And when the job opens up again, tell them this is their last chance to get your skills and ask for more money than before.

The difference between arrogance and confidence is the amount of supporting evidence.

When conducting interviews i keep it respectful and on-topic. It is as much them getting an impression of your workplace as you seeing if they're a good candidate.

Any executive who uses HR to interview and hire is brain dead....look for a different company.

In terms of non-standard questioning, the BDI approach is too simple to beat, anyone who has studied it can give perfect answers. I always give several open ended questions aimed at giving me guidance as to how the candidate reacts to something outside of their sphere of expertise and also insight as to how they think. Questions must always be respectful and intended for me to learn about them and they to learn about me, never to show up a shortfall in talent nor to make the interviewer feel mighty.

Some of the more arrogant responders who want to do foolishness such as "this is your last chance to get my skills", well, the interview ends that second and the person is escorted off of the property. Game over , forever.....will automatically trash their resume any time it enters my purview.

Sorry, talent is hard to find it is true, but effective teams are built of people with the right attitudes, enthusiasm for the job and competencies. In order to preserve the positive work environment that I try to create, I need to find out whether or not this person will fit, if for no other reason to protect the other members of the team. Once you see the damage that one bad apple can bring to an organization, it is pretty easy to get totally ruthless about bad attitude.

..and I can teach competencies, I can't fix bad attitude nor can I cause people to be enthused about the job. But what do I know, I have probably only hired a few hundred people over the years....

Dennis

Attitude can overcome a lot of things, but not everything. We have a mgr. in my dept. whose only sales experience was running a jewelry store in the airport. Now, that's bonafide, retail sales experience. But she is in no way qualified to hire and lead a team of consultative inside salespeople. And that was proven again yesterday when we had layoffs and her job was to clean out the desks of those who were let go. Two on her team were also let go, but she told them five days in advance and let out plenty more info than she should have throughout the week and she's likely now on the chopping block.

The best advice I can give you is to ignore most of the info in this thread. Fact is, the war for talent is heating up. When I say "talent", let me define that: capable, competent, performers who apply themselves, inspire others, and understand that while there are idiots in every business, the vast majority are hard working, good people.

Don't play games with the interview questions, try to outsmart the interviewers, or game the system. These questions are designed to see how you think and respond when faced with a sudden unknown. Be yourself, pause for a moment to compose your thoughts, and answer the question demonstrating your reasoning skills. Anyone can regurgitate pat answers or tell someone the key points they want to get across in an interview. A skilled interviewer can easily tell the difference. I want to hire "talent" that allows me to beat the competition and continue to be a highly successful, exciting place to work.

Not all HR people are idiots, just like all lawyers are not bad, and all auto mechanics are not crooks. I suggest you chose carefully, as you would a mechanic for your Porsche.


Oh, and Jobs said it best. I'm going to add my own twist: a few A players will kick the crap out of a whole raft of B and C players. Good luck on your interview!

Unfortunately, most managers won't hire people with more skills than them. They are afraid they can be replaced. A good manager knows that he is only as good as his people and that his job is to make them shine and not put his position above theirs.

I'd love to see you put together a pro sports team or hire top level sales executives. You'd reject every candidate for being arrogant.

It is not arrogant to say that you are one of the best (and have the stats to prove it). In a situation like that, there are diplomatic ways to help the interviewer "win" and realize that you are the best choice. There is an art to doing this and if you use my phrase above literally then you don't have that skill and Icey is correct in advising you to avoid that approach.

In the meantime, if the company can't see that they screwed up the first time and are offended/insecure about your belief that you are the better choice then you really don't want that job anyway. Most likely, they will be doomed to keep making the wrong choice due to insecurity or just goofy philosophy. Odds are, you don't have a shot as long as the same decision maker is there.

I can only commiserate as I've been dealing with the same type of thing recently, having been right sized by my previous employer.

The most recent idiocy was with a company in an adjacent market to my core experience; they were on the chemical side of the electronics industry where I've mostly lived on the component side. I was interviewing for a director of sales position. The market for this company's products is still developing and somewhat small at the moment ($100m globally), plus the two biggest players are privately held. So market information was slim to none; in fact I couldn't determine who the big players really were on my own (and I'm pretty adept at ferreting out this type of information). What didn't help was the company's website sucked.

So, I'm video conferencing with the German owner and starts down a path of questions designed to test my knowledge of the company.

'What do you think of X competitor versus us?'
'Compare our website with X's.' The real answer of 'both suck but there's is a bit better' probably wouldn't have been appreciated.

'Did any product on our website jump out at you?'
Again, honest answer was 'not sure how it could have since it takes four clicks to get to a product' but likely wouldn't have been appreciated.

'Did any of our technical papers jump out at you?'
Honest answer I would have liked to have given: What jumped out at me was there weren't that many for a company attempting to develop a market where one of the competitive technologies is to do nothing.

Sure enough, I got rejected because I didn't exhibit a high level of preparedness regarding customers (private company???), markets, competition, etc. I thought I may have been hindered as a result of not having an engineering background so I went through the process with an engineer friend, also in the industry. He didn't have anything jump out at him either, except agreement that their website sucked.

I called the recruiter for the position and asked if he had additional feedback from the hiring company. He told me that all three candidates failed to meet expectations for preparedness so no one received an offer. Yep, hard to prep on material that either isn't there except in someone's fantasy world.

As a result of their lunacy, I won't be purchasing any more P21S products, which the moron also owns.

You can't fix stupid and there is value in experience and training, but as almost any situational management training will teach, experience and talent in one sphere of endeavour does not likely translate into equivalent level in a new sphere of endeavour.

Leadership is the one where it take a degree of naturally born qualities, a degree of training and/or coaching and a degree of experience. The transition from technical experienced professional to leader is usually around 5 years long and frequently fails, some of the worst leaders I have had to deal with were originally the top technical talent and could not make the transition.

I don't mind confidence and it is not arrogant to state the level of skill you have demonstrated in previous roles, but I have a major issue with individuals who do not have the gravitas or emotional maturity to understand that commenting at a level that is passive/aggressive is not likely a successful way to win friends and influence people, particularly when the people in question include your new boss.

Talent is tough to find, it is true, but it is too easy to destroy the existing talent on the team by the addition of an individual who comes in with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and self-importance. Sports teams are different...but the lessons rarely translate into corporate life....

Dennis

PS - oh yeah, I want to get replaced, I am a fixer, my job is repair the area in question, bring in new talent as appropriate, get it running and get out. I want the smartest, ablest, most enthusiastic guys available as my tenure in companies is measured in MONTHS max. Off to the next opportunity....

Racer: don't feel bad. It sounds more like he was using you get free market research and to pick your brain on things to improve. If an interviewer is asking you to rate their company instead of asking you questions about how you would help the company then they are not looking at you.

Icey: I agree that there has to be a good fit with the team but based on your overly cautious stance, the Jets should have never hired Joe Namath. A top level performer can raise the class average of the team by inspiring others as they observe the leader excel. As such, they can learn tips on how to improve. A salesman is part egotist and part manic/depressive. The thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat are constantly at work on their psyche. Effective sales management knows how to corral the top performers without castrating their self image. Managing sales staff is different than a team of clerks.

I won't argue with you about sports teams and sales organization, my area of play is engineers, IT people, accountants, finance people etc....the corporate part of corporations. Sales and marketing are voodoo as far as I am concerned....I will leave that area to be managed by those who have that mindset, it most definitely is not one that fits my pistol.

Dennis

Nokia has a conservative European business approach with lots of PC mandates. My friend works there and the culture is very sterile. Big personalities won't fit in.

Best for you though - MS is in the middle of dumping 12K Nokia employees. :(

I interview a lot of folks for positions where I work...

Some useful stuff for you to know:

1) There is no rhyme or reason to the interview. The goal is really to find out if I like you, and if you "fit."
2) There is no right answer to the questions. Just don't say anything stupid.
3) Most of the decision is based on the resume. If it looks good, you get offered the position... That is, unless you do/say something stupid during the interview

The key to any interview is to come across as likeable. You don't have to know all of the answers. Point out that you are responsible, and not afraid of work... The person interviewing you will most likely have to work with you, and will be responsible for your actions. They want folks that are easy to work with.

Bo

Curiosity question: what positions are you filling with these interviews?

Wow, had an interview on Thursday (see Dayton, OH thread) and it was quite refreshing after the last two I'd had. Much more like the type I tended to conduct when hiring my own staff; on topic in terms of how well I'd perform in the role / organization. i.e. I knew my company's website sucked and was beating on the German idiots to fix it. All of the interviewers were solid, in that respect.

The funny thing is that, while the HR manager, thankfully, didn't ask any of the boilerplate HR questions, the R&D manager did. He pulled out the 'tell my your biggest strengths and weaknesses'. I'd already developed a rapport with him so I shared my strengths (which were mostly reiterations of points I'd already made) then told him 'now watch as I provide a weakness that I'll spin into a positive in short order'. Then did it. He then asked if I had any questions and I said 'for asking the boilerplate question, I'd like to know what you like best about working here and what you like worst'. He cringed when I added that second part, which was what I wanted, so I quickly told him he didn't have to answer that part, if he felt he was being put on the spot. But he answered it, with the condition of my not passing his response along to others. Probably the best feedback I got on culture in the organization.

Worst interview question I've ever gotten: "What is the biggest misconception about you?" There's no good way to answer it. You either end up talking about your weaknesses, how you're under-appreciated, or pulling some "weakness as strength" BS.

The job I just started last week had a real tough interview question. It had confusing wording (highly technical) and I spent the first ten minutes on that segment of the interview asking for clarification. I have since found out that I was the first to be interviewed and that question was tossed after my interview because it was essentially nonsensical.