Totally confused

[museikchik]

Okay so I had my very first phone interview today. I have been out of a job for three months so I was way excited. I did all this preparation for the interview, what are the company principles etc... So I get the phone call today and the interviewer sounds like he doesn''t even want to be conducting the interview. He asks me standard yes and no questions about my skills. Nothing really difficult. At one point he slipped up and said, "When we hire you and then caught himself and said when we hire the person" So I got all excited for a second. He was giving me all kinds of details about the position both at the beginning and end of the conversation. The interview itself took like 45 minutes. Then he said, "Well it was nice talking to you." I thinking "What! No interview?" I asked him when he would be making a decision on the position and he said soon and that he would be giving face to face interviews the following week and would be hoping to hire someone by Labor Day. He never indicated that he wanted to schedule a face to face interview with me but proceeded to tell me when he would be in town. I am totally confused because I can''t understand why someone would take so much time to give a person all these details about the job if they have no intention of seeing you again. Can someone give me some insight?

 

[monarch64]

Hmm. Do you know if the interviewer was someone the company uses (recruiter) to conduct/screen, or was he/she an actual employee of the company you are potentially going to be hired by?

Curious, because sometimes you''ll get an HR person who is following a questionnaire, and also a script, and they''re just screening or getting more information from you before the decision is made by another higher-up on whether they want to bring you in for a face-to-face or not.

 

[museikchik]

Date: 8/21/2009 7:27:59 PM
Author: monarch64
Hmm. Do you know if the interviewer was someone the company uses (recruiter) to conduct/screen, or was he/she an actual employee of the company you are potentially going to be hired by?

Curious, because sometimes you''ll get an HR person who is following a questionnaire, and also a script, and they''re just screening or getting more information from you before the decision is made by another higher-up on whether they want to bring you in for a face-to-face or not.

I was told by the technical recruiter this person was the Hiring Manager and would be conducting the face to face interviews next week. It just didn''t seem like the interviewer was prepared or had very much experience.

 

[tyty333]

Date: 8/21/2009 7:27:59 PM
Author: monarch64
Hmm. Do you know if the interviewer was someone the company uses (recruiter) to conduct/screen, or was he/she an actual employee of the company you are potentially going to be hired by?

Curious, because sometimes you''ll get an HR person who is following a questionnaire, and also a script, and they''re just screening or getting more information from you before the decision is made by another higher-up on whether they want to bring you in for a face-to-face or not.

Yep, we use to do this but we used lower level engineers to do the phone interviews. Then we would tell HR to
bring in the ones we liked and they would set up the in-house interview.

I''ll be keeping my fingers crossed for you that you get the callback.

 

[monarch64]

Date: 8/21/2009 7:53:43 PM
Author: museikchik

Date: 8/21/2009 7:27:59 PM
Author: monarch64
Hmm. Do you know if the interviewer was someone the company uses (recruiter) to conduct/screen, or was he/she an actual employee of the company you are potentially going to be hired by?

Curious, because sometimes you''ll get an HR person who is following a questionnaire, and also a script, and they''re just screening or getting more information from you before the decision is made by another higher-up on whether they want to bring you in for a face-to-face or not.

I was told by the technical recruiter this person was the Hiring Manager and would be conducting the face to face interviews next week. It just didn''t seem like the interviewer was prepared or had very much experience.

It probably was the hiring mgr., then, and he was conducting phone screens. Honestly, it''s Friday. I don''t know what time your interview was, but this HM could''ve been through 50 candidates by the time he called you and was just ready to get into the weekend. It sucks, I know. If there''s any advice i can give, it''s to never ever schedule something so important as an interview on a Friday if you possibly have a choice.

Most likely, he is gathering information about the candidates he''s culled from the stack of resumes/apps in his inbox and the phone screen is just a mandatory part of the process he has to account for. That''s middle management for you. SOP, period. If you''re lucky enough to get face time, I would still seriously consider whether you want to work for this company...if they''re not real stringent on who they place in these hiring manager positions that would make me leary of what the rest of the employees are like.

 

[museikchik]

Date: 8/21/2009 8:02:54 PM
Author: monarch64

Date: 8/21/2009 7:53:43 PM
Author: museikchik

Date: 8/21/2009 7:27:59 PM
Author: monarch64
Hmm. Do you know if the interviewer was someone the company uses (recruiter) to conduct/screen, or was he/she an actual employee of the company you are potentially going to be hired by?

Curious, because sometimes you''ll get an HR person who is following a questionnaire, and also a script, and they''re just screening or getting more information from you before the decision is made by another higher-up on whether they want to bring you in for a face-to-face or not.

I was told by the technical recruiter this person was the Hiring Manager and would be conducting the face to face interviews next week. It just didn''t seem like the interviewer was prepared or had very much experience.

It probably was the hiring mgr., then, and he was conducting phone screens. Honestly, it''s Friday. I don''t know what time your interview was, but this HM could''ve been through 50 candidates by the time he called you and was just ready to get into the weekend. It sucks, I know. If there''s any advice i can give, it''s to never ever schedule something so important as an interview on a Friday if you possibly have a choice.

Most likely, he is gathering information about the candidates he''s culled from the stack of resumes/apps in his inbox and the phone screen is just a mandatory part of the process he has to account for. That''s middle management for you. SOP, period. If you''re lucky enough to get face time, I would still seriously consider whether you want to work for this company...if they''re not real stringent on who they place in these hiring manager positions that would make me leary of what the rest of the employees are like.

Unfortunately I didn''t have much of a choice because they were the ones who offered the appointment time. I will definitely make it a point to make sure it doesn''t happen again. I have to say that this interview was the worst I have ever had (including all the entry level jobs when I first started working). The things that sucks the most though is that I totally have all the right experience and the job itself sounds awesome so to have this guy interview me was definitely a bummer.