of professionalism"? Although in some places I have worked, this behaviour was advantageous so it might merit an extra category? Alternatively, we might just need to accept that for some employers, lack of professionalism in certain roles is a positive reason to recruit or promote someone...
  • in reply to Anka
    Hey Anka. Did you mean avoiding candidates should avoid racism related questions or did you mean a particular candidates was racist unconsciously.

    In fairness, I am Asian origin and in interviews always like to suss out if the organisation has a culture of rascism. Its as much my opportunity to learn about their culture as its their to learn about me . Some may argue that its not best to do so, but I don't want to be wasting my time where an organisation will mark me down just because of colour of my eyes. I would rather not start the relationship then fail for issues outside my control. Unfortunately the risk of raising this at interview is that organisation may view it unfavorably but then thats a risk worth taking in my view.
Reply
  • in reply to Anka
    Hey Anka. Did you mean avoiding candidates should avoid racism related questions or did you mean a particular candidates was racist unconsciously.

    In fairness, I am Asian origin and in interviews always like to suss out if the organisation has a culture of rascism. Its as much my opportunity to learn about their culture as its their to learn about me . Some may argue that its not best to do so, but I don't want to be wasting my time where an organisation will mark me down just because of colour of my eyes. I would rather not start the relationship then fail for issues outside my control. Unfortunately the risk of raising this at interview is that organisation may view it unfavorably but then thats a risk worth taking in my view.
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  • in reply to Geetika Kaushal
    Hi Geetika

    In this situation, the candidate used a racist term about a particular group, seemingly without any awareness whatsoever that the term was prerogative or might be construed as racist which astonished the manager and myself.

    I sometimes wonder how people feel walking into a workplace that might be overwhelmingly white. This is is frequent in the industry I work in but I think / hope the causes are more likely to be unconscious bias or class prejudice or a combination of both as I have not personally come across overt racism. It is, however, difficult to get to the bottom of it as there is no solid data from which to draw conclusions and attempts at collecting it have not been very successful over the years.