The interview I had on Tuesday was for a large public utility. As a result, their hiring practices are supposed to be very by the book and transparent.
First, you need to fill out a long application, involving writing detailed accounts of how your job experiences exemplify various skills. Then, once they receive enough applications, they will call in a group of people for interviews.
Oh wait, you thought this was an interview for an actual position? Fooled. It's an interview to get on the list of candiates who can get called for an interview if an actual position opens up.
And if you can't make the day that they are doing interviews, sorry, you'll have to wait until the next round - the date is NOT negotiable.
Once you get to the interview, they sit you down in a room with a computer and a pad of paper and you have 45 minutes to create a writing sample on a topic they give you. Yup, a bit odd.
Then, you get a list of questions which a panel of two people will be asking you. You can review the questions for 10 minutes and write notes to yourself. Oddly, these questions are almost exactly the same as the questions for the application.
Finally, you have a 30-minute panel interview where you answer the questions, and when you are done, the panel grades your interview and your writing sample.
This grade then puts you in a rank. When a position opens up, the manager gets a list of everyone in the top three ranks to call in for interviews.
At least that's what it says on the sheet I got. My friend who also interviewed when I did said he asked more details about this and the managers actually only call in the top three scorers for each job, and then moves down the list if they are unavailable or do not like the candidates.
This would make a bit of sense, since then your score means more than pass-fail, but I still feel like they are making a lot more work for themselves.
For instance, why bother with Rank 4-7. If you are in any of those ranks, you will never get called in for an interview, so why bother differentiating.
And the ranks are not created to have a certain number of people per rank, so there could be 0 people or 10 people in Rank 1. So why bother with Ranks 1-3 either? You could just give people a score and a predefined passing grade, and either you pass or fail.
I got my score a couple days ago and I'm in the second rank and I think I did well, but really, my score gives me no idea how I compare to anyone else, which is really all that matters now, right?
Posted by dahl at April 2, 2005 12:23 PM