On the other side of the table!

A friend of mine is a pretty senior techie. A brilliant programmer he grew up the ladder pretty fast. Senior Management relied on him to make most of the hiring decisions. He was a passionate interviewer and would ensure that he hired the best candidates for his organization. Somewhere along the way, the passion levels came down and one could find him always complaining that the quality of resources has declined as compared to his days. Sitting on the other side of the table he looked at every candidate skeptically and was most of the times finding ways not to hire.

After years of great growth story, the organization he was working with took a downturn and he was forced to look out. It has been a very long time since he attended an interview and sat on the other side of table. However, he was confident that he would soon be working with some big names. Weeks passed by and months but there was no news from him. I met him at his place and asked him as to what was happening and why he wasn’t cracking the interviews.

He thought for a few minutes and listed out the following reasons.

§ “It has been a long time since I attended interviews. I was just not good at presenting myself in the short time given to me. I did not use the right words and right examples that would have strengthened my case. I never thought a Smart, Senior and an accomplished techie like me also has to work on how to present myself in an interview.

•  I am not an orator. I am a techie who solves complex problems .I am not blessed with good looks or great communication skills. Some of them were just going by the first impressions.
•  Some interviewers were looking for some specific answers from the training's they received and the sheets they carried. They were trying to map my answers to their sheets and I could not arrive at that. They do not seem to understand that there could be other answers to their questions.
• It is not easy to remember every minute detail especially if it happened many years ago.Some of them were fixated on such minute details that were not important and were missing out the other key areas.
•  Some were in a hurry. They were just going through the motions. I knew it from the very beginning they did not seem to like me and that they would not select me.
•  Some of them just did not seem to respect my experience and treated me very badly, kept me waiting for over an hour and finished the interview in ten minutes.
•  Some were focusing on areas I haven’t worked on rather than focusing on areas I worked.
•  Some of them just did not bother to listen to me, took calls in between and interrupted me while I was talking and moved on to the next question.
•  Some had a different accent, unique ways of asking questions which I just could not understand. They did not try to rephrase the questions for me. They just moved on assuming that I did not know the answers. Sitting at home, pondering on those questions it struck me that I knew every single answer. It is just that the environment they created did not seem conducive for me to do well.
•  I goofed up a couple of interviews as the very thought of not clearing the interviews and the many unpaid bills, EMI’s, children’s school fees got me too tensed."

 He further added “I realized that I was human too and it is just not easy sitting on the other side of the table … I guess I am an equal culprit when I was conducting interviews “

 Before leaving, I told him not to lose heart. It was not long before I got a message that he got an offer from a very big name.

 He sent me a note saying that the interviews he conducts now are quite different than what he used to do. “I now put myself in the candidate’s shoes and try to find various ways to hire than to reject. I understand now what it is to SIT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TABLE”