Comfortable Strangeness

July 13, 2005

Today was interview day at work. We have a position that needs to be filled ASAP so my schedule was quickly filled with interviewing potentials. I think the job fell to me mostly because my supervisor doesn’t like interviewing. As she has stated herself, she’s been suffering from famously bad taste as of late with her hiring (ssshhhh… don’t tell her I said anything… haha). I also get the idea that she was attempting to put my psychology schooling to use and see if I could do any better at getting a feel for folks.

Following an afternoon of interviews, we sat down to discuss what I’d seen and heard from the potentials. It didn’t take long for me to realize where her difficulty in hiring comes from. She tries to read too much into the interview… or, to put it another way, she tries to glean much more information from a 45 minute interview than I think is possible.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m an expert interviewer. I’ve had my dud hirings as well. But I realize that there is a limit to what can be discovered about a person when they come in for an interview. For one, most people put a much different foot forward when they are trying to get a job. Some seem very confident, when in fact, they are anything but. Some seem very chatty and sociable only to be quiet and reclusive once the job is theirs. And then of course there are the folks who don’t realize that they’re trying to convince someone to hire them and they act like complete ‘tards.

Of the folks I talked to today, two stand out in my mind because of the way they presented themselves. Polar opposites these people were, yet at the same time, they share a common (but opposite) thread (did you catch the Yoda-speak there).

I know that an interview can make people nervous. I know from experience that it’s tricky business to talk yourself up to a complete stranger. When I interview, I try to present myself as comfortable; that is, I try not to let the fact that I’m a little nervous show. What struck me about the two people in question here is the way “comfort” played into the interview.

With interviewee one, the comfort level was all on her side of the table. I wasn’t uncomfortable myself. But she seemed completely at ease. No… not just at ease. She acted like we’d known each for years and were not in fact the strangers to one another that we actually were. Part of me liked that about her. I like the idea that someone could come into a new job and feel totally at ease with their surroundings. At the same time, I’m not sure I like the idea of assumed best-friends-forever.

Interviewee two, on the other hand, didn’t seem as comfortable with me as number one. But this go around, the comfort level was all on my side of the table. Maybe it was because he reminded me SO much of someone else that it was scary. Maybe it was his personality. But for some reason, I felt like this person was much less a stranger than he actually was. In fact, the interview with him was much different than a typical interview because I felt so comfortable with him. I pulled someone else from the company in to co-interview number two because of the position he was interested in. She felt the same way I did… totally at ease. It was just funny that he didn’t seem to have the same comfort level with the two of us.

So now the dilemma becomes deciding between the two. Which “vibe” is better? The outsider being totally comfortable with the inside, or vice versa? On one hand it says something about a person that they could so quickly feel at ease in a strange situation. On the other hand, it also says something about a person that they could illicit a feeling of ease from strangers even when they themselves did not seem to feel the same.

Qualifications and interview question responses being about equal, which one would you go with?

Category Posted in Human Nature, Noteworthy, Personal