I hate interviews (and the selection process in general)

*sigh* Its over. I finally found some sort of industry related work to do over the summer. Hopefully it'll make finding a job some time after uni a lot easier. I was quite worried about it for a while. Everyone else seemed to get offered something a lot earlier, and for a while there I was content to accept the fact that I wasn't really good enough to get into anything. Although, I didn't really try that hard with companies like Deloitte and those sorts of companies. I think by the time I got to them , I just couldn't be stuffed anymore. They were all the same. Long, draining, and required a lot of things to be made up.

It kind of makes me think that I should have tried a little harder.

To get the position I was offered today was probably the longest selection process I've been through for a job. Well at least in terms of time required to go through it. Actually, Coles Myer may have taken longer, but I'm glad I didn't get a job there now.

Anyway, so the whole thing involved firstly a web based application which involved some psychometrics and the usual things involving employment etc. Then... just last month I finally got called about it. Took them long enough! 3 hours of psychometric testing later, and after some more anxious waiting time, there was the interview.

Apparently, the correlation for somebody's performance in an interview and their performance on the job is only something like .24 (if you use Pearson's d, the closer the number is to 1, or -1, the more likely it is that the two factors are related). Moreover, if you used an unstructured interview format, that is, if the interviewers just ask what they feel like asking instead of sticking to a script, then the correlation is something like .12. So I find it rather ridiculous that its the most widely used selection technique used to choose people. Other things like intelligence testing have a lot better correlation figures. I think that goes upto something like 0.6 for management related positions.

How much easier would it be if you could just do some sort of test which would be related to what sort of tasks you would actually do on the job, and you could be selected on that? I'm sure it wouldn't actually be too hard to set up. Although I guess for some jobs thats kind of unfeasible, (as they may actually need extensive training to do the job), it would still make sense in a lot of situations.

I'm guessing its because employers just want to make sure that you're not some sort of psycho axe killer who goes around bashing stuff up when they need to. Although... some of the people my current employer just recently hired sort of lean in that direction.

For those of you who asked, and anyone else who's interested, heres some of what happened today:
I actually got into the city quite early. The interview was only at 10am, but I was so used to going in to work at 9 that I got up around the same time and only left slightly later than normal. I ended up sitting at maccas eating breakfast, and just trying to kill time. Its not good to get there TOO early, so I've heard. 15 minutes was about right. It gives time for the receptionists to watch you reading the Australia Financial Review, as if you're actually interested in the economic markets. It was kind of funny actually, the receptionists got up to take me into the interview room, and they said I could take the paper in with me if I wanted to read it while waiting for the interviewers. I did so of course, what else was I meant to do except stare at blank walls?
Yeah.. so they come in, you say hello, shake their hand, etc. The usual and expected. Then they have a small chit chat about yourself. It turns out that the IT manager there lives in the same suburb I do. Helps with the whole getting to know each other thing.
Then they go through the structured part of the interview. I was told that it was going to be a behavioural one, and thats pretty much what it was. For those of you who are so sick of doing those web based applications, this would have been just like that except you had to do it on the spot, and also in person. So its hard to make things up. Thus, most of what I said was really quite honest, except for maybe a couple of things :P
So the things were the usual: Explain a situation where

you did something wrong

you felt really stressed/were under lots of pressure

something didn't go to plan

plans changed, and how you dealt with that etc.

Then there was the obligatory question: Where do you see youself a) at the end of your uni course, and b) in 5 years time?

I actually thought about that one for a while. Like... during the morning, and last night. Couldn't really come up with a coherent answer. It was quite unexpected, because when they asked, it just came to me. This is not to say that you shouldn't have a prepared answer for this type of question, I just didn't have one before I went in. My answer consisted of what would have been almost pure honesty. I said I don't know. Its hard to say because I'm not really too familiar with the industry, and the lack of experience hasn't really allowed me to see what kind of oppurtunities are available.

Apparently that was sufficient because the nice HR lady called me later to say congrats.