In the past a couple years, I had been to many interviews as an interviewee. I admit that even I was not really afraid of this kind of occasion, sitting an interview as an interviewee is still the last thing I would want to do in the world. But today the world has changed I was one of panel members to sit there and listen to other people talking rather than talking myself.

The interview was for my old position, which has been vacant for quite a while since I moved to this new position. With the history as an admin person before, I was asked by the boss to take the role as one of panel members. Well, never thought about this could happen on me in this country. I remember the last time I acted as an interviewer was around year 2000 to 2001 in China. In here, it has been all about finding a job but not recruiting someone to do the job

The interview was actually structured and all the candidates were given the exactly the same questions. We’ve got a sheet to write down the response from people and rank by scores for each question. The funny thing is until I sat as an interviewer, did I realise what performance of candidates is actually expected from the point of view of an interviewer. All our candidates tried to appeal the panel members and they all wanted to give the right answers and show the best side of them, but there are lots of factors that the candidates might not be able to have a control, such as who was the person before them, how they looked like on the day, how they dressed up and how they gave the information.

Recruiting is not about picking the best, but a process of comparison. It’s about who would fit in the position and the team the best. People often thought that as long as they show themselves properly, they would get the job, so they try too hard to cover everything by giving too much information, which happened today and really was putting the panel members off.

Remember: less is much. Sticking on the questions they asked would be always a good idea. It couldn’t be worse if you speak 10 minutes for one question, but only got a couple points are something they are expecting to hear from you. You probably have just got the opportunity slipped away. So in this case, it is even better that you only speak for one minute and only hit one point.

Panels are people. They come from their own background and can only look at you from their own perspectives. It’s not always a bad thing if you can’t get the job because you don’t want to work with people who don’t really like you and hadn’t chosen you at the first place.