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Have You Been To A Fake Interview? I Bet You Have.
Fake Interviews are insidious little things.
As a job seeker, they raise your hopes and waste your time. All that time setting up time off from work, getting your “interview suit” cleaned and ready, fighting traffic to the most difficult-to-get-to location in town, and waiting in the lobby a half hour after the interview time. Wasted.
Because they were never really considering you as a candidate. Perhaps they already knew someone they wanted for the position. Or, perhaps, they were just checking off government boxes so they could hire cheap foreign labor.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain what a Fake Interview is and maybe offer some ways to avoid them.
SWIMMING IN AN OCEAN OF POLICIES
As you’re probably aware, most larger companies have all sorts of policies and procedures about just about everything.
Want to change your desk setup? Want to get a new light bulb? Want to staple the annoyingly loud coworker’s mouth shut? There’s a procedure somewhere in the 10-binder-set called the “employee handbook”.
It’s the same (if a little worse) in most corporate Human Resources departments. There’s a policy for everything from “when to refer an employee to company-paid psychological counseling” to “how to address inappropriate (lack of) clothing in the workplace”.
Not surprisingly, there’s also procedures in place for hiring someone.
Procedures such as how a job description must be written, where candidates can be searched for, and how many people must be interviewed before an offer is extended.
THE FAKE INTERVIEW
It is those last two that create the situation for the fake interview.
For instance, suppose that I’. a hiring manager with an opening and I know who I want to hire. Obviously I will interview this candidate, but the policy says that I have to interview some more people, too.
As a result, I’ll have HR set up a bunch of screening interviews and send through a few candidates that they feel are not completely worthless (a harder standard to meet than you might think).
I’ll interview those candidates, tell them about the job, and let them know that “we’ll be in touch”. Which, usually, we won’t be.
HOW CAN YOU AVOID FAKE INTERVIEWS?
Here’s the thing - in about 60% of the hiring situations that I’ve experienced at large companies, the hiring manager already knows who he’d like to hire. Everything else is formalities.
So, chances are some of those “didn’t call back” situations that seem to pile up were Fake Interviews.
Most people unknowingly have been on a lot of fake interviews. The reason is that they are difficult to avoid, especially if you’re desperate for interviews so that you can get out of the Pit of Despair where you currently work.
In order to avoid them, you’ve got to screen pretty heavily on the interviews that you accept.
While I still haven’t figured out how to avoid them completely, here are some steps I recommend:
- Ask How Long They’ve Been Interviewing - The longer they’ve been searching, the less likely that they’re Fake Interviewing.
- Ask How Many People The Hiring Manager Has Personally Interviewed - While it might seem like a good thing that the hiring manager hasn’t seen many people, this can also be a great indicator that there are Fake Interviews going on.
- Ask for a Phone Interview - Preferably with the Hiring Manager. Let them know that you’re trying to conserve everyone’s time and a phone interview would help to do that nicely.
- Make Sure You’re a Great Fit - Once you understand all of the position details, make sure that you’re a great fit. That means you wouldn’t have to learn anything in order to jump in and do the job.
- Push Back If You’re Not a Great Fit - If you determine that you’re not a great fit, tell the HR person that you seem to be lacking A, B, or C skills that they mentioned. Then see what they do. If they say, “That’s okay…” listen for why that’s okay. If it doesn’t make sense, don’t do the interview.
I know a lot of these steps seem counterintuitive if you want interviews, but it’ll save you a lot of wasted time and effort in Fake Interviews.
Enjoy the Search!
-Dan
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Daniel R. Sweet
Chief Cook-And-Bottle-Washer / Technical Recruiter
FRACAT.com - Free Resume and Career Toolbox
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielrsweet
Call me on Jaxtr: http://www.jaxtr.com/fracat
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