Question: What has your job (or internship) interview process been like? What surprises you? What frustrates you? What excites you? How did you prepare? How did you perform?
What is your overall impression of the general interview process? Is it efficent? Is it effective? Is it humane? Is it ethical?
Since I am not a computer science major, I have not had experience with the whiteboard interviews discussed in our readings. Although I have not had the same experience, I can relate to the feeling of frustration surrounding whiteboard interviews and the apparent obsession some companies have with memorizing useless information. One interview I had asked me what MOSFET stood for, no other questions on how they are used or how they work, just simply asking if I knew the acronym. Although I answered the question correctly (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor), I could not help but feel some surprise that my interviewer really though that knowing this acronym was a good indicator of how well I’d do at my job. In this way I share the frustration of those who have felt that their whiteboard interviews did not adequately represent them. Especially in engineering, I’ve come to realize that most job skills are learned on the fly rather than in school, and that it is much more important to be an adaptive and ambitious learner than have a lot of knowledge coming out of college. For this reason I get most excited when interviewers ask me questions about myself, what motivates me, and try to determine if I would fit in with their work culture. In these types of interviews I feel I do the best because I consider myself to be a great teammate on any project, and I believe my ambition and eagerness comes out when employers try to find out about the real me. For these kinds of questions I do not need much preparation because my answers come from the heart, instead I spend most of my interview preparation reviewing basic electrical engineering principles in case they ask more technical questions, and I also do company research to demonstrate my interest in the company.
I think the interview process for many companies is very sound. Although there are factors such as the confirmation bias which supposedly dictates the success of an interview in the first five minutes, these sort of things are also indicative of how people at the company will view a prospective employee if he/she is hired. If an interviewee cannot impress an interviewer at the start of the interview, how will he/she be able to impress a client that he/she is meeting for the first time? As far as ethicality, I believe the interview process is both ethical and humane. At the end of the day the person who is perched to be the most qualified will get the job. Whether a company’s criteria for determining the superior candidate is flawed or not does not change the fact that there is always good faith. In every interview I’ve been in I’ve always been treated respectfully and humanely, and I cannot imagine any other companies acted differently towards potential hires. I also think the general structure of the interview process is fairly efficient. When presented with a pool of maybe 30 or more applicants, an initial first round interview is often necessary to weed out the good from the bad. After that there is a second round where the best of the best are interviewed to find the perfect match. I personally cannot think of any way this could be made more efficient other than simplifying the process to a single round, which would likely make it difficult or impossible to find the one candidate who is truly best for the job.