I know you've been waiting on the edge of your seat.
You've been wanting to know for the entire day it's taken me to post.
You can say it: you were worried, anxious, nervous for me, and slightly excited as well. ELB's first on-campus recruitment interview.
Well, I'll tell you how it went:
Pretty well.
I got there early, after leaving my class early, dressed in a nice black suit (thank you, Thailand) and a stripy green shirt (I look good in green), and a fly black tie. Needless to say, I was pretty pimped out.
I walked up the stairs to our career center and shivered as I sensed the evil of career services seeping through the glass doors. I walked past the reception desk to the OCR desk and swiped my card, which denied me, entered my ID, which denied me, and finally tried a third time to be accepted. Career services really needs to work on their infrastructure. After that, I sat, and I waited. I pulled out my crossword and I waited. And waited. I was a little early, they were a little late, you know how it works.
Jennifer, as she introduced herself, then found me and led me back to Tim, who conducted my interview.
I walked in, shook his hand, did the obligatory introductions, he sat down, I sat down, and he looked at me. We went over my life's history according to my resume, and I told him about some projects I had done, embellishing only slightly, and definitely dramatizing things to make a good story. What can I say? I like a good story. And then he asked if I had any questions.
That's it? That was the interview? I wanted some hard hitting questions.
What's your greatest weakness?
Tell me about a time you were in a group project and you had a problem.
If a lily pad on a lake doubles in size every minute and at the end of sixty minutes it fills the entire lake, when does it fill one quarter of the lake?
How many ping-pong balls would fit inside a 747 (boy would that be a fun one)?
None of that??
Well, I was a little disappointed, so I decided to challenge him instead. You see, the company I interviewed for is sort of a high-class company, and they had just released word that they were contracting to use the product, name, and likeness of a celebrity known for products in lower-class stores starting in fall 2007 for home decor and linens.
So I asked, innocently,"Why would you do that? Doesn't it devalue your brand?"
I think it caught him off-guard. I think I saw his pupils dilate. Quickly, he regained his composure. "Um... I'm not sure about that. Let me tell you how it relates to luggage," his specialty. Unfortunately, home decor and linens relate very little to luggage.
Pretty soon thereafter, I realized that this might not be the best company for me. Yes, I want an entry level job, but not at the cost of my sanity. That's why I'm not an investment banker.
After the interview, they had me take a forty-question exam that seemed more like a mini-LSAT than a job screening process. And, please, they do a screening exam for candidates who will later tell non-sequiturs about luggage to an employee who asked about branded linens? I don't think so.
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