Job interview, unfocused interviewer?

October 4, 2017 1:08 PM

In a job interview, how to you overcome the obstacle of an interviewer who isn't giving you an opportunity to highlight your accomplishments?

How do you present yourself in the best light without railroading when the questions they're asking don't produce tangible results related to the position?

I just got out of an interview where I felt like the interviewer wasn't actually interested in hearing how my experiences would make me a good fit for the role, and didn't want to discuss the specific qualities they were looking for until after I'd answered the questions. The questions were rambling and vague, with no specific target. I was told it would be a panel interview, but it wasn't. I was given a set of questions to prepare for, and they were not asked.

But... I really want(ed) this specific job and I'd like to do everything I can in the future to avoid the feeling of not knowing which of my accomplishments to highlight because the questions themselves were so vaguely-multifaceted and open-ended that picking a specific set of skills to highlight was difficult to ascertain.

posted by radiosilents to Work & Money (15 answers total)

This isn't an easy question to answer. Maybe you had someone who was just bad at interviewing. Maybe you had someone who knew exactly what they were looking for and it wasn't you highlighting your accomplishments. All you can do is answer the questions asked as best you can, and focus on pulling in those accomplishments if and when they're relevant. Otherwise the goal is to impress that person that day, and you do that by trying to go with them wherever they're going.
posted by brainmouse at 1:15 PM on October 4, 2017

I would put forward that if the interview process is that badly run, failing to get the job may be a blessing in disguise.
posted by 256 at 1:16 PM on October 4, 2017 [7 favorites]

Best answer: At this point, you can write a more detailed follow-up note than you usually would, with a few extra paragraphs summarizing any information you wish you could have presented in the interview.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:25 PM on October 4, 2017

The interviewing process goes both ways. You're looking to see if you actually want to work at this place, and that decision is as important as whether they want you to work there. If the interview went that badly then its not a good fit for you. I know you really want the position, but as 256 points out, this may have been a good thing.
posted by bshort at 1:51 PM on October 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I administer really open-ended interviews like this about three days a week. Could probably do it in my sleep at this point.

Anyway it's hard to answer precisely without knowing what the questions were. The general advice I could give would be to ask the recruiter or hiring manager in advance what qualities they are looking for a candidate to demonstrate in the interview. Or if a question has multiple potential approaches you could take in answering it, you can ask the interviewer which one they'd prefer -- "would you like to hear about A, or would you prefer to hear about B?" I appreciate it when candidates do that.

Advanced mode is to try to put yourself in the interviewer's shoes and try to intuit why they might be asking the question and use that to guide your answers -- in my experience really strong candidates can often do that. YMMV.
posted by phoenixy at 1:52 PM on October 4, 2017

It's entirely possible that they'd already picked someone for the position (often an internal candidate) but for policy reasons have the interview N potential candidates and you just happened to be hapless candidate number N. That can lead to the kind of interview that you suffered through.

It's also possible that you just had a really bad interviewer. If you do the detailed followup e-mail, if you have other points of contact that were part of the process, be sure to CC: them so they can see the diligent follow-through. That might help keep you in the running if the decision's not already been made or on their radar when a new position opens up.
posted by Candleman at 2:23 PM on October 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

My goal in any job interview is to take over within the first 5 minutes and do most of the question asking. It negates the risk of a shitty interviewer, and generally results in a good interview from their POV. Sometimes you get somebody who is intent on forcing you to spend 45 minutes reciting the bullet points on the resume in front of him (can't remember a woman interviewer ever doing this) and in that case you write it off as a job you probably didn't want anyway and move on.
posted by COD at 2:26 PM on October 4, 2017 [4 favorites]

My goal in any job interview is to take over within the first 5 minutes and do most of the question asking.

I think asking for details on this fabulous statement is on-topic. I have a guess as to how this works but it'd be interesting to hear a little more. Care to expound?
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:40 PM on October 4, 2017

My goal in any job interview is to take over within the first 5 minutes and do most of the question asking.

Ha, I have interviewed several people who do this.It's generally obvious, and always (for me) disliked. Especially so if it is a man, as a woman interviewer. Of course, my alternative is not making people recite the bullet points on the resume, but I've spent a lot of effort learning how to interview well. Of course, YMMV.
posted by brainmouse at 3:05 PM on October 4, 2017 [19 favorites]

+1 to brainmouse's point. At my company every interview question (even the ones that seem vague and open-ended from a candidate POV) has explicit written scoring criteria. Some amount of steering the interview is OK, especially if it happens to be in a direction that covers what I was going to ask about anyway, but the candidate taking over the interview pretty much guarantees an automatic fail.
posted by phoenixy at 4:03 PM on October 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think asking for details on this fabulous statement is on-topic. I have a guess as to how this works but it'd be interesting to hear a little more. Care to expound?

Sure - it really isn't that big of a deal. My experience, working mostly for smaller tech companies, is that the person I'm interviewing with is usually not a trained interviewer, may not particularly like the interview process, and are generally quite happy if they don't have to conduct a traditional interview. Small tech company CEOs often love to talk about their company so it's pretty easy to ask a couple of questions and sit back while they ramble, giving you plenty of follow up question material, and next thing they know it's been an hour and they think it's been a fabulous interview because they spent most of the hour talking about themselves and their company. It's Dale Carnegie 101 - everybody's favorite subject is themselves.

I've absolutely had people - never a CEO that I can remember - that were determined to work their way through their list of questions, which were probably the exact same questions they asked everybody. Those interviews don't go well for me, and I'm fine with that. The more the interview flows like a conversation and less like an interview the better I do, and the better fit the company seems to be for me.
posted by COD at 4:50 PM on October 4, 2017

One possibility is they already got a sense of your qualifications from your resume, and were interviewing more to get to know you.

Another possibility is they were out of their depth, unprepared to take over for the panel. The first time I had to interview someone, I thought I knew exactly how I wanted it to go based on the billions of interviews I’d had, and it turned out I suuuuuucked at interviewing. I said dumb stuff, forgot to say other stuff, and was frankly weird. Happy ending: I did hire that candidate, because I knew from their application materials they could do the job, and I knew from the hell interview that they were truly interested and a bright person.

Do follow up briefly with any major points you may have missed.
posted by kapers at 6:31 PM on October 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Sounds like Donald Trump was your interviewer. If that's the best face the company can put on itself, then it's not somewhere you wanna work. You might want the job, but not with this pack of bozos.
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:20 PM on October 4, 2017

Because of strict HR rules many interviews for government positions require that the same questions be asked of all interviewees and the answers are scored and then added up and the candidate with the highest score wins. Sometimes having to give extra points to minorities or veterans. Of course the scoring is subjective so the interviewer can manipulate the score how they wish to get the outcome they want.

If the interviewer is reading questions off a list and taking notes that is probably what is happening. If they aren't looking at paper or taking notes they are probably just winging it rambling on.
posted by Justin Case at 11:15 AM on October 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Pivot, pivot, pivot. You answer the question you want to answer -- you just have to find a way to get there. Without knowing exactly what was asked to you, it's hard to give you specific advice on how to do this. But I think it's all about bridging where the conversation is to where you want it to go so you can highlight want you want to highlight.
posted by AppleTurnover at 11:42 AM on October 5, 2017