I've been interviewing potential hires for close to twenty years now and a number of years back I had a long unemployment stint myself. I think it's fair to say that I have quite a bit of interview experience on both sides of the table. Recently, I've been interviewing for a new hire here at work and it's just been pretty frustrating.
There aren't really that many things to think of when attempting to get a job. And most of those things should be pretty basic. Sadly, though, it's frequently those very basics that candidates miss on. There are a million books on the job searching process - yes, a million. Not one more and not one less - and there are day long and multi-day seminars and classes all over the place. I thought about putting together a nice seminar to help folks with this, and I still might some day. As I was running the planning though my head, it occurred to me that there's realistically only enough material for about 30 minutes. And that would be:
- 1:00 - 1:05: Introductions and overview
- 1:05 - 1:20: Actual content regarding a successful interview
- 1:20 - 1:30: Questions and answers
And there you have it. That's about all there is. Unfortunately, few would likely pay for a 30 minute seminar so the seminar organizers fill the rest of the day with ancillary information that probably just confuses people and dilutes the actual message. If I were to spread the half-hour out into a full day, I'd likely just repeat the 15 minutes of actual content over and over and over again.
