When we first started discussing Project 3, to be completely honest, I was quite anxious. I have been to a few job interviews before in my life and even though they went fine, the process was nerve-wracking. Along with the idea that I would be “performing” this interview in front of a group of my peers, this whole project was out of my comfort zone. When I finally started thinking about questions for the interviews with my group, I felt a bit more prepared. Some of the questions we thought up came to us easily because we’d all been to a job interview before so we had an idea of possible questions. However, when it came to more specific questions about our group’s job posting, we came across a bit of trouble. None of us had ever been to an interview for this kind of job so we didn’t have first-hand experience about what questions to ask. We put our heads together and were able to come up with a few job-specific questions for the interview in the end.
During our first dry-run of interviews, my group played the role of interviewers. We had to use our questions we had come up with before, and also answer any questions the interviewee had. This part was a little bit difficult for me because I am not great at thinking on my feet, especially in situations where that is expected. I tend to freeze up and not be able to say anything. This happened once towards the end of our interview when the interviewee had asked us a question and I wasn’t able to come up with a response. Luckily one of my other group members was able to answer their question on the spot which was very helpful.
After observing the role of interviewee, I was very thankful that another member of my group had volunteered to play that role. The people that were interviewed were able to come up with answers to questions on the spot which I don’t think I would’ve been able to. While observing I noticed that some people seemed more comfortable than others, and some answers were more articulate than others. However, everyone was able to get through the interview and answer all of the questions that were asked, as well as ask questions of their own. In my personal experience, my interviews have been a lot less formal, so it was interesting to see a more “formal” interview with a panel and specific questions.
Ranking the candidates at the end was very difficult because they all did so well in my eyes that it was hard to choose. The reasons we had for ranking each candidate were pretty arbitrary in my opinion, and any one of them would have made sense in the #1 spot. However, as a group we chose who we all agreed on and drafted rejection letters for the other two candidates. This part was interesting because as someone who received rejection letters before, I assumed they were all automated, with the same script for each one with only the name changed. This may have been the case for the ones I received, but drafting them showed that some companies do take the time to respond individually.
