Multiple job interviews for one position

[Ginevra]

Do you or your grown kids or spouses have experience with this? This is for a class i am taking. I didn't know it was becoming common to meet with several different interviewers to attempt to get a job. What is this like? Do the interviewers ask different types of questions? What happens if you feel person A was likely to hire, but person b didn't seem to like you?

[5of5]

This varies tremendously.  At some big companies, HR dictates what types of questions are to be asked, and the decision process.  One company I'm familiar with has a meeting of the interviewers and they discuss the form that each person had to fill out.  In this case, each person tends to have different questions to be asked.

[DawnM]

Yes, my husband had multiple interviews.  In fact, his interviews often lasted about a full day.  He would meet with several people in the firm throughout the day,  go to lunch with several who were in the office, etc.....

 

Part of that was to see if the personalities meshed.  I am finding that is very key to many businesses.  They want to know YOU as much as they want to know what you know.

 

He has been at this current job for 9 years, so it has been a while since he interviewed.

 

I will be on the job search within the next couple of years and I haven't interviewed in so long that I am not researching some things to brush up on my skills!

 

Dawn

[bettyandbob]

My ds had 4 interviews for a $9/hour job at an upscale fitness facility. This was for a lifeguard position. He was told ahead to wear business casual to three interviews and a suit/tie to the last one. He didnt get the job. However, I've heard from many people it's an awful place to work.

 

Getting back to your question, I've seen multiple interviews include someone who would be an immediate supervisor, someone who is broadly in charge of the organization, and someone in between. They usually are asking different questions. For the immediate supervisor I would expect questions relating to skills specifically needed. I think one interviewer would bring up the organizations mission statement and what the candidate brings to the mission.

[Guest]

Here's an example that may help answer your questions...

 

My dh is a supervisor and just conducted an interview of several candidates with two other supervisors. They all suggested the questions they wanted to ask in advance, narrowed the amount of questions down, weighted the questions based on importance, and then decided who was going to ask what question (usually they asked the ones they wrote). They interviewed three candidates and during the interview they each rated the candidate on a 5 point scale about how well they answered each question. When the interviews were complete, they tallied the results. The hope is that one of the candidates will score significantly better than the others to make the hiring decision easier. What ended up happening in this case is that they were all within one point of each other. Since my dh was the hiring supervisor, he had to make the final decision. His boss wanted to hire the candidate that she already knew so that's what they did. Another one of the candidates ended up being hired by one of the other supervisors.

This is tremendously helpful. Thank you so much!

[Pippen]

Local school districts have gone to a system of interviewing where the first step is an interview with three administrators asking predetermined questions. This interview is videotaped and available to others administrators in the district.  

 

The second interview is with a building principal, and two other staff members. Questions are predetermined.

 

Rubrics and scoring in relation to predetermined "best" answers are involved in both interviews. Before candidates get an interview they have to pass an online set of questions that compares candidate answers to answers of successful teachers.

 

 

[Rachel]

My husband works for an engineering firm, they generally only do only one interview but it's long. For entry level or non-supervisor engineering positions, interviews are generally all day long. The immediate supervisor, HR person, and a VP sit in on the formal interview that's about an hour. Then the interviewee spends about an hour individually with 2-4 other people he/she would be working closely with, usually engineering and drafting representatives. Then they go to lunch with a group of people. When my husband is hiring he tries to limit the group to him and the engineers this person interviewed with. He has seen interviews where the group is quite large though (everyone in the office loves a free lunch). The ones who actually met with the interviewee individually are the only ones who give input on whether or not to hire the person. They have a sit down and compare notes, they try to do this the same day but it doesn't always happen. My husband has final say on anyone that will be working under him but he always makes sure that those above him don't have reservations before he makes an offer. For example they recently hired an engineer who was quite talented but has more education than is necessary for their type of work so there was a lot concern about "wasting" her talent.

 

When my husband hires he usually does not have multiple people competing for an open position. It's more that someone in the office knows an engineer looking for work or they got a resume from a new grad who looks promising.

 

The process for the admin side is different but I don't know how it works.

[poppy]

The only job I ever had that required just one interview was a phone sales job with very high turnover. Every professional job I've ever had, or hired for, required multiple.

[umsami]

This was the norm when I was working….and when I interviewed.

 

Usually, you'd have 6 or so interviews over the course of the day.  Then we would meet and discuss each candidate, what we liked, didn't like, etc.

[Arcadia]

Hubby is in engineering. For his previous company, when someone comes for an interview in the dept he works in, all of them take turns to interview the applicant as a group but each ask their own questions. All have to agree to hire for someone to get hired.

For his current company, the interview is one on one with the whole dept. and I don't know if all have to agree. The HR did told him some were not happy with the job title so he got the job with the agreed pay and a "lower" job title.

The interviews are whole day affairs with lunch catered.

[QueenCat]

Yes, my husband had multiple interviews.  In fact, his interviews often lasted about a full day.  He would meet with several people in the firm throughout the day,  go to lunch with several who were in the office, etc.....

 

 

This is how it worked for dh's last interview, also 9ish years ago. First, he had a one hour phone interview. Then they flew him up. The night he got there, he had dinner with the head boss of the site. The next day, he met with a few different people, had lunch with a group, and then met 1-on-1 again with the main guy. They gave him an informal offer before he flew home.

[Lanny]

Here's an example that may help answer your questions...

 

My dh is a supervisor and just conducted an interview of several candidates with two other supervisors.  They all suggested the questions they wanted to ask in advance, narrowed the amount of questions down, weighted the questions based on importance, and then decided who was going to ask what question (usually they asked the ones they wrote).  They interviewed three candidates and during the interview they each rated the candidate on a 5 point scale about how well they answered each question.  When the interviews were complete, they tallied the results.  The hope is that one of the candidates will score significantly better than the others to make the hiring decision easier.  What ended up happening in this case is that they were all within one point of each other.  Since my dh was the hiring supervisor, he had to make the final decision.  His boss wanted to hire the candidate that she already knew so that's what they did.  Another one of the candidates ended up being hired by one of the other supervisors.

 

This brings back memories of an in person (not a phone interview, which is the way I normally did interviews with prospective clients) interview I did, many years ago. The client flew me down to Florida and I stayed in a motel there that is in such a dangerous area (in South Florida near the ocean) that they had the motel office closed at night.

 

There were 3 or 4  people sitting at a table with me. One person would ask a question and it was very hard for me to try to answer that person and not be rude to the others. Always, I try to be courteous and polite to other people and in that situation, it was difficult and uncomfortable.

 

It involved an overseas contract and when I asked them about the expected duration, they told me 6 months, which was far less than what I had been led to believe, before going down to Florida. I told them because of the  I.R.S.  tax regulations, I was not interested in going overseas for less than 18 months. No idea as to whether or not they would have brought me onto their team, had I not told them that.  Had they been honest about the expected duration, I wouldn't have gone down to Florida to meet with them in person. 

 

That was not my *worst* interview for a contract assignment. The worst was a phone interview with a company in the State of New York. I did not have good chemistry with the person (a woman) who was doing the interview. I could work for a woman, without any issues, but not with her. I've worked with many women who were excellent Engineers. They tried, 2 or 3 times, to bring me in, but I rejected it. 

 

CHEMISTRY is a huge part of working with  people on a team. I still communicate with some of the people I worked with many years ago. 

[Ali in OR]

Interviewing with multiple people is standard in tech, and expect some of those interviews to be technical if you're an engineer. Meaning you might get presented with an engineering/physics/math type problem so the interviewer can see what your problem solving skills are like. They can be pretty hard problems! I've never had that kind of an interview, but as an electrical engineer my husband has been both the interviewee and interviewer in that situation.

[gardenmom5]

this isn't a new phenomenom.  depending up on the job and level, multiple interviews was standard practice even in finance and business.

 

dd is a techie- and has done interviews with different groups of people over a couple days.  dh has done interviews over a couple of weeks. (or more.)

[Guest]

I used to be one of the "key interviewers" at a firm I used to work at.  I tended to have an eye for who would be a good employee, so I got on a LOT of interview lists.  

 

Generally, there were 6 interviews in the day scheduled.  Most of them were with people who did the work the person was interviewing for.  They asked questions to test skill AND creativity.  There was usually a manager of that group involved as well; they looked for fit with the group and spark of intellect, creativity, judgment and teachability.  There might be an interviewer from an interfacing group--if that was important.  After each interview, the interviewer sent a summary and a recommendation to hire/no hire, with reasons.  For most positions, any one interviewer could make the NoHire decision, but usually, there was room for one "no" vote.  

 

Then there was me.  I was the big surprise.  If the candidate made it all the way through the day, with a hiring recommendation, I was the "as appropriate"--not on the schedule, but if it looked like a Go, I got the last interview and made the final decision.  I was looking for creativity, spark, judgment, flexibility and potential upward mobility in the company.  By now it is about 7 pm.  8-}  

 

I myself went through this process and know that it can be exhausting.  That's part of the process, too.  Anyone can be perky and "on" for an hour or two, but by the end of a long day, you see big differences in candidates.  

 

This was 16 years ago, at this point, so things might have changed even where I used to work.

 

[Wheres Toto]

This is standard at the company I currently work for.  We are a healthcare marketing company (our clients are mostly pharmaceutical companies).  Even entry level positions usually involve meeting with 4 or 5 people.  Each person talks with them casually, asks what questions they want to, then they discuss their impressions.  The level of the interviewers will range from someone on the same level as the position being hired for to the President of our department.

 

I only had one interview, with the person I was replacing, when I was hired but I started as a temp.

[flyingiguana]

When this last happened to me, person B didn't like me BECAUSE person A liked me. So I didn't get the job. I guess the other configuration would have worked? Person B hated person A.

 

With that sort of weird dynamic, I'm glad I didn't get hired.

 

As it turned out, when they finally published the results of the study they would have been hiring me for, I had the last laugh. They did everything wrong, spent a huge amount of money on it, and ended up with no significant results because they didn't know how to do the statistics. (Guess they should have hired me)

 

My daughter's most recent interview included 2 different days on which she met with 2-3 groups of people each day. It was a tech job. She got the job. They seem to be hiring a ton of people though, so I'm not sure how they have the time for that.

[G5052]

When I had a university research job, HR typically culled down the resumes to the top 10-20.  Then the management team would cull it down to less than 10, and then they'd do phone interviews with the group leader or deputy.  Then the management team would meet to discuss the phone interviews and the resumes, and they'd pick 4-6 to do face-to-face interviews.  The face-to-face interviews would be all day with different groups, some managerial and some peers.  That evening, they'd take them out to dinner with a few members of the management team.  Then everyone who had face-to-face contact would meet to decided who to hire.

 

Other than a few of the smaller independent contractor jobs, it has always been multiple people.

[snowbeltmom]

Interviewing with multiple people is standard in tech, and expect some of those interviews to be technical if you're an engineer. Meaning you might get presented with an engineering/physics/math type problem so the interviewer can see what your problem solving skills are like. They can be pretty hard problems! I've never had that kind of an interview, but as an electrical engineer my husband has been both the interviewee and interviewer in that situation.

 

This was exactly my experience 25 years ago my senior year of college. I rotated throughout the engineering departments interviewing one on one with the head of each department.  The day started at 8 am and ended around 6.  Even lunch was another interview.  I was exhausted at the end of that day.

 

[LucyStoner]

For non-profit managment type jobs 2-4 was the norm. Usually the first one is HR screening and then a supervisor and then perhaps a group interview with people across the department the job is in. United Way was especially laborious and I nearly accepted the job (which I had decided I didn't want) just because I was so tired of interviewing. Planned Parenthood was even more complex but they are trying to filter out plants/activists. I didn't take that job either but I probably should have.

[KRG]

I'm in the middle of this right now.  I've interviewed twice for  a very part-time but fairly well paid position.  The first interview was with the immediate supervisors.  The questions were imo typical interview questions.  What would you do in this situation, tell us about your qualifications and what are your long term goals, general chit chat about what the job entailed and then any questions I had. It was about 45-60 minutes long.Then I had an interview with the director the next week. It was very quick--I knew this before the interview started.  The director asked all the questions which mainly pertained to how to handle deadlines and again my long term goals.  The supervisors were there but did not ask questions.  I was asked if I had any more questions about the position and those were all directed at the supervisors.  The second interview lasted no more than 20 minutes.  I had to consent to a background check a week after the second interview and now I wait..

[Farrar]

I've heard of this in many fields - especially when it's important for the person to fit into the team in which they'll work.  The boss or bosses have to approve the candidate and the senior members of the team also need to have input.

[Murphy101]

This has been the norm for some time now. My dh and my dc have all had 3-6 interviews of some kind or another for their jobs. The number of applicants is huge, so employers are taking far more time in hiring.

[madteaparty]

It's the same song and dance in the legal industry, as well. Even when they are recruiting you, instead of you seeking out the job.

[Plateau Mama]

I wouldn't say its new. I worked for a large, Fortune 500, company out of college and they always had multiple interviews. This was 17 years ago. If you were doing well the interviews lasted all day. If you were done by lunch, you knew you weren't getting hired.

[BlsdMama]

Yes. Anytime DH has interviewed someone it has either been in a group or with individuals at various levels. When he has been the interviewee it has been the same experience.

[Tap]

I have been on interviews where you first meet with an HR person to make sure you meet the minimum qualifications, can follow basic directions (often involves some form of testing) and are dressed appropriately/act professionally.  If you pass that interview, then you get to interview for the actual job.  Those are often group interviews, where like someone else mentioned, you are rated by several people and given a score.  For some companies that is it, and some will still have another round or two of interviews where you meet with people who are more involved in the actual job tasks you are doing.  The higher up the position in a company, and the larger the company, the interview process can last several days.