Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

I was speaking with some of my high school friends tonight and the conversation drifted to our worst interview experiences.

So I thought I would open it up to the Gradversity readers. What was your worst interview experience? Leave a comment below and let us know!

Every job seeker needs to go through the interview process to land a job. It’s a fact of life.

So given that this is such an important event, it makes sense to be as prepared as possible.

Take some time and ask a friend to grill you with mock interview questions (the tougher the better). It will help get you into the interview frame of mind. This kind of practice can help you polish your delivery and increase your chances of landing the job you really want.

I’d always had a hidden desire to work in high finance until it turned into the scapegoat for the economic disaster. So it caught my eye when I read You Think The Google Interview Is Tough? Try Getting A Job At A PE Firm, I couldn’t resist taking a look. In case you don’t know, PE stands for Private Equity, and the people who work in this profession are the new “Masters of the Universe” in terms of international finance. Even as we come out of the economic turmoil of the last few years, investment bankers are still being paid enormous sums for the work that they do. It’s unbelievable.

Want to get in on the act? Be prepared for a nightmare interview. Here’s one of the scenarios you may see:

…the typical interviewee is walked into a little room and told he has two hours to write out the steps necessary in something like an LBO (leveraged buy-out)…once done, the interviewee is taken into a room with one or more men (it is usually men, he says). They ask him to walk them through each step he took and listen while he justifies the reasons behind everything he suggested. If he does well, he is brought into another room where he begins an interview with someone else. The whole process takes at least three hours, he says, they are trying to trip you up the entire time.

This doesn’t sound like my idea of fun, but if you want to eventually make the big money, you have to be prepared to jump through the hoops!

Ever been through an interview like this?

I have been traveling for work over the last few days and Mrs. Gradversity and I had planned to go out for a nice dinner when I got back. Everything was going according to plan until we sat down at our table and were hit with a wall of perfume.

The woman at the table next to us was covered in the stuff. She must have been wearing half a bottle. And even though she was just about to leave when we arrived, the scent lingered through most of our meal.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. The trouble is that last night, I had a massive allergy attack (brought on by the perfume) and spent the entire dinner sneezing my head off.

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t wear perfume or cologne to an interview (or any other time when you will be meeting a potential employer). You never know how an interviewer is going to react, either from a personal taste perspective (liking or disliking the scent), or from an allergy perspective (sneezing like mad).

Don’t take the risk. Leave the perfume/cologne behind!