Stories and Some Learnings: Lessons from an Interview

It wasn’t my first interview but I was hardly prepared. The events leading to the interview had happened in quick succession. When I recall this after all these years it feels like a bit of luck and a bit of results of continued hard work and sincerity had contributed to my clearing the interview.

I wasn’t really looking for a job change and was determined to spend at least two years at the organisation where I was employed then. I was however part of a few yahoo groups aimed at helping people know about open positions in different organisations and also helping the aspiring candidates with interview questions and help. By luck or by a chance of fate, I met one of my close friend’s classmate on these groups. We discovered we had a common connect and that led us to communicate and share information with each other. He often enquired whether I looked for a change and I would say no.

But as it had to happen, some equations at my workplace did not seem to fit, some conflicts and clashes came out of nowhere, some questioning and blame games also followed. It was under these stressful circumstances that I decided to ask my friend’s friend to keep me informed. And as luck would have had it, there was a call for an interview which I sailed through.

Before the interview there were some written rounds and puzzles to solve, some English language and grammar skills to be tested and I sat for the interview I knew I would have to give my best and that would be only though honesty.

Now the organisation I was getting interviewed for was more process oriented and mature compared to where I was coming from. The interviewers questioned me about processes, about tools and templates and work assignment methods. So work assignment was random I clearly mentioned, there were excel templates we used and I had some bit of experience in one of the web tools. What I had clarity on was about the process, about how reviews were done and how feedback to the quality of the deliverables was provided.

I guess what scored well with the interviewers then was my ability to explain my current work scope, knowledge of processes and able to understand why a certain thing was being done. However I later learned when I became a part of that team that there was another factor that stood well above all the skills and the knowledge and that was ‘attitude’ — the attitude to perform, to own, to admit and to learn.

The first round wasn’t the only round that I had to go through for this job. The next was a video conference after a few days, and with onshore clients where I was put in a room and where even the offshore interviewers/managers were instructed not to be present. It was one of my first experiences on a video call with an onshore team where the technical questions weren’t difficult but the focus was perhaps on communication, on confidence level and checking my willingness to be flexible and openness to travel if the job demanded. I still have very clear picture of the conference room and me facing the two interviewers, one of them was to be my future lead and the other my future manager.

This was a story of one interview that ended in happiness and me securing that job. There are other experiences too — good and bad both — and I do hope I will jot those down as well. My intentions are two-fold: i) Helps me to pour out in black and white some life experiences ii) might help someone know about the ups and downs and accepting that there are no direct answers to what works and what doesn’t!