Interviewing Potential Employees

This morning was great fun. PM had interviewed this guy for a helpdesk/project manager/network engineer a week or two ago and told me a little bit about the guy.

What he said wasn’t the good.

When you go to a job interview, no matter what, do not talk down your current position and employer. Or talk about getting into someone’s face. This guy talked about doing both. Bad sign.

The dilemma we had was that the other three candidates that PM interviewed last week either didn’t come close to what we wanted or had a job offer already. Unfortunately the one we wanted got another job. He was young, energetic, full of enthusiasm and knew what he was talking about. Oh, and he also had a good way with people. No wonder he got a job so fast.

So we bring this guy back in for a second interview with the whole department, PM, JW, LG, IA and myself. We had JW and LG on the phone and the rest of us where in a conference room. He’s right on time and first impressions aren’t bad. We then sit down and proceed with the interview. I’m up first and ask some of the usual questions about IT.

What was your most challenging/rewarding IT experience?

Can you work with -blagh –blagh –blagh kind of software/hardware?

Do you communicate well with others?

Where do you want to go in the future in this field?

All of the common questions

I wasn’t impressed with his answers, or lack thereof. Some questions just were not even answered. Like JW says, he kind of almost interviewed himself and rambled with the answers he gave. He also came across as not really wanting to learn any new things until forced, which is a very bad thing in the IT field were things change daily.

We keep him there for about an hour and then walked him to the door.

The after interview meeting was interesting, we went to PM's office and called LG and JW; everyone was a thumbs down. We were asking PM if there were any other candidates. He assumes that there are and that the recruiter is on it. It’s a very tight market right now in DC for IT help and you don’t want just anyone. They need to be able to fit in with the organization’s culture and your team.

I guess we’ll just treat this one as a test interview until the next one shows up.