I went on an interview yesterday! Therefore, I've been hearing the dreaded question quite a bit. The reason this drives me crazy is two-fold. First of all, I must be a bad judge about interviews. I've gotten jobs from interviews that I've only felt so-so about. And I've had interviews that I felt really good about, but the job went to someone else. Secondly, it's not for me to decide if the interview went well or not. That's a decision for whomever is sitting on the other side of the table.
That being said, this is how the interview went (in summary)...
- They asked me to arrive 15 minutes early and I was exactly on the nose 15 minutes early. Actually, I was more like 40 minutes early. I sat in my car and read through all my notes before walking in the door exactly 15 minutes before the interview was supposed to start.
- When I signed in at the front desk, I noticed that the person who had signed in before me had done so 2 weeks ago... and I recognized her name. We went to school together at the Art Institute. Is she my competition? I start to panic because I know she's super nice and hard-working and good. But then again- that was two weeks ago! My mind is racing... Calm down calm down calm down.
- I sit in the chairs by the front desk and wait and wait and wait. The woman at the front desk can see me and I imagine that my interview has already started. Those front desk people have a lot of power, you know. I sit very quietly and smile when people pass and stare intently at the giant poster on the wall that gives a year-by-year synopsis of the company's successes.
- Finally! I'm greeted by one of my interviewers and ushered into the conference room. There are three people on the interview panel. They introduce themselves and tell me the structure of the interview: They talk about the job, I talk about my resume, they ask me questions.
- Their description of the job tells me that this is some place where the skills from my first career as a lab analyst may be appreciated! That is not always the case. I highlight my scientific and analytic skills and I get to talk about working with color. I show my portfolio paying special attention to the color stories.
- Questions they asked- When did I disagree with a decision from a higher-up and how did I handle it? An example of a time when I was called out on a work-realted problem and how did I handle it? What process do I use to learn new tasks or take on new responsibilities? What strength would I bring to the role? For the first question in this list, I talked about a time very early on in my internship (as in the first week!) when I was asked to double-check someone's lab dip results and I disagreed with her analysis of one color. She said the red was too dark compared to the color standard, but I found it to be a perfect match under every single light condition. I was very nervous about bringing it to her attention but she agreed with me, told me she didn't trust her eyes, and changed her results. By the end of the internship, I was running lab dips without assistance. One of my interviewers said, "That's a great example."
- At the end of the interview they gave me four diffeerent sets of embroidery samples. Each set included three different samples with the same logo placed on the same colored fabric. Each sample in the set had a different color scheme for the logo. They asked me to go through each set and talk about my favorite and my decision process. One of the sets was a pale yellow fabric. The obvious "loser" from this set was embroidered with thread the color of baby poop. I called it as I saw it and they laughed.
- I asked two questions, "I noticed that this organization is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the big giant parent company {Of course, I used the actual names of the companies when I asked the question.} What does that mean in terms of culture or other differences?" and "Can you tell me how this job is evaluated and what is expected for this role in the first 30 days or 60 days?" After I asked the second question, the manager said, "That's a great question!"
- The interview ended exactly one hour after it started. I was ushered out of the conference room. When I was about halfway through the front door I remembered that I needed to sign out. I turn around and walked up to the reception desk. I said to the woman at the desk, "oh, I almost forgot to sign out!" I look up to see if there's a clock but all I see is her grinning back at me with a look almost like, "Ha-ha! They'll hear about this! Gotcha!" There was no clock so I had to ask her for the time. Her silly grin greeted me in return. She delayed the tiniest bit- just to torture me a little bit more, I'm sure- before looking at her computer and giving me the time. I thanked her and left.
