UncleFluffy said:
Unless its in the construction feild. This is common and happens all the time to 0 bad feelings. Everyone gets hired back.
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Multiple job interview etiquette.
- Thread starter nickn
- Start date
Unless its in the construction feild. This is common and happens all the time to 0 bad feelings. Everyone gets hired back.
Is it bad manners, though? I mean, if you get hired, then a week later get a job offer that affords you either a better quality of life or more money, saying " Hey, I got this job offer that's offering me x, can you compete?" and the answer is " no..." then by all means, you're allowed to move on, whether it's after 3 days or 30 years.
It's not the end of the world, but it pretty classless. If you work in a specialized industry or small town, you'd be surprised what people remember. Burning bridges is not good.
It's employee at will. Sure, you're gonna burn a bridge but it's usually within your right.
As employer, my take it as you made a commitment to accept the job and you need to give it a fair chance. It is not the same as a company laying off people (short of purposely over hiring and cutting people within the first two week). If you accepted the work responsibilities, salary/benefits, and have started training, it is tacky and presumptuous to try to renegotiate any of this right after you started.
RS
I tend to look at it like this: My job, overall, is to provide for my family in the best way possible. My family and myself are who I answer to. If I have the opportunity to provide for them better (more money), more efficiently (better hours) or with less stress to bring home (work environment), then by all means, that's what I'm going to do.
I think the number of employers who actually care about their employees is fairly slim, and the ones who go above and beyond (lets say, Google, for example) do so because the productivity out of happy people far surpasses that of unhappy people. Yeah, they'll let you bring your dog to work at their doggy daycare, but you'll be a lot less likely to say 'no' when they're asking you to work 14 hour days if your dog is taken care of.
Maybe you'll burn a bridge, but your employer should understand that they can't provide the same opportunity or you wouldn't be looking to leave.
I could argue if you know the true market value of your professional skills/experience, that you should never accept a position that offers you below average opportunity or compensation. That is your error.
I also feel like this economy has made businesses crazy. This is the most common question I've gotten on interviews: "Why do you want to work here?"
Well the actual answer is: to make money for myself and my family, but that's not what they're looking for.
Then you have the ominous job application process, whereby you launch your resume off, either via craigslist, or a job board (monster, careerbuilder, etc) into space, and never hear anything back because they're overwhelmed by response. Then if you get the call back, you have a phone interview, then emails, then a personal interview, then, maybe you'll get a job, but they'll let you know in 5 to 7 business days.
Well the actual answer is: to make money for myself and my family, but that's not what they're looking for.
Then you have the ominous job application process, whereby you launch your resume off, either via craigslist, or a job board (monster, careerbuilder, etc) into space, and never hear anything back because they're overwhelmed by response. Then if you get the call back, you have a phone interview, then emails, then a personal interview, then, maybe you'll get a job, but they'll let you know in 5 to 7 business days.
Getting a job on the spot is somewhat rare, but it happens. Happened to me last 3 jobs i got. My last job interview was on Thursday, they called me on Friday and asked if i can start on Monday.
Don't sounds too excited about the company you want to work at.
If company B asks and company C comes up, don't act like you really want to go with company C, it will turn company B off you. No one likes sloppy seconds.
My suggestion is, if it comes up tell them that you have another interview and you were interested to see what kind of place it was and compare your options. Make company B feel like they are on the same level as other companies you are interviewing for.
Interview should be about you finding a place you like just ask much as them finding employee they like. Interview goes both ways. I make them understand that, that while they are interviewing me, i am interviewing them. Just like they have multiple people they are looking at to hire besides you, you have multiple companies you are looking in as well.
The same advise goes for company C interview. Before i got job i have now, i interviewed with a startup that i really wanted to get into. It was an amazing company and i was overly excited about it. I came in very close 2nd because they thought i held back on the interview. The excitement i showed for the place was pretty real, however, it came off fake to them.
Don't sounds too excited about the company you want to work at.
If company B asks and company C comes up, don't act like you really want to go with company C, it will turn company B off you. No one likes sloppy seconds.
My suggestion is, if it comes up tell them that you have another interview and you were interested to see what kind of place it was and compare your options. Make company B feel like they are on the same level as other companies you are interviewing for.
Interview should be about you finding a place you like just ask much as them finding employee they like. Interview goes both ways. I make them understand that, that while they are interviewing me, i am interviewing them. Just like they have multiple people they are looking at to hire besides you, you have multiple companies you are looking in as well.
The same advise goes for company C interview. Before i got job i have now, i interviewed with a startup that i really wanted to get into. It was an amazing company and i was overly excited about it. I came in very close 2nd because they thought i held back on the interview. The excitement i showed for the place was pretty real, however, it came off fake to them.
An interviewer has NO BUSINESS AT ALL knowing who else you are interviewing with or whether you are interviewing with anyone else at all. It is simply inappropriate and a sign of either bad professional ethics or ignorance of them if they ask. You are under absolutely no obligation to tell them whether you're interviewing with others or not. Having said, that, there's no lie; if they do ask, it's enough for you to say that you will be considering all the options that arise and choosing whatever is the best situation for you. They should make an offer based on how qualified you are, not on an estimation of how in-demand you are or aren't and therefore what they think they can get you for.
If a company does come through with an offer while you're still waiting to hear from a company you'd rather be with, then you can tell the offering company that you're waiting to hear from some other options, and ask how much time they can give you before they need your decision. They should at least give you a day to contact the other company and tell them that you have an offer and to ask how soon you'll be hearing from them.
If a company does come through with an offer while you're still waiting to hear from a company you'd rather be with, then you can tell the offering company that you're waiting to hear from some other options, and ask how much time they can give you before they need your decision. They should at least give you a day to contact the other company and tell them that you have an offer and to ask how soon you'll be hearing from them.
Sure. The question there is how long you stick it out until you find a job at your market value. Regardless, I still think it is crummy on a number of levels to quit a short time after accepting a new a job. The more common scenarios I see is people taking a job they are way overqualified for (that they shouldn't have accepted in the first place because it was so far off salary/level-wise) or people quitting because the changed their mind about working at all or over a nominally better offer (i.e. a couple grand - almost nothing after taxes).
RS
As a prospective employer, I may have a legitimate business reason for asking. If there is a candidate I am very interested in that has a rare skills set, it is good for me to know where s/he is in the job search. The I would ask him/her about the level of interest in my job/company. It is hardly unethical or uncommon. It is qualifying them as a prospect for the role, akin to any sales process.
That is a bad interview question. I doesn't tell you anything about a person's true motives or interest level in most cases. I guess you could argue it is some judge of their intelligence/thoughtfulness but there are better questions to get at that.
RS
There are a lot of BAD interview questions...actually, let me take that back. There aren't really a lot of bad interview questions - not including illegal questions; there are just a lot of questions that don't have criterion validity (i.e., predictive power) in the context of the organization and KSAOs of the position. As I've stated in another thread, I do career development stuff. There are two things I tell people when giving counsel.
1.) Interviews are one of the least valid forms of selection (especially compared to something like an assessment center).
2.) Employers are suprisingly more irrational than you might think when it comes to hiring decisions.
1.) Interviews are one of the least valid forms of selection (especially compared to something like an assessment center).
2.) Employers are suprisingly more irrational than you might think when it comes to hiring decisions.
1. Generally, yes. Most hiring managers and some HR people are bad interviewers. I'd still say a skilled, objective interviewer is as good as assessment tests in most fields.
2. Yup. Many people decide in the first 1-2 minutes if you are going to get the job or at least move on to the next round.
On a direct level, yes. However, watching how the interviewee handles the question can be very informative.
While I disagree that such a thing as true objectivity exists, particuarly with an assessment that is ultimately qualitative, the people who are truly good at giving interviews are generally experienced HR people and people with backgrounds in I/O psychology. Unfortunately, they aren't the majority of the people doing the hiring. With that said, there's a ton of research out there that indicates interviews aren't a very valid form of selection. Assessment tests can be incredibly INVALID, depending on how well they're constructed and how they're used. I have a friend who told me a story about some executive he knows who would give people groomed for executive positions the Myers-Briggs test. If any of them had a score that was high in introversion, they wouldn't make it to the next level; she had some vauge idea that introverts wouldn't do well in an executive positon. I told my friend that she has no damn business administering a psychometric and trying to make decisions based upon it because she doesn't even understand the basic theory and psychological constructs underlying the metric.
Unclefluffy said:
True, but the observer must be sure that he or she is being accurate with what they are percieving. With that said, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that many interviewers who ask invalid questions are doing so because they falsely believe that they are being provided with information that directly relates to the KSAOs of the position.
The HR people where I work are some goofballs. Scary to think they screen employees.
I didn't know what KSAO's are, so I did a search. It led me to a cool document: Link Removed. Yes, you will need to open a PDF from an unknown source. If you are scared, you can use Fortiguard to scan the PDF before you open it.
-Mike
I didn't know what KSAO's are, so I did a search. It led me to a cool document: Link Removed. Yes, you will need to open a PDF from an unknown source. If you are scared, you can use Fortiguard to scan the PDF before you open it.
-Mike
