I had doubts if I should go
ahead with this video or not. The information I want to share is relevant, and
it can help candidates in their future Skype interviews. But it can also be
misunderstood and considered as lack of professionalism from my side. Nothing
further from my intentions here!
Due to all the respect with
the thousands of candidates I had the chance to interview by now, some
interviews were really amazing, but others were terrible. If you think for a
while, can you guess what makes a job interview really bad, in a way that it
remains in your mind for months and even years after it has happened? That is
exactly what I want to share here.
There are no perfect
pre-defined steps to do a memorable interview. Of course, there are things that
helps, just like there are behaviors that do not help at all the candidate to
give a professional impression and succeed on the interview. If you are smart
and use a bit of common sense, you will probably avoid some of the most basic
mistakes you could do to fail in an interview. Nevertheless, as I have
confirmed already in my experience, “common sense” is something relative, and
can vary tremendously from one person to the other.
For some reason, I realized
people still take a Skype interview as something less serious and important
than a face-to-face interview. I don´t know why it happens, but this is the
only explanation I can find for facing the situations I had to deal with while
doing Skype interview. Similar situations never happened to me before in
personal interviews, so I guess we should all start taking Skype interviews
into a different level.
Here comes a list of real (and
also funny) situations I had to deal with in previous Skype job interviews:
Situation 1
A male candidate appeared on
the screen without any shirt, t-shirt nor polo. Nothing was covering the top
part of his body. Well, I don´t really know about the lower part of his body,
as I could not see it on the video, but the upper part was naked, I could see
that.
He might have noticed the
surprised look on my face once his video turned on, so he immediately justified
himself, saying that “It was very hot on his place, so he decided to take the
shirt off to do the interview and stop sweating”.
I am afraid to imagine what
this candidate would do in case he is at work and he feels that the ambience is
getting warm…
Situation 2
I could see a cat, or a dog
(or even both sometimes) moving behind the candidate during the interview. I
love animals, so I can say it was quite distracting for me, and I assume it
could be distracting for most of Recruiters. At some point, the dog started
barking loud, and the candidate had to stop the interview to take the animal
out of the room.
Maybe the animal should not
have been on his interview room since the first moment, right?
Situation 3
In the middle of the
interview, the candidate´s father showed up in front of the webcam to say “hi”
to me. The father also emphasized that his son was really in need of that job,
and that I should give him an opportunity. The father didn´t want to leave
after he said his speech, so I politely had to ask him to let me speak again
with his soon alone.
Which kind of candidate needs
his father defending his qualities to the Recruiter, during the interview? Is
it to show how competent he is for the job? Be careful with those situations,
because it might create some serious doubts in the interviewer´s mind about the
autonomy and empowerment of the candidate.
Situation 4
When I was interviewing a
woman, at some point I could see a baby´s hair in the lower part of the video
on the computer screen. The “hair” was moving, and I could hear his voice
saying “Mammy, Mammy”. Of course, the woman got distracted, and although she tried
to ignore the baby…. babies do not understand that.
The kid started screaming
during the interview. The candidate apologized, explained it was dinnertime for
the baby, and asked if I could call again in about 15 minutes to finish the
interview.
I did call her later, but
maybe, this interruption should not have happened.
Situation 5
In another interview, I could
hear a kind of “echo effect” in the room, but it happened before the candidate
opened his mouth and could speak. It was like this: a few seconds before the
candidate was going to reply my question with a word, I could hear the exactly
same word in a lower tone. It was coming from another person, but the
microphone could capture that.
I started being suspicious
about it, kept my ears alert, and I finally understood the real situation.
There was somebody else in the room, whispering the answers to the candidate,
so the candidate could repeat the exactly words to me.
Seriously? Why to do that?
Situation 6
A candidate was checking the
watch on his arm from time to time, every minute or so. I asked him if he had
to leave, and he said yes, he had to leave, because he was already late to meet
his girlfriend.
I apologized for taking his
time, and wished him a lovely afternoon with his partner. If the interview
didn´t seem to be important enough to him, why should I care too much about it?
Situation 7
Another story about boyfriends
and girlfriends. A candidate seemed to be tired and was almost falling asleep
during the interview. I thought he could be sick, so I asked if he was feeling
well and if we could go ahead with the interview. He said he was feeling good,
just needed some rest. He explained he didn´t have much sleep “because he went
to his girlfriend´s place on the previous night, and they didn´t stop having
fun all night, so that´s why he was tired today”.
No further comments.
Situation 8
Last but not least… A
classical “phone ringing situation” during the interview. We all know we should
turn off our phones before the interview starts, but still, we can eventually
forget about it, right? What we should not forget is to think properly in case
it rings, when you are in the middle of the interview.
So, the phone was ringing. The
candidate apologized to me, answered his phone and spoke to whoever was on the
other side of the line for almost one minute – I could see that from his webcam
and hear him speaking. After, he turned the phone off and told me he was ready
to start his interview again.
I could not understand what he
spoke about during his phone call, because I do not speak his native language.
For sure, it was something funny and interesting, because he was laughing a lot
during the call. I think the person on the other side of the phone was more
interesting to him than his interview result…
I could go on and on with more
examples, all situations that happened to me, but I guess I have made my point. Skype interviews are
important, as important as any other kind of interview. Do not forget about it.
Do your best and go ahead!
As you know, English is not my
native language. I use it because I can reach more people and share my
experience with you. Feel free to visit my blog at julianarabbi.blogspot.com
and find more articles and videos.
Click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
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