The Best and Worst Interview Questions

[caroljane]

You are right, and I am sure that you do not let your feelings about your present employers colour your answers to your future ones. Just look out for yourself and the future.

[Selene]

...this means I wasn't able to get anything in writing, and I have no legal claim to the promotion. Having said that, nobody is disputing that I deserve the promotion - they're just telling me I have to wait whatever amount of time HR takes to post it. The problem is that could literally take years...

Bob:

If your claim would be validated and a Court, or, other arbitration panel found in your favor, is it possible that the award could be retroactive to the date that they started to funnel work that was above your pay grade?

A...

[Robert Baratheon]

Bob:

If your claim would be validated and a Court, or, other arbitration panel found in your favor, is it possible that the award could be retroactive to the date that they started to funnel work that was above your pay grade?

A...

It's tricky but not impossible to prove. The on-paper difference between the pay grades is something like "performs tasks with some supervision" and "performs tasks with minimal supervision." In practice, we all have a good sense of who should be where, and nobody is disputing that I should be promoted. In any event, I don't particularly want to sue or grieve my employer for the next two years. The most likely outcome would be an order that I not receive work above my pay grade with the possibility of a little back pay. As Daunce pointed out, it's really more of an ethical line they crossed. I don't approve of how they handled the situation. Lots of soft factors in play.

[Selene]

Bob:

If your claim would be validated and a Court, or, other arbitration panel found in your favor, is it possible that the award could be retroactive to the date that they started to funnel work that was above your pay grade?

A...

It's tricky but not impossible to prove. The on-paper difference between the pay grades is something like "performs tasks with some supervision" and "performs tasks with minimal supervision." In practice, we all have a good sense of who should be where, and nobody is disputing that I should be promoted. In any event, I don't particularly want to sue or grieve my employer for the next two years. The most likely outcome would be an order that I not receive work above my pay grade with the possibility of a little back pay. As Daunce pointed out, it's really more of an ethical line they crossed. I don't approve of how they handled the situation. Lots of soft factors in play.

Bob, I understand completely.

I was just calculating whether the validating fact pattern could be established.

I subscribe to the "someone has to breach the barbed wire" theory of a struggle [a modified Sun Szu theory of conflict]

Not sugesting you be that person, just mulling over whether it could be done and how.

Thanks

A...

[dldelancey]

The strangest one I got was "Have you ever been sexually harassed on the job?" Maybe the company had had problems with that, but I didn't know that. Jeez.

I once was asked, "Have you ever sued an employer for being sexually harassed on the job?" The implication of both your question and mine being that the victim of such harrassment is the one to be avoided, not the perpetrator.

[caroljane]

Yes, indeed. I got a pretty good idea of why the job was vacant.

Incidentally,I truthfully answered No to the question. I had been flirted with and asked for dates, but not pestered. I had to listen to my boss's sexist jokes, but not overtly punished for not laughing at them. The workplace was fairly sexist back then but |I was never prevented from doing the job . I also got breaks from colleagues for being the only girl in the boys' club.

[Selene]

Excellent points Carol and Deanna:

I worked "under" a very strong woman in an all male field in the '70's, civil engineers.

The sexism issue was just about to begin boiling.

Kinda what happens when you are cooking and you leave the pot with the tight lid cooking and get distracted by other "stuff."

I would come in in the morning after she and I had been out at two (2), three (3) community meetings the night before, to obnoxious heads of departments going, "So, how is it working under _______? We heard you guys were out late last night.," crap.

Just on the edges.

I finally figured out a way to silence the lambs.

A...

[caroljane]

You, underneath? I am shocked Adam, shocked.

To end my interview story, I did not get the job. They hired a man.

[Selene]

You, underneath? I am shocked Adam, shocked.

D/s so misunderstood by so many.

Just never enough time.

[Robert Baratheon]

I have a female manager who is overall very good and supportive (aside from the specific frustration I voiced earlier), but I've noticed a disturbing pattern in my agency of hiring a hugely disproportionate number of female engineering/technical managers. It's roughly 50-50 at this point, which can only be the result of affirmative action on steroids considering 10-20% of engineers are women. If a woman is truly the best candidate, then she should be hired, but hiring so many women just based on the "novelty" of it or to make the agency look "diverse" is a disservice to everyone. Of course, I could never say anything publicly.

[Brant Gaede]

I have a female manager who is overall very good and supportive (aside from the specific frustration I voiced earlier), but I've noticed a disturbing pattern in my agency of hiring a hugely disproportionate number of female engineering/technical managers. It's roughly 50-50 at this point, which can only be the result of affirmative action on steroids considering 10-20% of engineers are women. If a woman is truly the best candidate, then she should be hired, but hiring so many women just based on the "novelty" of it or to make the agency look "diverse" is a disservice to everyone. Of course, I could never say anything publicly.

You are assuming a commonality of competence with private industry if not other government agencies. Let's assume--this is not necessarily true--that these types of engineers have three general levels of competence and pay: x, xx,and xxx. Let's also assume your agency needs and pays for x. Perhaps at x the ratio of applicants male and female is 1:1. At xxx it might be 100:1. There goes your conclusion about "only." Hence you would actually need to do a study and collect more statistical data. Such might indeed support what you now think is true.

--Brant

in my very limited experience government lawyers are much more impressive than government engineers

[Robert Baratheon]

You are assuming a commonality of competence with private industry if not other government agencies. Let's assume--this is not necessarily true--that these types of engineers have three general levels of competence and pay: x, xx,and xxx. Let's also assume your agency needs and pays for x. Perhaps at x the ratio of applicants male and female is 1:1. At xxx it might be 100:1. There goes your conclusion about "only." Hence you would actually need to do a study and collect more statistical data. Such might indeed support what you now think is true.

I don't have any reason to believe female engineers are inherently more competent managers than male engineers, so I have no reason to believe the selection pool would vary significantly from the overall engineering workforce.

in my very limited experience government lawyers are much more impressive than government engineers

I'm both, so I wonder if that places me above, below, or somewhere in the middle. In my somewhat less limited experience, I agree with your assessment.

[caroljane]

Robert, it is quite possible that your management situation is the result of a general policy directive, something like, women are half the workforce so they should be half the management force... but that is just an unprovable speculation.

[Robert Baratheon]

Robert, it is quite possible that your management situation is the result of a general policy directive, something like, women are half the workforce so they should be half the management force... but that is just an unprovable speculation.

Such an explicit policy would be unconstitutional in the United States under the 14th Amendment because it would involve the use of a hard quota. However, the Supreme Court has (incomprehensibly) ruled that organizations may use a subjective "weighting" system of affirmative action and not violate the Equal Protection Clause. I don't doubt that there is some kind of concerted effort to weight the applications of female applicants because there is no way the proportion of female engineering managers could have become so skewed if there wasn't. It also seems to be more pronounced the more technical the position is, to the point where if a chemical engineering office manager position is posted, it is almost certain to be filled with a female applicant.

I haven't been around long enough to rise to the managerial level, so it hasn't affected me directly in any way - I'm rabidly pro-merit/anti-affirmative action as a general rule. Interestingly, the most destructive federal hiring policy which everyone complains about is veteran's preference. If a veteran applies to a position, the position will typically be closed because it is practically impossible to avoid hiring the veteran, even if they are one of the worst technically qualified candidates.

[Brant Gaede]

You are assuming a commonality of competence with private industry if not other government agencies. Let's assume--this is not necessarily true--that these types of engineers have three general levels of competence and pay: x, xx,and xxx. Let's also assume your agency needs and pays for x. Perhaps at x the ratio of applicants male and female is 1:1. At xxx it might be 100:1. There goes your conclusion about "only." Hence you would actually need to do a study and collect more statistical data. Such might indeed support what you now think is true.

I don't have any reason to believe female engineers are inherently more competent managers than male engineers, so I have no reason to believe the selection pool would vary significantly from the overall engineering workforce.

in my very limited experience government lawyers are much more impressive than government engineers

I'm both, so I wonder if that places me above, below, or somewhere in the middle. In my somewhat less limited experience, I agree with your assessment.

That's why it would need to be studied. As for your competence it cannot be judged by this kind of categorization. You can categorize me as my father's son, but he had 55 to 60 IQ points on me.

--Brant

[caroljane]

Robert, the veteran`s preference seems so right, yet I see how impossible it could be in practice, and this is a tragedy for the veterans and for your workforce, which should be able to reabsorb and embrace your defenders.

My father was lucky. he married a wife who nagged him into taking the civil service exam, because she knew veterans got preference. She believed it was all about nepotism and his personal qualifications did not matter much. He liked being a carpenter and did not much fancy wearing a uniform or taking orders again, but he wrote the exam, and manfully guarded the border for the next thirty years.

Like Brant`s father he had many IQ points on me He discouraged me from following in his footsteps despite the good pay and the advancement he had achieved.

[Robert Baratheon]

Robert, the veteran`s preference seems so right, yet I see how impossible it could be in practice, and this is a tragedy for the veterans and for your workforce, which should be able to reabsorb and embrace your defenders.

My father was lucky. he married a wife who nagged him into taking the civil service exam, because she knew veterans got preference. She believed it was all about nepotism and his personal qualifications did not matter much. He liked being a carpenter and did not much fancy wearing a uniform or taking orders again, but he wrote the exam, and manfully guarded the border for the next thirty years.

Like Brant`s father he had many IQ points on me He discouraged me from following in his footsteps despite the good pay and the advancement he had achieved.

Veteran's preference is the result of political pandering with little regard for consequence. Everyone knows it's problematic, and yet political forces ensure that nothing is ever done. There are far more reasonable ways of employing veterans without torpedoing the entire federal hiring process such that convoluted HR workarounds have become the norm. One way would be committing to pay a percentage of the veteran's salary out of the general fund instead of the agency's budget. This would incentivize hiring veterans in those close cases, but at the same time it wouldn't bind the agency to selecting an inferior candidate. Unfortunately, most veterans don't want to hear that military service isn't a bona fide job qualification that warrants all manner of special privileges, so any attempt to reform the mess of a system would be shouted down as "anti-veteran."

I'm not mentioning any names regarding that last statement.

[caroljane]

`For`I`m a broken man on the Halifax pieré the last of Barrett`s Privateers`

Stan Rogers

[Robert Baratheon]

I had a three-person-panel interview on Friday with a well-known Washington, DC institution. The interviewers were smart, savvy people who had been successful in business, so I was surprised when they took out a list of painfully cliched situational interview questions that I was required to answer on the spot. There were 10-15 questions in this section of the interview, and each question required me to admit some kind of personal shortcoming or explain how I resolved a generic workplace problem. I have to believe the interviewers knew the questions demanded a degree of dishonesty. I'm wondering now if that's the true probative value of such questions: if a candidate can lie well enough to you to preserve appearances, he can lie well to others on behalf of the organization. If you can't get any dirty laundry from the candidate in such a power-imbalanced setting, he presumably knows not to air the organization's dirty laundry in public. In other words, they may be looking for a certain type of dishonesty.

[Selene]

I had a three-person-panel interview on Friday with a well-known Washington, DC institution. The interviewers were smart, savvy people who had been successful in business, so I was surprised when they took out a list of painfully cliched situational interview questions that I was required to answer on the spot. There were 10-15 questions in this section of the interview, and each question required me to admit some kind of personal shortcoming or explain how I resolved a generic workplace problem. I have to believe the interviewers knew the questions demanded a degree of dishonesty. I'm wondering now if that's the true probative value of such questions: if a candidate can lie well enough to you to preserve appearances, he can lie well to others on behalf of the organization. If you can't get any dirty laundry from the candidate in such a power-imbalanced setting, he presumably knows not to air the organization's dirty laundry in public. In other words, they may be looking for a certain type of dishonesty.

And plausible deniability.

[Brant Gaede]

I had a three-person-panel interview on Friday with a well-known Washington, DC institution. The interviewers were smart, savvy people who had been successful in business, so I was surprised when they took out a list of painfully cliched situational interview questions that I was required to answer on the spot. There were 10-15 questions in this section of the interview, and each question required me to admit some kind of personal shortcoming or explain how I resolved a generic workplace problem. I have to believe the interviewers knew the questions demanded a degree of dishonesty. I'm wondering now if that's the true probative value of such questions: if a candidate can lie well enough to you to preserve appearances, he can lie well to others on behalf of the organization. If you can't get any dirty laundry from the candidate in such a power-imbalanced setting, he presumably knows not to air the organization's dirty laundry in public. In other words, they may be looking for a certain type of dishonesty.

And plausible deniability.

"I cannot answer the question for it requires me to accept its premise as being my premise. It's not who I am."

--Brant

from the pan to the fire: where you are to where you want to go?

[Robert Baratheon]

One thing I've noticed is advertised positions never list a salary or salary range anymore. The field is always left blank.

This Monster.com article has an "HR consultant" complaining about applicants who ask about salary and benefits in the first interview, like it's a major faux pas or an insult to her profession.

Why the cloak and dagger routine? The whole purpose of a job is to receive payment for one's labor. If the salary and benefits being offered are too low, there is no purpose in conducting an interview in the first place. It would be a waste of everyone's time.

What is so offensive about asking what a position pays?

[Brant Gaede]

If you don't want to hire someone offer too low a salary instead of saying we don't want you. If accepted, stick them someplace to match the low pay. The interview is to find out what the applicant is worth to your company, if anything. The power of the interviewer is vitiated if he isn't free to ask first what the applicant wants. (EDIT: I wanted to delete this paragraph for I didn't know what I was talking about, but it was accidentally posted. BG)

One thing I've noticed is advertised positions never list a salary or salary range anymore. The field is always left blank.

This Monster.com article has an "HR consultant" complaining about applicants who ask about salary and benefits in the first interview, like it's a major faux pas or an insult to her profession.

Why the cloak and dagger routine? The whole purpose of a job is to receive payment for one's labor. If the salary and benefits being offered are too low, there is no purpose in conducting an interview in the first place. It would be a waste of everyone's time.

What is so offensive about asking what a position pays?

I can speculate with the best of the ignorant. Why not ask HR?

--Brant

Edited November 11, 2013 by Brant Gaede

[Robert Baratheon]

If you don't want to hire someone offer too low a salary instead of saying we don't want you. If accepted, stick them someplace to match the low pay. The interview is to find out what the applicant is worth to your company, if anything. The power of the interviewer is vitiated if he isn't free to ask first what the applicant wants.

I don't understand - why offer them anything at all? Employers today get hundreds of applicants for every vacancy they post. They are firmly in the driver's seat and can accept or reject candidates as they please.

These aren't walk-ins off the street. They are people applying for a posted position with a full job description, and typically a predetermined salary or pay range. Why the big secret production over what that range is? Is it really just not wanting to throw out the first number? If that's all it is, then why the great offense taken when applicants behave similarly, to the extent where they even use it as a disqualification of the candidate?

[dldelancey]

Employers today get hundreds of applicants for every vacancy they post.

Not always true.

As to not posting salary ranges, I also find it annoying. Especially in today's electronic world where applying for the job is way more of a time investment than printing a resume and popping it in the mailbox. If I'm going to spend 20 minutes registering an account in the online applicant system then filling in the application form, then uploading my resume, then taking the survey....... I wanna know first if it's going to be worth the effort.

On the other hand, not every company has a formalized method for job classification. There are some who actually do decide what a candidate is worth and then offer them that.