Job Interviews in retrospect of a Recruiter's candidate experience.

Hi, my name is John, I am a recruitment consultant and recently I have been in the same place as the many jobseekers here - the journey of job-hunting. This write-up is a collective retrospection of my experience, realisations, and how I persevered from it. I realised that by writing about my experience, I can help a lot of jobseekers, recruiters, and managers with my personal insight of the industry.?

I initially started writing this as a personal joke after a bad panel interview experience. I wanted to de-stress and told myself that I would try to write 101 things that I hate about job interviews. I would pen it as my recruitment manual guide to make me successful in my role and as it turned out 101 things was a lot. When I couldn’t think of writing the things I hated, I started to compartmentalise the things I liked and it led me to the thought that this write-up can be a good material because it offers an insight. As an advocate of personal development – I blushed in the idea of helping others.?

I now work in a full-time position and the initial incomplete draft of this write-up is already 8 pages long. I am planning to publish this as a series of articles here in LinkedIn, I have made recruiter notes along the way to best approach situations that I encountered on my job search. In lieu of that, I have also written Interviewees notes that is relatable in several instances.??

This is not an expert recommendation; it is a write up of experience that offers my personal insight and how I approached or would’ve approached a series of events that I thought worthy to share. This write up will tackle the six negative experiences I’ve had and how I’ve dealt with it and the six positive experiences that I think can be adapted by a lot of recruiters and managers to better candidate experience and realise candidates’ potential.?

The first topic will be about candidate tips and how to best approach a job seeking situation to your advantage.

Develop personal action plans and put it in a project tracker complete with timelines

I was once given feedback right after the conclusion of my first interview that I am ambitious in an ambivalent tone. This wasn’t my first rodeo with this word, within my personal and professional life my ambitiousness proved more difficult to relate with as I’ve gotten older and started progressing in between job roles. Only a handful of people related with my “ambivalent” trait and the rest felt that I was punching above my weight.?

I did not realise that my ambitions were only dreams, and my dreams can be ambitions. Often people confuse the words dream and ambition not realising that where ambition lacks perseverance, it is only but a dream. Having an ambition is actuating it with plans and actions.

Writing a personal action plan is a powerful tool to be accountable to yourself, it means that you are acknowledging your weaknesses and you are ready to action them. When I left my first recruiter position, I conceded to the fact that I have shortcomings to myself, and it reflected in my performance and tenacity. In the end, I did not weight my offer and value very well and set myself up for failure, I was driven by the same old tricks that I deemed effective from my previous industry that my audaciousness was walking two steps in front of me. I had to assess my situation and felt strongly that I have found my calling and industry but felt a misfit within the space. I wrote my first action plan that day and it read “move”.?In its simplest form an action plan should be actionable, when I initially wrote “move” I had to ask myself some basic questions.

·??????How fast should I move from here?

·??????Where should I move?

I wanted to move to a place where I can have access to mentorship, commissions, and development plan, I wanted to be part of a small team and work closely with key-decision makers in the business - to be able to do that I recognised that I needed to expand my network, I was in recruitment, and I knew that there are specialist recruiters who can help connect me with my initial answers and so I did.?I worked with a Rec2Rec recruiter who understood what I was looking and connected me with industry options.

Channels where you can create and make an impact.?

LinkedIn is a powerful tool if you maximise its use.?Be proactive with your network, ask advice from experts. In my experience, asking advice from directors, recruiters, and hiring managers themselves have led to fruitful meeting and discussions. They may not offer you a job in the end, but they can certainly help in tuning your direction. This kind of resourcefulness and proactiveness is impressionable within the industry that is centred in machine learning to generate candidate pool. Finessing a genuine human interaction gives you a strong advantage among other candidates.??

One of my dear friends who is an entrepreneur encouraged me to actively seek answers in situations where waiting is not an option. He said that in his 20 years of being an entrepreneur – Dedication and commitment is a rarity and business owners alike value this trait more than the ability to multi-task or work under pressure.?In one occasion, rather than passively waiting for an interview result - I directly messaged a company director for a feedback and wrote the reasons that I can be a good addition to the team, I've also had an experience once where I was the one who was actively progressing my job application by following my interview with an email that read "I would like to progress my job application to the next level" because I was so impressed and felt the synergy after my initial meeting.

Takeaways for Candidates.?

These are some of the takeaways that I've used myself to broaden my job interview and assess how I can fit into an existing team.

1. While it is very ideal as a candidate to focus on your strengths, you will get a better answer if you bank on your weaknesses as well. This lets you get an overview if the employer is looking at harnessing your weaknesses to be developed and actioned within their organisation. Understand that strengths can get you the position but weaknesses and ability to develop from them will get you up the ladder.
2. Team culture is a great thing, and every company will say that they have a great work culture and yet you may still find yourself not fitting well. The key to culture fitting is not a one-way street, as humans we persevere to be understood and life is a quest full of it, it is easier to define what you look for in a team culture rather than be absorbed or be defined by it. Write key elements and attributes you look for and rehearse it as questions when the topic comes up or toward the end of your interview. For me, great team culture is a contribution effort and not just group-thinking and I pay careful attention to an Interviewer's response to this.
3. Quantify your processes if you're going to talk about them. Organisations are more productive than ever because a lot of the things from previous generations have been quantified into systems of work implementation. Explain them with a clear intention of planning-doing- then through to results and then assessment, this lets them know that your work style is mouldable.?
4. Trust your gut. You should walk out of an interview feeling positive. In my case I look for feelings of excitement, this could be envisioning myself in their team or working with key managers. If you don’t have this initial feeling, or feel unsettled with how your meeting has concluded, it can be an indicator that the team or management style may not suit you. This gut feeling is only relevant if you have spoken to the actual team manager relevant to your role; while hiring managers can give an initial impression of their organisation, it is not a total reflection of the team they are resourcing for.

The first negative experience

“Not being able to finish my answer and getting interjected by the interviewer moving forth and not coming back/tying up my answer with their interjection.”

I initially wrote this observation after sitting in an interview and hating the whole structure of it. I thought about writing 101 things that I hate about job interviews and satirically call it my recruitment interview manual. Writing about negative experiences like this meant that I could ponder and avoid it from happening in my role as a recruiter. We all know that listening is more important than talking, I never knew of anyone getting to trouble for listening but the same couldn’t be said of talking. Recruiters will certainly get more value in listening to candidates rather than talking and it is something that I tell myself before a candidate call or interview.

Recruiter Notes:?Keep initial introductions to a minimum and cover important aspects like your name, your role within the organisation and the reason why you are the interviewer for the role. Cover important bases like achievements towards the middle when you have established rapport with your candidate, your focus is to put a candidate at ease, and situate them at a comfortable place to converse and answer your questions.?

Interviewee Notes: When faced with this kind of situation, let the interviewer do the talking, focus on personal skills rather than technical walk-through of your job expertise or description as it will delineate their conversation with lesser opinions to contribute – after all, you are the ultimate judge of your personal skills. Any form of interjection after this should be easier to tie back to your main thought as the interjection is focused on your personal strengths and character. Keep your answers concise and leave a slightly longer pause before answering, this sort of cue eases the ears to listen and is more likely to help alleviate an interviewer’s urgency to interject while you are talking.?

The next negative experience focuses more in the recruiters lens, there are many styles to doing interviews but in my experience, the one that have really stood out and made an impact is when they focus on my strengths and looks at my weaknesses to be developed within the company.

“Companies/Interviewers that focus on your weaknesses rather than your strengths.”

In one occasion a General Manager failed to understand my CV format which led them to assume that I was going from one job to the other and not picking up that I was a contract hire for a year and a half. This ensued the question “Why should we hire you, if you have been jumping from one job to the other?”?I then proceeded to explain that this was not the case and that during this period of work I was able to deliver my projects and received promising feedbacks as evidenced by the list of my references. Taking the defensive step without initially conditioning the setting can lead to an interrogative conversation rather than a productive meeting. If only I could go back and answer the question again, I would’ve answered it in this tone:

“Sorry if my CV Format have confused you, I understand that commitment is one of the primary values that companies look for in a candidate, I’ve worked with a recruitment agency similar to yours and I can tell you more than a hundred things that I truly enjoyed as a contract hire, I have showed dedication and commitment to my agency and was rewarded with fulfilling assignments where I was able to showcase my skills and continuously received promising feedbacks to continue working to the next assignment as evidenced by the timeframe and multiple projects I delivered.. .”

Answering in this format immediately eases the tension of the interviewer’s assumption, I did not only acknowledge their feedback but embraced the values that they were looking for. I also tied my answer around their business model because in this case it was very relatable.?

Recruiter Notes:?80/20 Balance. When assessing candidates, assess their strengths more than their weaknesses as ultimately you are not recruiting them for their weakness. Keep weaknesses as an open discussion if you have the resources to train, develop, and correct it. Most weaknesses are not cardinal, and recruitment is a leadership position where ultimately the goal is to harness human talent because they are your biggest capital.?Cardinal weaknesses are usually red flags that needs special attention like termination, volatility, and commitment that can ultimately decide if you should progress a candidate to the next level.