The Preoccupied Interviewer
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Someone shared their experience on LinkedIn:
A couple of months ago, I “walked out” on a virtual job interview. It was for a pretty well-known company. A household name, I would say. The recruiter phone screen was fantastic, but the hiring manager round? Not so much. Why?
1) He showed up to the call with absolutely no enthusiasm. I got the sense that he would rather be watching paint dry than to be talking to me. He actually seemed a bit annoyed. I felt like a complete nuisance. It was AWKWARD.
2) He started the interview by letting me know they would be doing SIX rounds of interviews. Yes, SIX. SEIS. SECHS.
3) I walked him through my background, skills, and experience including the reasons why I left each of my former roles. But all while I was talking he was distracted. Don’t know what he was doing, but he was definitely not giving me his attention. He might have actually been watching paint dry.
4) His first question for me? “Can you tell me why you left roles A and B so soon?” I had literally just explained all that, but he hadn’t been listening. It also rubbed me the wrong way that he would lead with a gatekeeping/disqualifying style of a question rather than to ask a more in-depth question about my competencies, skills, and experience. Huge turnoff.
How Far Back Should My Resume Go?
My suggestion:
After the manager didn’t listen to your answer, the better approach would have been, “I have the idea that you are pre-occupied with something.”
“What gives you that idea?”
“Because I just answered that question in my previous answer. It seems like you have your mind elsewhere.”
That could have been the intermediate step prior to your “walking out,” complete with, “Would it be better for you if we re-scheduled?”
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2022
Putting Your Resume Together
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching, and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2400 episodes.
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