Full Time Life Sustaining Jobs Disappearing. Job Searchers Reduced To Begging Anymore.

[MissB]

17. Interviews are no fun.

I've been on both sides.

We do panel interviews here. Usually there are three people - one from the area where the potential employee will actually work, one from somewhere else in the organization and one external panel member.

I've heard the pleas. It sucks to hear them, because we generally only have one position come up every few years. I'd love to say "hire them all" but that would make me an unpopular panel member.

I think I'm still traumatized from a panel interview I had to do for a job I was seeking back in the late 90s. I think there were ten people in the panel, and someone had pulled out one line from my cover letter that matched their job description for a small part of the job. The rest of the interview was just freaking painful for everyone. I wouldn't have been a good fit for the company. I really should've ended it quicker and just walked away.

Another interview I had to do around the same time was a smaller panel interview at a large corporation that my dh worked at (and still does). I was in grad school and newly pregnant. Dh had worked there for a decade by then, so I knew the entire three person panel. What was awkward was all the people that would walk into the interview room DURING the interview and congratulate me on my pregnancy. Holy hell. Really?

The job I ended up taking had a three person panel interview and candidates had to solve a problem and present the solution to the panel. It's a technical job (engineer) so it's totally to be expected, but it still was torture.