I'm about to lose my job

ok so here is an example of how to use STAR on one of your questions:
if you had two things that were due at the same time and you could only finish one, how would you decide which one to complete first

S/T: A few years ago I wsa working on X project for Customer 2 when I got an urgent call from Macanudo who asked me to complete Y project for Customer 1. Well, this was an exciting opportunity for me to work on project Y as it was similar to what I wanted to get into, but they were due at the same time and there was no way I was able to do both by myself.

A: Since I know that my team was able to competently complete Project X and since I would gain a lot of experience working on Project Y, I delegated Project X with check in dates and set mini-deliverables while I worked on project Y with a cross function team consisting of accounting, marketing, sales, and the janitorial staff.

R: Proejct X was turned in on time and Project Y was completed to great satisfaction to Macanudo and the end user which directly lead to a $2,234,000 sale later that month.



note that I gave a specific number in the result section. This is very important. The R section needs to contain statements like "as a result of my actions, sales went up $XXXX or YYY%, costs went down $ZZZZZ or AA%, new customers increased by BB%, team satisfaction rose by CC%, etc.

Remember, for hiring managers, unless you are in sales, YOU ARE A COST CENTER and they need to understand how you are either going to lower enterprise costs or contribute to an increase in sales.

Good luck
 
Gardner,

Thank you very much for that info. I'm going to study up on it tonight. I just set up another interview for later this week (not the same employer) and was basically told to prepare for those type of questions.

Rex is right, of course, but this is the game one has to play.
 
I was reading some of this stuff last night and I literally wanted to throw up. What an absolute load of horsecrap. This is how companies find employees nowadays? No wonder we're outsourcing everything to India.

Seriously, this makes me want to hole up in a cave in Montana and trap beavers for a living. Good lord.

If you really want to learn about a person's personality, take them to happy hour. You'll learn a hell of a lot more than you will by grilling them with these bs questions for two hours.

My gosh I'm almost about to agree with Rex. I don't know that I even want to work for a place that does this.
 
I have no advice that's not already been offered.

I say be thankful you have options. Many don't. This might be an easier ride if you focus on that.
 
One word: options.

The more options you have the better. The more leverage you have the more people will want you. It applies across the board in life and it is 100% true.

My advice is to be very aggressive in the job search right now while you have a job, but don't make any decisions until you have to. It's amazing how the tone changes when your employer knows you have other valid options. It's amazing how the tone changes when a prospective employer knows that you already have a job and you don't have to take his offer. In this particualr case it might not make a difference, but as a general rule, options, options, options.
 
The more I read about this behavioral interview crap the more pissed off I get. Anybody who's good at answering these ******** questions is NOT somebody I'd want to hire. The people who make your company work are the ones who give you a solid day's work without bitching and moaning all the time. They're not going to remember nor will they consider it important enough to tell you that in September of 2005 they had a conflict with Betty Lou and resolved it by buying her a bag of chips at break. And anybody that does is a freak who's gonna **** up your entire staff.

Man, what a load. I'm glad this stuff wasn't around when I graduated because I'd probably still be unemployed. Honestly, I'm getting pissed enough to walk out of this thing tomorrow if they ask me some of these ******** questions. I'd have probably walked out of that interview on Monday had I known that this was the scam they were pulling.
 
Totally agree, but if you interview with a company on the larger side, you are going to get these kind of questions. As far as I know, they have been SOP for about 5 years now unless you are VP/Director level.

Relax though. An interview is a rehearsed dance, nothing more nothing less. Every candidate says some variation of the same thing since you are already screened via resume/network. They will know if they want to hire you within the first 5 minutes of your interview and your answers to these kind of questions will only reiterate the up or down decision, it probably wont change it.
 
Good news. The interview went very well - none of that behavioral crap despite what I was led to believe. We just sat around and talked about what I'd done at my current and prior jobs, and it turns out the managers there have backgrounds very common to mine. By the time I got back to my office they had already called my boss AND my boss' boss. I'm taking that as a good sign.

In reply to:
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Since I work out of my home and mostly work solo, I would be hard pressed to answer the fellow worker conflict question. I think I might go with the " eating my BBQ out of the break room fridge" or possibly the Mrs. Mac toaster story. I could just tell it like it happened to me and we would all get a good laugh
 
Good luck el guapo. BTW, I guess your current employer doesn't mind that you are looking around since they were called after the interview? How did your converstion with your current employer go to allow you to use them as a reference?
 
My current boss will likely get the ax sooner than I will. We feed each other leads, in fact. It really sucks for him because he was pretty close to retiring (and me taking over). I'm not sure what he's going to do.
 
Got an offer. It wasn't exactly the job I wanted but the people seem pretty cool and they matched my current salary. Plus it's downtown, which is kinda nice.

The new owners were cutting and slashing folks last week so it was really sweet to have that offer in my back pocket when they got to me. Basically, they said they wanted me to stay on for a couple of months to help with the transition but couldn't guarantee anything beyond that. So I turned in my notice.
cool.gif
 
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