Working in HR i have seen a lot, from candidates, employees, employers even other HR people that make me wonder what the hell is going on with everyone. Today as the title suggests i am planning on providing some useful info through a story about something that you should never do during an interview.
If you manage to avoid that then your chances will most likely go up or in general you will leave a more positive image. As a bonus, because i am generous, i will also share through another story an example of what a company should never do to its employees or they will probably look for other opportunities. First things first, let's start with the first part.
What you should Never do during an Interview
So we had a position for a specific role and a number of people applied. Based on different factors we decided to proceed with some of them, we divided them and i had to interview some. So one of these guys, never replied to the phone when i called, i emailed him and answered after 3 days stating that he was only available for the online interview on a specific day and hour.
In my opinion, when you are looking for a new role, you need to show some flexibility, chances are that i may have way more interviews for that role than some people have interviews in total for different positions at the given time. Also, you need to pay attention to providing your availability as for example if you are available in 2 weeks from now, the position might even be covered by then.
Anyway, i try to get in any person's shoes as we will all have interviews in our lives, thus even though during this time i stopped working, i decided to help him out cause he may actually had issues with his job in terms of time and had an interview. At the start of the interview, the guy seemed a bit weird but it was just a hunch.
I asked him, why he was interested in the role and whether he read something in the job description that led him to apply. He took some time to think, and replied the following:
" I don't remember much but that it was related to Finance right?"
Then i asked him whether he knew the company, or did any research about the company and received the following reply:
"I pass every day from the company in my road to work and got interested."
Fun fact: He was literally talking about another company. He mentioned me the street and such and the company is in a completely different area :P
By that time i knew that this was a waste of time for both of us and thus i asked him what kind of work would he be interested in, regarding tasks and such and as i imagine he said something completely different from the actual position. I told him that the positon is entirely a different thing than what he wants, explained it to him a bit and then asked whether he would see himself doing that.
He said that this is not exactly it but depending on the money he could be up for it. Fast forward the interview ended there and nobody wasted any more time. The moral of the story which has happened a lot of times already is that people don't actually even bother to read the job description or some things about the company.
You can't be applying for positions without even knowing what's the position about. Most likely you will be asked something relevant, you won't have any idea, feel ashamed and waste your time. Also, nobody will proceed with you nor you will leave a positive impression if you have no idea about the company or the position.
Thus, for the love of god even if you don't know anything about the company or even the position before the interview invest a couple of minutes to do research on the company and the role, and see whether this would be something interesting for you. Showing to the other side that you have done your research will only benefit you!
What a Company should never do to its Employees
Now let me share another story, a different story on how can a company lose people. So a friend of mine signed in with a company a couple of months ago where he would work remotely and only once per week he would have to go to the office. In the said company the IT department was working fully-remote.
After 2 months the company announced to everyone that they would change their remote policy. Now instead of once per week, my friend would have to go twice per week in the office and the developers would need to go once. Then after 3 months, they announced that the department my friend is in should go 3 times per week in the office and the developers twice.
As you can imagine this was something the upper management decided without even caring about their employees. As a result, many developers already left and many more are looking for fully remote roles. The team my friend was in her department had 4 people in total, among them a Team Lead. Everyone including my friend announced to the Team Lead, that they would be searching for other opportunities and that they were not happy with the outcome.
Even the Team Lead mentioned that she can do anything about it and that she is looking for other opportunities as well. As you can a lot of people raised concerns, some left already, some announced that they will leave and others re searching for new roles behind the scenes. The upper management simply doesn't care but they don't realize that by doing that they lose smart people and also the whole process of hiring people especially those working onsite is more costly.
The moral of this story is, that your employees matter and you need to consult them before making decisions that will directly affect their everyday lives otherwise the above will happen!
Do you have any similar experiences?
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