I had an interview this morning so to prepare for it, I read a bunch of sites on how what types of questions are usually asked and how to respond to them. For every major question, there is a pat response that not only are you supposed to know, but have memorized to the point that, as one site said, you could recite if awoken at 2 in the morning. The point of some of these questions is to sound as confident as possible and the point of some of them is to not actually answer the question asked. One of the pat responses, in fact-- the one about the always tricky "what would you consider one of your weaknesses", became so well known that it doesn't work anymore and so lately another pat response is being suggested, one that says the same thing as the previous pat response but in a different way.

The result of this is that in a way, an interview is just a verbal test, like the kind you had in history or math class. Your asked a question and your supposed to answer with the correct answer. Answer correctly, you get a point. Answer incorrectly, you lose a point. It's just yet another hoop that you're supposed to jump through. You could also say that it's like running for politics in that every politician is told to give the campaign talking points no matter what the question is. This keeps them from saying something they shouldn't (like their own opinion or reality) and keep them out of trouble. It's no surprise that most winners in an election are the one's who stick to the script. It's also no surprise that people are completely turned off by it because everybody sees right through it.

Now while this makes senses to the interviewee, it doesn't seem quite right for the interviewer because they know for whatever question they ask, the response they get is primarily a bunch of BS some book told them to say. None of this is in any way helpful to the interviewee because they never really get a true perspective of that person. Like say somebody's main weakness is they have a short temper and have a tendency to yell at people for no reason. Now this would be something a potential employer would want to know but since nobody is going to answer the question "what would you say is your weakest skill" by saying "I tend to yell at people all the time," the employers would never know that until they hire that person and watch them yell at people all day.

So how'd I do today? B+ at best. I just have to hope somebody doesn't get an A.

Oh, I talked to about three people (two of them via conference call) and everybody ended the conversation by saying "good luck." Now does that mean "we really liked you so good luck in the interviewing process because we're rooting for you" or does it mean "there's no way we're going to hire you so good luck out there." Or does it mean nothing at all?

Nah....nothing in job interviews mean nothing at all.