Putting my best foot forward

Oops. I almost went an entire day without blogging. Since nothing interesting has happened in the last 24 hours (no, I don’t want to talk about the election results), I think I will give everyone an update on my interviews.

I had an interview with a major oil company on Thursday. The interview didn’t go very well. I didn’t particularly feel articulate and I didn’t get the impression that the interviewer was interested in interviewing me. It was almost as though she had decided before the interview whether I was going to get a second round or not and seeing me in person was just a formality. Where I really messed up was when she asked about my least favorite class. In finance parlance, this is one of those questions that has very limited upside and unlimited downside. In other words, there are very few good answers and way too many bad answers that can take you out of the running. In response, I talked about a particular class where the professor had stringent rules and made students feel as though we were treated like undergrads rather than students in a professional school. After the interview, it took me a total of ten minutes to realize I had given a very bad answer. I got an email Monday night telling me to not expect a second interview.

There were two companies I interviewed with yesterday. The one in the morning was with a tire company. I always get to the waiting room about ten minutes early, double check my name, and if possible find out the name of the interviewer. I thought I was being quite clever when the interviewer came in, called out my name, and during the handshake I addressed her by her first name before she had the chance to give it. But the interview that followed didn’t go as well. I just didn’t feel from her response that I was getting through to her or that she was impressed with me.

After this interview, I had some time to gather my thoughts for my afternoon interview with the credit card division of major bank. I had purposely arranged the more important interview for the afternoon so that I could use the morning interview as preparation and it worked. Even though both interview asked me behavioral questions, I did substantially better in the afternoon interview than in the morning interview.

Later this week I will blog about the two type of people who come to campus to conduct interviews and how you can get a leg up in the process by finding out ahead of time what type your interviewer falls into.