Dealing Effectively with the Stress Interview
Whether justified by the position or not, many interviewers ask stress-inducing questions. Candidates who understand that interviewers generally care more about a candidate’s reaction to a question rather than the actual content of the answer are one step ahead of the game. MedZilla discusses some of these situations and how candidates can better handle them.
(PRWEB) February 6, 2004--There’s an increasingly common practice in
pharmaceutical interviewing in which the interviewer asks the candidate
questions which are designed to induce stress. For example, a candidate who
might have multiple academic degrees could be asked to go to the board and draw
a simple cell. In engineering, a degreed and qualified candidate might be asked
to draw a simple circuit.
After watching the candidate complete the task,
interviewers have been known to laugh and say, “You call that a cell?” or “Are
you done?”
Demeaning? Maybe. But the thought behind the task is not to
see if the candidate can draw the cell or circuit; but rather how he or she
reacts to the situation.
Marky Stein, career coach and author of
Fearless Interviewing: How to Win the Job by Communicating with Confidence, says
there are wrong and right ways to respond to the demand and response.
She
says that if the interviewee reacts by saying, “How dare you ask me something
like that; I have two PhDs!” that’s a bad reaction. It’s also bad if the
candidate appears confused and tries to change the drawing. The good answer, she
says, is to simply to stand back from the drawing and calmly say, “This is a
human cell to the best of my understanding.”
Stress-based questions are
common in interviews in all industries. According to Stein, the question might
be as simple as “What is your favorite color?” If you stress out, act confused
or stop to think about the most political answer, you’ve ruined the opportunity
to show your calm, calculated ability to handle potentially stressful
situations.
“People who have not interviewed for many years are often
surprised at the level of strategy in today’s interviews,” says Frank Heasley,
PhD, President and CEO of MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and
professional community that targets jobseekers and HR professionals in
biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science. “Unless you understand
the motives behind the lines of questioning, job candidates might feel dejected
and insulted, which could very well lead to their blowing the
interview.”
Other tricky questions
“What would you do if you
caught a fellow employee stealing?” might not be what you expect if you’re being
interviewed for a job as manager of radiologic technologists at a hospital.
According to Stein, again, it’s not important that the candidate respond with a
flawless protocol straight out of the company’s employee handbook. Rather, the
candidate might say she would first talk with the coworker and then go to a
manager if the problem persisted. The key to the answer, Stein says, is that you
wouldn’t necessarily go straight to the manager unless the problem was something
having to do with sexual harassment or violent behavior. “Apparently in
corporate America that is preferred behavior to try to handle it with a peer
first,” she says.
If you don’t know the answer to a stress-inducing
question, Stein says, you might smile and say, “Wow! That’s a good question.
That’s something that I’d like to think about.” “Then you diffuse the whole
issue,” she says. “The content of the question doesn’t matter at all.
[Interviewers] want to put you under the microscope and see how you behave under
stress.”
Stein also writes in her book about the “question behind the
question.” This type of question sounds like a perfectly innocent: “What would
you like to be doing five years from now?” The interviewer, Stein says, is
trying to assess if you’re over or under ambitious. If you’re over ambitious,
you might say, “I’d like to be the director of this department in a year.” If
you were under-ambitious, you’d say: “I’m just trying to make enough money for
my next vacation to Hawaii.” A good answer is: “I would just like to continue
learning and growing in my field so I can make a greater
contribution.”
Arm yourself with anecdotes
According to Stein,
candidates should pick six skills that they have and want to pursue in their
jobs, such as management, analysis, assembling, building, creating, directing.
Then, write these “action verbs” each on an index card. On the other side of
each card, write a few reminders of anecdotes about how you performed these
skills successfully with bottom line implications to the job. “Hopefully, you
have three anecdotes for each verb. When you go into the interview, you’re
literally armed with an arsenal of 18 different little stories you can tell
about doing those things,” she says.
Tory Johnson, CEO of Women for Hire
and co-author of Women for Hire: The Ultimate Guide to Getting a Job, says that
in anticipation of any interview, not only is it key to confidently convey your
strengths and successes in positive terms, but it’s equally important to know
how to reflect negative situations with positive, flattering results. Its a
challenge to do this on your feet, which means advance preparation is
important.” If, however, you find yourself unprepared for such questions, ask
for a moment to consider the response. Take a few seconds of silence to think
before you speak,” she says.
Some things are just plain wrong
(legally)
It’s one thing to ask uncomfortable questions, it’s another to
ask illegal questions during an interview. Employment attorney Michael Smith,
with Bechert LLP of Washington, DC, says examples of inappropriate questions
include asking a married woman how she intends to handle childcare
responsibilities in light of her job responsibilities. Another is asking an
older candidate whether he can handle the physical demands of the job—if that
question wouldn’t be appropriate to any other age candidate. Questions about
religious preference, disabilities or health also fall into the inappropriate
realm.
What an interviewer should be doing is asking questions on a
neutral basis, key to whether people can perform jobs regardless of who they are
or what they are, Smith says.
When the interviewer strays into the zone
of inappropriate, an interviewee has a few options, Smith says. Ideally, the
interviewee should tactfully point out that the interview ought be about the
requirements of the job and diplomatically steer the interviewer back to that
issue. A calm, tactful approach is much more effective than a threat that what
the interviewer asked is unlawful or discriminatory.
If an interviewer
makes sexual advances or does or says something else that is intolerable to the
interviewee, the candidate might want to lodge a complaint, internally, with the
company or organization. A company with a hiring policy in place might
re-interview the candidate using another interviewer. The candidate can also
take his complaint to an outside organization, such as the Equal Opportunity
Commission, and could be financially compensated.
Turning ugly
situations into job offers
According to Heasley, job candidates who
understand the reasons for stress interviews can turn these potentially negative
situations around and make them positive. “Many people just don’t know how to
react to some of these bizarre interview situations. It’s not necessarily what
you say, but rather the perception you create and how you react that will result
in that job offer.”
Of course, don’t forget about the basics, Stein says.
“The first 15 seconds of the interview, countless studies show are the most
important. It’s not so much how you answer the questions, it’s making a first
good impression with your manner of dress, your posture, your handshake and a
smile on your face and that has been proven time and time again.”
About
MedZilla.com
Established in mid 1994, MedZilla is the original web site
to serve career and hiring needs for professionals and employers in
biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, science and healthcare. MedZilla
databases contain about 10,000 open positions, 13,000 resumes from candidates
actively seeking new positions and 71,000 archived resumes.
Medzilla® is
a Registered Trademark owned by Medzilla Inc. Copyright ©2004, MedZilla, Inc.
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if electronically, with a link to the URL www.medzilla.com. For
permission to quote from or reproduce any portion of this message, please
contact Michele Groutage, Director of Marketing and Development, MedZilla, Inc.
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