So....some of you may know, but I have a lot of job interviewing experience. For the past 9 months I have been employed as a job coach. With that being said, I accompany my clients to, on average, two job interviews a week. Do that math, that's about job 90 interviews in the past 9 months. Then you have to add all the interviews I've done for myself throughout my life, and the number is probably about 140 or so....(I actually have no idea how many job interviews I've gone to in my life, but 50 seems like a good number.)
Dang it. Actually doing the math doesn't have quite the effect I wanted it to. But try adding up how many interviews you've probably been to in your life?? Then I think you'll see how big my number actually really is :)
Anyways, I'm job searching for a full time job (because my job as a job coach is only part time) and going to interviews this time around has made me realize something. And this "something" most definitely does not come up in everyday conversation, so I wanted to write about it on here.
At every interview, at some point, the interviewer says something along the lines of...
"Well I have a few more interviews.....so I'll get back to you next week"
"I'm doing interviews all day today...."
"I've interviewed several people already and have some more tomorrow...."
(Unless you're the rare case that gets the job offered on the spot. Which I've seen three times in my job interview existence.)
I obviously know they're conducting interviews because their previous interviewee was walking out when I walked in and because their next interviewee is waiting in the lobby when I leave.
I never thought anything of that line until recently.
I went to a job interview with Utah First Credit Union. I was impressed by a lot things I saw/experienced during the interview process (I had three interviews with them), but the thing that impressed me the most was that never ONCE did they say anything about interviewing anyone else.
...I saw one of their next interviewees waiting in the lobby when I left, so I know they were interviewing other people, but other than that, it was like it was this big secret they were trying to keep from me.
But I actually appreciated it. It made me feel special, like they valued me as an interviewee so much they were afraid to tell me they were interviewing other people. Like they were afraid I, the person jumping through hoops to get the job, would walk away if I found out they were interviewing other people.
And it also made me have more respect for their company.
This probably seems weird, and most people conducting interviews don't think any thing of it, and I certainly didn't until I experienced the opposite. But it was just so classy of them. I really appreciated it.
So I decided that if I'm ever the one conducting the interviews, I won't feed that line to anyone.
