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بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ

I helped with interviews on campus this past Friday. Since it was my first time helping I doubled up with someone and took most of the notes while the other person asked all the questions. I took advantage of the opportunity to look for the the distinctive behaviors that separate the good interviewees from the par or bad ones. Once I began to *look* for things, it was obvious who had had rehearsed questions to one specific answer, who had only generated ideas, and who had no idea what they were doing. The following is what I discovered:

• Pauses work wonder to gather thoughts before answering questions. Rushing into an answer puts a dead lock on the theme for that answer and can be detrimental to your ranking of interviewees
• People who come in with *props* to pass off for bonus points are easily exposed. Example: Interviewee walks in with the daily WSJ for an afternoon interview and can not recap any of the top stories after stating they were “reading” it.
• Be aware of hands and facial expressions. They do wonders to convey messages (either supporting your statements or exposing your uncertainty).
• Be assertive. It’s completely possible to not be the best candidate but to be ranked above others due to positive outlook, and assertiveness

One central aspect that came to mind was that it’s the same way people see investments: The employer may not be doing a long term outlook on the candidates, they want to know who the best candidates are now (only using hindsight). Some of the people I felt had the best potential outlook from a long term perspective, were ranked the lowest because of certain responses or certain things not desirable to the interviewer. Others were able to pull ahead of others because of their positive outlook and how they carried themselves.

The net present value of some candidates did not play into how highly they were ranked, but unless someone comes up with a better crystal ball, nothing will change.