I have been in a few during my journey on planet earth. There are lot of variety how they are conducted.
As an applicant, it is important to take use of the opportunity to figure out what kind of place the employer is - it is a two-way interview, also the employer is an applicant, which sometimes is not fully understood by the presentative of the employer.
A good approach I have concluded, is, in top of normal guidance of knowing the company:
- Spend time on a company website if they have such
- Study their values, vision, story. Values should not only be about delivery.
- If there are external interviews, case studies, presentations study these.
- Discuss about values, and how they guide the everyday work. This both with HR and hiring manager. Ideally one does not need to think values separately them being organic part of person but they still need to act accordingly.
- Ask retention, how many people have left and to where
- Try to get in talks with current team members, preferrably with diffrent backgrounds, this was hugely beneficial for me to put pieces together.
- Try to evaluate how hiring manager is talking about team, the words I, me, us, responsibility, trust how they are used in rhetoric can show the attitude (generally, as an example, more experiend and best managers do not use I, say "trusting team" instead of "giving responsibility” etc)
- Ask career possibilities, objectives, bonuses.
- if company says learning organization, walk the talk is support employee thinking - this means r&d and entreprenourial spirit should be supported. Common thing is to lean into conventional historical way of doing, sometimes which is good on some areas, but it prevents thinking.
- Be honest. tell that, reason being that if you lie then you are different person at work than they hired.
- Where do you want to be n years, this figures out if having direct goals. Sometimes not understanding Zen-thinking that goals may not work so dreams is better, and if explaining otherwise than career ladder, try to mirror it to goal, like better expert and gaining more holistic understanding of various areas you are supporting.
- There are some common questions which can be interpreted wrongly, like I commonly am thought to be seeking short term jobs, but have not yet fully figured out why that is thought since it is not the case. This means that you should explain your stance for question within what context it is valid. Naturally, this means that interviewers should first get to know the interviewee before making definite conclusions how to interprete the assessment.
- They may ask about values. Based on psychological competence, the unconscious competence is best, meaning the competence is "second nature", without extra thought into it. This is ideal situation with values, no separate thought as it comes naturally. However it depends on the interviewer how things are interpreted.
- Questions about weaknesses, well that depends on the job. Some jobs are easier to know before hand, some others are more difficult - it is not that person does not know himself. Some may think this being a sign of emotional intelligence when knowing weaknesses, but it is quite difficult to know if job is more abstract.
- Questions from interviewers can be indirect. This means that they can ask questions which they think may give an answer to a question which was actually not asked. You may want to ask clarification as well what is wanted to be known. This where do you want to be in n years can be such.
- One interesting thing could be to try to ask if you are hired as an expert or proficient, competent, advanced beginner, or novice person. This sets some requirements for you in regards way of working, and also to figure out how the management works - e.g closer to expert you are, less rules and management there must be.
- Try to ask corner cases, like how is remote work supported, or how you can buy a computer which is not attached to a corporate network. Those seeing it as mandatory evil try to keep you at office, as well as more junior managers.
- Note also that a companies who restrict employee thinking and want them to adapt for conventional way or working blindlessly, they may see curious person with many questions a potential danger for existing culture.
- ideally a new member into company, team, should complement the team - not blend in.
- Wanting external views mean that internal thinking is not in shape.
Generally speaking, you are trying to assess the maturity of your boss, internal culture, available freedom, ability to think instead of purely being told what to do.
One generic article supporting this:
https://hbr.org/2016/12/6-traits-that-predict-ethical-behavior-at-work
One good description of the evolution of a leader can be found here:
http://http://c4isys.blogspot.fi/2016/06/genesis-of-leader.html
Some very good guidance, in my opinion can be found from the links below, please note that not everyone need to reverse, program - they unconsciously teach you logical, mathematical thinking which is essential. I selected some of the advices breaking into security field, as it is a special field when comparing to others, like an form of art, craft instead of mechanical science although many think it as a science.
https://moxie.org/blog/career-advice/
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/06/how-to-break-into-security-ptacek-edition/
http://https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/08/how-to-break-into-security-miller-edition/
https://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2016/08/so-you-want-to-work-in-security-but-are.html
A totally different posting could be different suitability tests, which can give very varying outcomes, lets just say that if you eveluate a fish for its ability to climb a tree, it will think being stupid for rest of its life. This means that same test should not be used for everyone. People just are different, and some of the most famous scientists did not succeed on Mensas test either. Spatial intelligence can be trained with Sudoku, when you look numbers as symbols instead. Mathematical questions typically are on high school level.
