on the other side the table

in the process of moving to the corporate i have been through interviews and used to wonder if it is possible for someone to judge my skills completely in a couple of hours by just asking questions.

these days the same problem troubles me .. only that it is as an interviewer. There are those where there is no doubt and can be screened out. but then the above average borderline cases are the ones who leave me with a feeling if i did rite rejecting them. did i ask enough or should i have given them more time to let them prove their skills. Luckily i dont have to interview freshers .. i consider that a more tough task as the interviewer's skills to guage talent has to be really good.. one wrong decision and you have affected the start of a student's career. Anyways the ones with an excellent academics have no worry .. they will set on some place or other. Only the brilliant students with average academics (believe me this is the case many a times) get affected.

Its a different game interviewing the experienced ones.. first thing is that they are to be interviewed for a specific position requiring specific set of skills.. and this is relatively easier than interviewing freshers. secondly you can make a mistake or two if you are not fully happy with someones performance .. these guys already have a job and you are not doing any injustice to them if they are skillfull and failed to perform due to pressure and youve mistakenly judged them.

recently i interviewed a guy from similar background as mine... he has been working for long on scientific projects, had excellent analytical and mathematical skills . He came for interview with his wife, she was insisting on sitting along with him throughout the interview... a request the HR guy did not listen to. she requested again and was allowed to sit at a distance that she could see him but couldnt listen him talk. All the time i was interviewing this guy she was keenly looking at him. Everytime i gave him a problem to work on and took attention off from him i looked at her and everytime i found her looking at him ... there was something in the way she was looking at him that impressed me.. i guess that was affection.. care, love or hope... this guy is damn lucky to have a partner so much loving as her. Only negative thing was that i couldnt screen him in as he was not having enuf skills in the technologies we were looking and the role that he was being interviewed.. i gave him enough amount of time (more than others) to see if i can get some thing on what we were looking for and what he claimed in his resume.. but unfortunately i couldnt screen him in. he was sharp and good but not in what we were looking for....i did what i could do.. appreciate his work... tell him about my background being similar to him .. encouraged him to keep on working on good stuff.... and do what is known here as brand rescan to see if he fits in any other team's requirement.

well.. i hope he fits in to some teams requirement here and joins my company... atleast i will have someone with whom i can talk about my previous work and can share his knowledge on the scientific projects he did.