Granted, Mugu was supposed to keep his mouth shut and looked pretty, but sometimes I just couldn't resist asking a few questions, much to HR's displeasure. But then again, there were so many awkward moment of silence, Mugu thought what he did was justified to keep things in motion.
Even as a rookie interviewer, here are Mugu's opinions, and perhaps this would help those who are still in the interview process.
1) Mugu can get a sense of who you are from reading your resume. Don't underestimate this statement. You can have tons of friends and professionals giving you suggestions of how to improve your resume, but what ends up going in there reflects you as a person, and your preferences and biases. Typically this is what Mugu gets from reading resumes:
- What you should know and what you don't know
- Your personal goals and career priorities (whether you have an objective section or not)
- Whether you're telling me a bunch of crap
2) When I ask you a question, I am looking for a connection. Assuming that your resume is impressive enough to get an interview. Now you walk in, all nervous, but all in the while trying to do your best to impress. I assume that you are technically competent. The question is, whether I can work with you. That's how I ask questions:
- Things you should know. I want to see if you are up to standard.
- Things I know you don't know. I want to see how far you go before you reach your limits.
- Things I don't know. I want to see if you can convince me to see things your way.
Strangely, the last type of question is most difficult. I might not know the answers, but I will know if you are trying to BS your way out. It's better to come clean and tell us that you don't know, either.
3) If you fail to explain things clearly to me, you don't understand the topic good enough. You have spent years mastering your own topic. Now it's time to tell people what great work you've done. The problem? No one understands what you are trying to say, because every other word is jargon. One who truly understands his subject will be able to explain his understanding appropriately. You can always keep asking why indefinitely, but it takes great wisdom to say when to stop. It also shows me that you have put some thought into what you are doing, aside from just doing what your supervisor told you to do.
4) Don't think that you can change the way we do things. Mugu has made that mistake in his more ignorant days. Now I see what kind of a prick I was. You are here to work with our system, not the other way around. The difference you make will be your work, not your system. One of the most popular things to say is, "I would like everybody to use [insert someone's favorite open source tool here]." If it is such a good tool, it would have been part of the corporate workflow a long time ago!
5) If I like you, we will make things easier for you. A big part an interview is to see if we connect, whether we "click" will be very important. This is not an exact science, and that's why most people tumble on this. In the mean time, while I don't want to be so biased, but I would be inclined to help you out a little if I like you. But, of course, I cannot make it that obvious ...
What does Mugu want to see from you. Mugu doesn't ask for much. All that is required is that
- You have a good idea of what is required of you.
- You are honest about your strengths and weaknesses.
- You know what are important to us.
- Your resume has a good experience-to-page ratio.
I did not make that decision, but if I were chairing that interview, I would not have asked him to come back for a second interview. Here is what happened.
- Every other word he used was jargon.
- He tried to BS his way out of some questions for which he should know the answers.
- He told us from his resume he could speak a foreign language, but in fact he couldn't.
- He told us, in no less than 5 occasions, how his GPA was so high he could go to prestigious schools I have never heard of.
Somehow I have a feeling that he will be working next to me in a few month. Time will tell.
