Gender differences
Been doing a lot of the job interview thing lately. One thing I’ve noticed is that I don’t feel like I do well when the interviewer is a woman. Seems to me (and this is all anecdotal, of course) that, whereas men interviewers focus on what you have done and what you can do, women seem to focus on what you would like to do and how that made you feel. For example, every woman I’ve interviewed with asked the question:
What is your dream job?
Thoughts running through my head were professional beer-taster, rock star would be cool, and owning my own gun company. But none of those are answers that are particularly appealing to a potential employer. So, I struggle with that question and don’t really perform that well.
Also, a popular question asked by interviewers of both genders involves assessing how you react to pressure or stress. The question has many forms but usually goes like this:
Describe a time when you faced a great challenge and how did you react to it.
Now, the real answer is to pick any situation as I tend to work under pressure a lot. And as for my reaction, it has always been to cowboy the fuck up and get the job done. Now, that answer tends to work on men (minus the cowboy the fuck up part) but for women, they follow up with asking me how that made me feel or how did that strain my work environment.
I’m not the touchy-feely sort and struggle with that sort of stuff.
June 1st, 2006 at 12:54 am
I’ve got a great track record feeling people out in interviews.
Which has led to some issues with co-workers, when I was the only dissenting voice. The reason I really thought of that, was that the most obvious cases were ones where the other interviewers asked “feeling” questions. (One time I was the lone male, the other, we had two females out of 6 interviews on the team).
I’m in the IT world. And with most of the issues I run into, it’s something new, you have to be able to find out what’s wrong, and deal with it. It’s what I try and find out on interviews – and it’s quite startling to lots of applicants.
I applied for a job once, and they asked me to write a program with an unfamiliar language, with internet access to Google for reference. I thought that was a pretty good way to weed through the people with a nice resume, and those who can solve problems.
June 1st, 2006 at 6:01 am
I would comment on this, but I don’t want to confront you.
June 1st, 2006 at 6:33 am
feel free, i’m tougher than i look
June 1st, 2006 at 7:08 am
I never realized I should be asking all these questions when interviewing.
The main one I feel I should ask prospective employees is “Can you deal with idiots while wearing a loaded gun on your hip and not shoot them?”
June 1st, 2006 at 9:11 am
And one wonders how the work force is turning into a pantheon of bullshit artists… when they’re asked questions like this they’re pretty much forced to practice.
Unfortunately, I’ve become quite good at it myself.
June 1st, 2006 at 9:50 am
The thing is, most women don’t expect a good answer to those type questions. Not from a guy.
Dream job? One where I set my own pace and schedule, with enough vairables to keep things interesting.
As for the “great challenge” – tell them you didn’t have time for feelings, there was work to be done. =)
June 1st, 2006 at 12:07 pm
I had a job interview back around 1999 in the RTP area of North Carolina, and my interviewer (a man) asked me to describe my ideal job. At the time, jobs in IT were a dime a dozen, so I felt I could take a risk. I said “Heck, my ideal job would be to be like that guy on PBS who travels Europe and tells you all about it. But I’m guessing that’s not what you’re talking about.”
They made an offer, but I refused it (not because of that, but because their environment was a total mess).
As to male versus female interviewers, I frankly haven’t noticed that much difference. I’ve been just as likely to get “direct” questions from females, and just as likely (perhaps even more likely) to get obtuse ones from males. Back in ’95, I actually had an interviewer ask me the “If you were a tree” question.
Then there was the time, back in 1997, when the president of a company I was interviewing for glanced at my resume, saw that I was from Wisconsin, and said “I got my ass kicked in Wisconsin.” When I immediately recognized that this was a quote from Stripes, he was so impressed that he nearly hired me on the spot. 🙂
June 1st, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Since reading an earlier edition of this book *many* years ago, I rarely get the interview without getting the job offer:
“Knock ’em Dead”
by Martin Yate
He writes about the job hunt in general, but his section on interviewing is superb. He really gives you what you need to know about why they ask the question and what they are looking to get and/or not get from your answer.
There are lots of books on job interview questions, but I’ve never read any of them. Never felt the need to.
Seriously, I was batting about .100 before reading this and then I got offers on the next 12 or so in a row before I got beat out on one that I knew I wasn’t the most qualified for. I’ve done a lot of contract work, much of it short term, so there have been plenty of opportunities to put this to the test.
Highly recommended.
June 2nd, 2006 at 6:13 am
I once told an interviewer that I wasn’t the only one being interviewed. That they also were being judged as to whether they were acceptable to me.
They were shocked. I said, yes, I am that good, but more importantly I don’t want to go to work for somebody if I am going to hate going to work everyday.
It put them completely off their game.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:47 am
straightarrow:
I’ve never been so direct as to say that outright, but I’ve been in several interviews where the company realized this fact. A two-hour interview process, where 30 minutes is me selling myself to them, and the other 1.5 hours are them selling themselves to me. It’s happened more than a few times.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:49 am
I’ve done it too. I’ve turned down some stuff lately that I wasn’t entusiastic about and that was basically dead end. Employers often forget that they have to sell themselves too.
One interviewer asked me: Why should we hire you?
I gave a brief answer and said: Why should I work here?