Recently I got an unexpected opportunity to interview some applicants for a startup event. It was a unique experience that gave me a fresh perspective, and I’d like to share some of my discoveries as a first time interviewer (may sound extremely naive and stupid to you :p).
An applicant might expect the interviewer to be familiar with everything in his application packet. I suppose I totally should, if I want to be a nice interviewer, but the fact is that I’m simply not able to bring back all the details of the guy sitting in front of me right after the previous one had left, when I have to talk to 6 applicants back-to-back in an hour. Point is, if there is something important in your materials that you think would significantly increase your chance, be sure to bring it up and remind the interviewer of it – he might miss it otherwise!
As recruiters, all we really care about is whether an applicant fits the position. In other words, whether you’ll excel at the job, and whether you’ll be happy doing it. Some folks in my pool appeared very sophisticated at what they do, but failed to demonstrate the skills and qualities that we were looking for, so we had to reject them. Also, it’s totally cool to have hobbies (music, sports, etc), and I’ll think of you as an interesting person, but it doesn’t make up for your aptitude (if you lack it), and doesn’t have much to do with your chance of getting in.
Passion and motivation can be very appealing, and it’s quite easy to tell whether they are genuine or not.
For the inexperienced: proficiency matters. It’s definitely important to be a fast learner, but relevant experiences tend to be more impressive. Of course there has to be a first step to any new field in life, in which case it helps if you have taken the initiative and got some preliminary experience or research on your own, which also reflects motivation.