Jananas

I had an indifferent interview today. Not as terrible as they come, but certainly not good by any stretch of the imagination. It was one of those awkward situations where we just didn’t ‘fit’. We talked past each other, didn’t automatically understand what the other was getting at, didn’t ask questions. And its certainly a strange feeling to spend the entire interview feeling like the person interviewing you is trying to dissuade you from wanting the job.

But bad interviews happen. Its part of life. And even though I felt a little ‘off’ afterward that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, its probably better to happen now, early on in the process, so that I have experienced it. As I’ve been able to process it over the last few hours, I’ve realized where I didn’t understand things as well as I should have or how I could have asked different questions or phrased things differently to smooth things out. I feel like I have strategies now so that the next time it happens I’ll be better prepared.

The real reason for this post though is that I HATE STUPID QUESTIONS. Yup, dislike it so much that I felt the need to use all caps to express it.

I was interviewing for a financial analyst role (in this case, defined as doing mostly forecasting/planning/budgeting, with some added analysis, business casing, and ad-hoc deep dive stuff – all stuff that I’ve done before and am well versed in). It was for a Canadian company with a credit card offering. We talk, not very productively, about my past experiences.

And then this one gets dropped: “If you were in a financial analyst role at the TTC what’s one suggestion that you’d make?”

My first thought was, oh my aren’t we trying hard to be edgy and up to date. I can just imagine this person reading/experiencing all the typical TTC stuff being talked about in the news lately and then thinking ‘I could make an awesome and timely and relevant interview questions out of this’. It came off as lame and trying too hard.

More so, the question itself isn’t very good mostly because of how its framed. The question is asking me for a suggestion that might come out of a financial analyst role. Except that my resume (and work experience and even the job that I’m interviewing for) all highlight the fact that I have no transportation industry experience or government experience or anything that would be remotely relevant. Which means that I have no knowledge base from which to extract ‘financial analyst’ based suggestions.

My assumptions is that my interviewer was trying to get at how I would approach a typical problem – in which case a better question might have been “In a financial analyst role at the TTC, how would you approach finding a solution to a problem?”.  What this question sis asking for is the typical thought process I would go through when looking into problem. My answer would tell you a lot about how I think, how I approach an issue, what my problem solving capabilities are – all things that are relevant to the role.

And this question I could have answered – detailing what sort of expenses I’d look at (gas costs, maintenance, construction of new lines, salaries, union dues, etc.) vs. revenues streams (tickets, taxes, government funding), how to increase ridership, public policy issues that might impact decision making criteria, or even greater social good issues around the important of a good public transit system overriding typical answers from a strict cost-benefit perspective.

But I didn’t mention any of that. I was too flustered by how awkward things were and wasn’t able to really process what was going on and what I needed to do. I did try to take a step back and ask for clarification so that I had a better understanding of what the person was looking for (at least its a step towards better communication!), even if the fit was so off in this case that it didn’t really help.

Here’s what gets me though – I don’t even know how relevant the question was to the role I was interviewing for. The interviewer was trying to extrapolate my ability to provide drop of the hat suggestions (and jaw dropping, interviewing stopping, amazing ideas at that) on something that I know nothing about in an industry with significantly different considerations than the one I was interviewing for (i.e. public policy and social good issues) to my ability to perform a role with the same name in a for profit credit card industry. Maybe the question was more about thinking on my feet. But you know, a good starting point for that is asking good questions.

A good interview is as much about the skills of the person asking the questions as it is about the person answering them.