On Jun 20, 2007, at 9:28 PM, Sylvia Rognstad wrote:
On Jun 20, 2007, at 10:21 PM, Sheridan Alder wrote:
The trendy thing nowadays is asking applicants to provide an
example of a time that you had to deal with a difficult situation,
customer, etc. Try to think of something, even if it seems pitiful
at the time - like, "when my sister tries to pick a fight with me,
I just walk away and refuse to fight". A safe response might be,
"I asked my supervisor for advice to deal with the situation".
I so hate it when I am asked that question in interviews. Doesn't
everyone unconsciously forget those difficult situations because
they were so unpleasant? I have wracked my brain for a good answer
and have yet to remember one.
It may be "trendy", but it's part of a particular, more extensive,
interviewing system called "Behavioral-Based Interviewing" -- I got
trained in it last year so I understand it a bit more from the other
side. The idea is that anyone can give hypothetical answers to
hypothetical questions ("How would you handle ...?") and it doesn't
mean much in terms of what they'll actually do. But if you ask them
for a concrete example of how they _have_ handled such-and-such a
situation, then you've got a better chance of having something to
evaluate. And the thing is, it's much more important that the
answers be concrete and illustrative than that they be directly
related to the job you're applying for. (Job-related is best, of
course, and it probably helps to preface a non-job-related answer
with something that identifies it as such.) Concrete means setting
up a specific scenario or problem and illustrative means explaining
what _you_ did in response and what the eventual outcome was. "Safe"
responses aren't what the interviewers are looking for -- if the
interviewer asks how you've handled a difficult situation, they want
to hire someone who doesn't run from difficult situations and who
learns from past situations to improve future responses.
When I interviewed for my current job, I was coming off of a decade
of grad school and applying for a job I had no specific formal
training for. My interview responses involved a lot of drawing from
school experiences (confrontations, managing others, planning and
executing projects), hobbies (more project planning, interpersonal
skills) and so forth (my examples of "a time I worked on a really
effective team" included family camping trips).
If you know you're going to be dealing with this style of interview
(or think you might be), it can help to create a mental list of
experiences to use as examples for a wide variety of scenarios. When
I've participated as an interviewer using this system, the most
common pitfalls were answers that gave a scenario but no resolution,
or that wandered off from the topic and never really got to the
point. Googling on "behavioral based interview" can track down much
more helpful suggestions than my brief sketch here.
Heather
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