another facebook repost. enjoy!
i was almost impressed when i saw the intern candidate waiting in the receptionist area. he was wearing rectangle framed glasses and 2 pieces of a 3-piece suit. the suit was brown. brown tweed. his shirt was striped. and let’s not forget the big thick, not quite ascot tie.
he hit me with the incorrect grammar the moment i approached him. “i’m supposed to go witchu?” did u think i was my own assistant? lol. he must have assumed….once we were in the conference room i noticed the “diamonds” in each ear. he handed me some papers that were stapled together. is this your syllabus? he said something about wanting to bring me the book. i guess that was a noble effort. but it didn’t quite explain why he took a semester off from a 4-year program to complete a certificate program. don’t get me wrong. digital’s great. i work in digital. but will a certificate in digital something or other be worth anything in 2011?
and now the question and answer portion of our presentation.
this candidate definitely read the chapter on having questions during an interview. unfortunately he skipped all of 2nd and 3rd grade english class where he would have learned about proper sentence structure.
“diyawl” do this? “diyawl” do that? would it have killed him to say “do you”? there are several ways to frame a question. there are alternative forms of questioning. one can ask a question in many ways… do you catch my drift? repeatedly hearing “diyawl” on top of “i seen” had me near my wit’s ends. when did i become bitchy snotty media girl? even if that’s not what i am, that’s certainly how i felt. this was a waste of time. i could have been outside swooning over my POTUS. (he was doing a drive by through the city)
i stepped out briefly to try an find someone else who could validate my assessment of this candidate. finding no one able to assist, i returned to the room and asked if there were any more questions. right on cue, intern candidate non-elect said… “are you indian”?
pause
no
he stretches his arms to either side. “oh, cause u look like u could be black” and he raises his right hand “and white” and he raises his left hand.
all i can do is shake my head.
then he asks when we’ll be filling the position. i say in the next week or 2. he says “oh, well just so you know, another company is interested in me and they want my answer by like friday or monday”.
oh. ok. i’m shaking my head affirmatively.
“they’re real corporate, like real corporate. it’s doing the same thing, but i would rather do this because it’s entertainment.”
ok. again shaking my head affirmatively.
and before you say well he’s young, he just doesn’t know any better, let me just say he’s not that young.
this type of behavior is barely acceptable from a 16 year old. this person started an associates degree in 2002, which means he is at LEAST 24/25.
we’ve got to do better.
Ha Ha This is so true! Granted you and I are both in a relaxed industry, digital media however there are some standards in entering our industry like any other that people must adhere to.
I recently interviewed 16 candidates in a two day span. Besides the standard questions, I had my own personal checklist that I applied to all of them. My checklist did not require answering questions, but just from my own observation. My checklist consisted of: Did you ask more than one meaningful question? Did you write anything down during the course of the interview? Did you hand me a resume? Were you dressed up? Surprisingly, 0/16 candidates were not able to get all four check marks; which is crazy!
After reading your article and sitting on those interviews, it’s obvious a lot and I do mean a lot of people can not interview properly, which is sad. I’m not old by any means, but at the same time the soft skills needed to execute a successful interview are almost non existent at times.