May 1, 2009

Glassdoor's peek inside the job interview process

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How many times has this happened to you? You find a great job and manage to secure an interview. You study the company's history and prepare a list of knock-out answers in your head to every possible question you can imagine.

And then you get something like this: "How many trash cans would you say are in Times Square? Take me through your thought process." Or maybe this: "Using the components of a pen, if you could make another item, what would you make?"

Both are real questions asked by interviewers for, respectively, an American Express marketing analyst position and a Tyco Electronics engineering job. They were designed not just to elicit a "right answer," but to catch people off guard and see how they respond to difficult task in pressure situations.

The questions were included in a new Interviews section that launched this week via career information clearinghouse Glassdoor.com. The free service gives readers insight into the job interview process at some of the nation's largest employers, helping to prepare them for the kinds of questions they can expect. Most of the companies are geared toward finance and high tech jobs, with household names such as Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Apple, Dell, Google, and Deloitte, as well as local giants Microsoft and Amazon.

For the last couple of months, Glassdoor has been conducting a "closed beta" test, in which it asked job seekers to describe their job interviews in the last few years. For each interview, the anonymous participants shared details about the interview format, the length of the process and the negotiation techniques they used. They also reviewed their overall experience in terms of difficulty and effectiveness.

What Glassdoor ended up with is a database of nearly 2,000 questions asked by more than 1,000 companies in 40 countries. From these responses, Glassdoor found that 38 percent of the interviews originated from online postings and 17 percent came from employee referrals. About 60 percent of the respondents said they received a job offer and accepted, while only 9 percent declined a job offer.

The questions range from the almost universal ("Where do you want to be 10 years from now?" from IBM) to the completely off-the-wall ("If you were a cereal, what kind of cereal would you be?" from Cisco Systems). In my personal experience, I've been pretty lucky that I haven't been taken aback by any tough or crazy question during a job interview -- although I do remember, right out of college, being unnerved by a gruff editor who glared disapprovingly at me and barked, "So what makes you so special?" (I can't really remember my stammered response, but I eventually did get the job.)

Being an interactive site, Glassdoor will only provide sneak peeks at answers unless you add your own job-search experience to the mix. (Students with no work history can also sign up through their active .edu e-mail accounts.) Once you've given them your story, you can search through all of Glassdoor's 2,000 interview entries by company or by job title, plus other information about salaries and reviews of 23,000 companies.

The Glassdoor Interview tab is only a couple of days old, so I'll have to take it out for a spin and see what nuggets of advice I can find for interviewing in today's market. In the meantime, I'd like to hear some of your stories, too. What was the strangest question you were ever asked in an interview? What were some of your most unusual interview experiences, and what were the outcomes? Keep in touch.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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4 Comments

mac on May 5, 2009 12:54 AM | Reply

While staying with family in California, applied for job with CTB/McGraw-Hill. The day before the interview, someone phoned to say position canceled. The next day, someone called to ask why I didn't show for the interview. Call answered by head of house, who formed unkind opinion I was a slacker and kicked me out of house. This opinion has prevailed for years, and still provides discussion for people with undeveloped brain.

Rojd Mattson on May 5, 2009 8:33 PM | Reply

After graduate school, I was puzzled that no one asked me how my graduate studies would benefit his/her organization. I was the one to always bring it up. However, the worst question I heard was the following, "If you could wave a magic wand and have any job you wanted, what would it be?" I thought the question was so stupid I answered, "A talk show host." I was interviewing for a position as a technical writer for an insurance company. His eyes opened wide in shock. I didn't get asked back.

Rod Mattson

Tina on May 10, 2009 4:08 PM | Reply

These off-the-wall questions always strike me as the interviewer being a smart-a$$ bully.

Melanie on June 12, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply

As a Talent Acquisition professional and the person who sits on the interviewing side of the desk, I'd like to say that I'm amazed to hear of these poor interviewing questions and believe that they are the exception. Unfortunately, I've asked candidates, friends, and family about their interviewing experiences and it's all too true. Too few companies are really educated and apply interviewing techniques that assess candidates' abilities for the job for which they are interviewing and how will this person add value to the organization. When HR gets good at predicting and providing its contributions (people in this case) to the needs of the business, then it will help itself to be seen as a more competent function within the organization. Until then, unfortunately, it will continue to generate buzz and a reputation for asking what kind of cereal would you like to be.

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