So...I spent this week interviewing candidates...
for a couple of positions we have open at about the same level I'm at...sort of hiring my replacement.
Anyway, I am completely flabbergasted. These were all college graduates with many years of experience in the workforce and in my industry...and they were awful. Most of them were bad in the interview. They gave incomplete answers to questions anyone who has worked in auditing for 6 months should be able to talk about at length. None of them had a really good answer prepared for questions that show up on any job interview (like "what could you contribute to the department" or "discuss an instance when you had conflict with a team member and how you resolved it"). There were several questions where we asked for specific examples of how they dealt with different situations...and they just couldn't do it. It was like pulling teeth.
The last time I did a job interview, it took over an hour. These lasted about 30 minutes apiece. And none of the interviewees seemed to think this was odd.
But the worst part...we require applicants to do 3 Excel exercises and write a paragraph on what they bring to the department in Word. And save them to a disk. Three of the five didn't even do the Excel exercises. One didn't do the Word paragraph and another didn't save it in Word as per the instructions. And the ones who did do the Excel exercises didn't do them very well. *sigh*
I don't want to hire any of these people. I don't even think my boss needs to do a second round of interviews with any of them. They were less than impressive.
I just wanted to whinge.
Anyway, I am completely flabbergasted. These were all college graduates with many years of experience in the workforce and in my industry...and they were awful. Most of them were bad in the interview. They gave incomplete answers to questions anyone who has worked in auditing for 6 months should be able to talk about at length. None of them had a really good answer prepared for questions that show up on any job interview (like "what could you contribute to the department" or "discuss an instance when you had conflict with a team member and how you resolved it"). There were several questions where we asked for specific examples of how they dealt with different situations...and they just couldn't do it. It was like pulling teeth.
The last time I did a job interview, it took over an hour. These lasted about 30 minutes apiece. And none of the interviewees seemed to think this was odd.
But the worst part...we require applicants to do 3 Excel exercises and write a paragraph on what they bring to the department in Word. And save them to a disk. Three of the five didn't even do the Excel exercises. One didn't do the Word paragraph and another didn't save it in Word as per the instructions. And the ones who did do the Excel exercises didn't do them very well. *sigh*
I don't want to hire any of these people. I don't even think my boss needs to do a second round of interviews with any of them. They were less than impressive.
I just wanted to whinge.