Interview Tips – It’s Not Always How You Answer the Questions

Hiring managers have all kinds of tricks up their sleeves when it comes to determining which job candidates rise above the others.

Of course, there are the standard items such as the cover letter and resume.

For a position with HMA Public Relations, advancing candidates will take a writing test that includes questions about current events and demonstrates a familiarity with the media.

I had a great uncle who was a bank president in the Midwest.  He would always take job candidates to lunch.  If they salted their meal before they even tasted it, he would disqualify them from getting the job.  His rationale was that if they made such assumptions with their lunch, they would likely do the same with bank customers without actually knowing what their needs were.

A recent New York Post article shared another trick an employer uses in his hiring process.  He explained how he refuses to hire anyone if they fail to return an empty cup to the kitchen at the end of an interview.

The quote from the article:

“I will always take you for a walk down to one of our kitchens and somehow you always end up walking away with a drink,” Mr. Innes said in a resurfaced 2019 interview with the podcast The Ventures.

“Then we take the drink back, have our interview, and one of the things I’m always looking for at the end of the interview is, does the person doing the interview want to take that empty cup back to the kitchen?”

He said it’s about attitude – and whether the candidate is willing to wash their own cup or leave it for someone else to take care of.

These are both unique and somewhat hardline examples, but they both point out that it is often the little things – the things that move the needle in the “team fit” category — that sometimes make the difference on which candidate gets the job.