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April 01, 2008
On the Other Side of the Table
These last few weeks we have been conducting interviews to fill a few openings with the Peers for next year, and I have been lucky enough to be able to help with a few of them. These interviews have given me a brand new perspective on the interview process because it has allowed me to appreciate the questions that are behind the questions that are asked - a phenomenon that is in all interviews.
A big thing that we look for in peers are an understanding for the real impact of an experience that builds into a career or simply a goal of a career. For example, my internship with the DC Public Defender Service looks great on a resume or law school application simply based on what I was doing, but, I appreciate it for so much more.
As an intern I saw the bad side of the criminal justice system, the poverty that often spawns crime, and the terrible segregation that pervades throughout DC. I also helped, in a very personal way, clients who had rarely been given anything in life, so that they might avoid everything that goes along with jail time.
Because of these insights, this internship is valuable in two ways - both as a really impressive addition to my resume, and also as a great topic for an interview, where I can showcase my passions, depth of experience and future hopes and dreams.
A similar understanding is what I have been looking for in every one of my interviews, and is the "question behind a question" that I have posed to all of our candidates.
The important thing to realize is that I am not going to ask:
"Do you appreciate your internship for both its extrinsic and intrinsic value?" Despite the fact that that is what I really want to know.
A more appropriate question is slightly masked:
"I see you experience with so and so, what was valuable about it? What did you take away from it? Why would you suggest it to someone else?"
It is tough to see these underlying questions, much less to answer a question that isn't even actually asked! However, you have to realize that each question has a purpose, and that an interviewer isn't looking for a restatement of what you put on your resume.
To get a little experience in seeing those underlying questions, think about the main goal of an interview: separating qualified candidates to find the perfect fit for a position. The only way to do this is to ask the same general questions of all candidates, so that you can compare and contrast the quality of their response.
This means that your generic response, describing the surface level of what you did, isn't going to cut it. They already have that surface level understanding, so take the opportunity that is the interview to give them a deeper understanding, so that they can answer the big question: Are you the best person for this position?
And if you can do that - you would make a great peer!
-Nick
Posted by glauchni at April 1, 2008 04:22 PM