The Two-Year Job Interview

I'm a bit of a political junkie, so I've been following the Presidential race for months now - even though the actual election is still almost a year away.

I'm from the UK and things are very different there - election cycles last for weeks, not years. So this two-year campaign seems a tad excessive to me, and it made me wonder if the length of the cycle is part of the reason why Americans have such a low opinion of politicians (don't flame me! I said 'part of the reason'!)

I mean, how well any of us would fare if our job interviews lasted for two years? What secrets, mistakes and prior failures would interviewers be able to learn about if you had to spend 24 months making your case for a new position? Imagine how it would feel to finally admit "Yes, I under-estimated the cost of that new computer system back in 1993" or 'You got me - I really thought I had time to finish that project before the deadline and I was wrong," only to have it written up into an article in the company newsletter and distributed around for everyone to read and opine on.

I have to think that by the time you finally got the job, everyone would be a little tired of you, and any mystique you started out with would pretty much be gone!

Cross-posted at Blue Sky Resumes Blog

Comments

[Louise Kursmark]

Louise, good post! At some point the interview process (and the political process) will cross the line from helpful information to unnecessary detail.

What happens in politics is that lots of people (like me) pretty much ignore the primary process - thus letting others make the decision for us! - and get seriously interested only for the "real" election. In the workforce, this equates to having HR or recruiters make the initial screening decisions (sometimes wise, sometimes not) and presenting a slate of finalists to the hiring manager. So if a candidate can go around the screeners/primary election and go directly to the decision maker, he/she might have a great shot! (Read: Michael Bloomberg... or any of our clients who take our advice to go directly to the source.)

[Marcia Robinson]

Great post and comment about this 24 month "interview from hell". For most of us coaching our clients through the second and third interviews are tough enough.

I actually posted and completed an article a few days ago, about not just the length of the job search, but the "illegal interview questions" that are being asked and, more importantly, being answered.

Should we be concerned that we are making decisions about the top job in the country based on illegal interview questions about Race, Color, Sex, Religion, National origin, Birthplace, Age, Disability and Marital/family?

That might still be happening in the "real" workplace more than we think.

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