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I've done many, many interviews - starting with more technical and then onto management now. I always felt I was missing something once I strayed out of pure technical questions. The podcast on interviewing helped me realize what I was missing in feeling comfortable with pulling it all together. I had lots of good questions but no focus. Okay - I did know I'm trying to figure out if they fit now and in the future but I couldn't pull it together cohesively. The company gives us tons of questions and we're all given areas to focus on but I always felt awkward.

I listened to the podcast on last minute interviewing last week and pulled together my form with 10 questions - 1 question about business news, 1 on book read, 4 questions about mangement philosophies & characteristics & practices & results, 2 questions about the resume, 3 behavioral - giving feedback & learning something & convincing someone and 1 on what excites them. The key was they were all focused on figuring out the 4 things suggested - inter-personal skills, cultural fit and management/personal development skills. (This wasn't a technical job so no technical questions.) Knowing I was focused on those 4 things, made it easy to pick questions to fill in the gaps and know exactly what I was looking for out of the responses.

Thank you so much! We just had a hiring freeze lifted and I've been told that I may get pulled into interviews for other positions. I felt I could say sure confidently and really provide value to the process. :)

ctomasi's picture

I keep my "Quick and Dirty" interview notes close at hand. While 95% of my interviews are scheduled and use the behavioral questions, once in a while I get pulled in quickly and am glad I can get to the Q&D questions.

Closely related to Q&D questions... I read this on TechRepublic's website this morning and thought I would share it here. I know a lot of the MT listeners are technical Managers. While this is specifically targeted at hiring programmers, I feel it relates to almost any technical (IT, engineering, etc) position, including IT Managers.

http://downloads.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=346127&tag=nl....

I'm going to be discussing it on the Manager Round Table list next week.