Dumb interview!

[Pretzlgl]

Recently had a computerized telephone interview as a preliminary interview with questions like this. "On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being strongly agree and 1 being strongly disagree, answer the following questions."

Have you wanted to be a nurse since you were little?

Do you have more stamina than your coworkers?

Do you do everything your Nurse Manager tells you to do?

(Yeah right, like jump off that bridge...)

Do you agree that the administration at your facility is always right?

And on, and on, and on.

Then a live phone interview next with questions frighteningly similar.

Anyone out there experienced anything similar? And is it just me or is this strange?

[colleen10]

Generally, I have been taught in my HR jobs that I have had that those who use these questionaires are not well skilled in the areas of interviewing and don't know what to ask and what to listen for. A company that I worked for used to use a double sided sheet of paper listing about 40 description words. One side asked "please check off the words that you feel best describe you". The second side were the exact same words only this time you were to "describe the words that you feel others would use to best describe you." You punch the results into a computer and then whamo - you get a personality description. Most of the time the managers that were doing the hiring didn't even know how to read them.

Good for you for running, not walking away from this place. I always say that the HR group should be the nicest most polite group of people at any company or hospital because they should realize that they make the greatest impression on new hires.

[sjoe]

You can easily figure out how such a company treats its employees. Obviously not a place where you, or anyone with self respect, would want to work. At least you'll recognize this kind of stuff again when you hear the first question. That will save you the time it would take otherwise to answer the others.

Just when I thought I had heard everything!

[abrenrn]

Funny. Way back in 1986 I had a real live interview that went much the same way.

I was applying for summer jobs between third and fouth year at hospitals. One hospital I had applied to sent me a letter telling me when and where to be for an interview, as well as telling me to bring a transcript. I received it when I got home, late, from school, the night before the date of the interview. I was off the next day. I guess the hospital checked with the school about my availability. Not with me.

So, I went the next day but I did not make the trip into school to get my transcript which would have been easy if I had gotten the letter one day sooner. I figured I could get it to them if I was offered the job and they needed to check.

At the interview, conducted with a classmate, I was chastised for not having it. My unsuspecting co-interviewee (a classmate) had gotten her letter the night before and she had time to pick up her transcript. I was then told, "Compliance is very important".

She then took my classmate's transcript, showed it to me and asked if mine looked like hers. I told her pretty much, I took the same classes and everything. That was not good enough for the interviewer. She wanted to know if it was exactly the same. Again, I said pretty much. Are your grades the same? Again, I said, pretty much. She said, exactly the same? Finally, embarrassed to be even looking at my classmate's transcript, I said no, not exactly, I had one B and the rest were As.

The interviewer then turned to my classmate (mostly Bs) and said, "Well, doesn't that make you feel good? Having her tell you how many As she got."

Needless to say, I didn't bother to get my transcript to them. To my surprise, they sent me a letter telling me what day to start work. I had taken another job in the meantime.

Computers, real people, they want the same thing it seems, no matter who's asking.

And, it did not occur to me that this recuriter probably violated the law by sharing another's confidential transcript with me. Not at the time. It has since.