Deputy Director of HR-Services Department, BDO Unicon Outsourcing
What you will learn after reading this article: Why questions about recommendations from previous employers are a sign of bad taste for the employer.
To choose their ideal candidate, companies do not hesitate to ask personal and provocative questions that often leave applicants perplexed. This results in the classic selection of the best among equals being reduced to a "cat and mouse" game. The candidate does his or her best to save face, while the potential employer keeps trying to catch him or her lying or identify a discrepancy in the position.
The interview has turned from a creative process into a standardised formality with a typical set of questions. The Web current has a plethora of articles on "How to answer a recruiter's questions" and "How to pass an interview." In this article, your colleagues will tell you which questions to turn down in an interview to avoid wasting time.
“Are you a humanist or a techie?” In January, the Superjob.ru site administration abandoned its “education” column for posting vacancies. They had come to believe that in the modern society, experience is more important than education. Many employers now focus on the professional skills of their would-be staff and not their GPA scores.
Professional profile is important. For example, we employ accountants with an education in economics or finance. But I have not met any candidates with a degree in librarianship applying for the position of accountant.
It is not so important which institute the candidate graduated from and in which city he or she studied. However, the education profile allows us to understand a person's list of interests and general mindset. For a number of professions, it is important to find out whether the would-be specialist is qualified in a particular field.
"What are your three main competencies?” The candidate begins to speak generally about stress tolerance or his or her ability to work in a team and handle difficulties. Answers to such questions provide no important information, and very rarely can they be supported by concrete examples.
It is better to ask the applicant about his or her most interesting projects. How did he or she manage to solve particular tasks in a short time? How did he or she cope with the problem without additional funding?
"Who are your referees?" If applicants fail to provide references to their former employers, this does not necessarily mean that they performed poorly at their previous places of employment. Previous employer-employee relationships may not have worked out well, and all cases should be dealt with individually. It is quite possible that the cause of the conflict might not have been the employee, but his or her former employer. And the latter is not always ready to admit his or her guilt.
If you do get a personal phone number, what is the likelihood that the person on the other end of the line is not the applicant’s best friend pretending to be his or her former department head? You certainly always have the option of checking the information by calling the company directly. However, you might not always have the time or means for that.
Therefore, there is no need of concentrating on the response to this question. You are simply incapable of knowing the whole truth.
