Colassal blunder.

[SunnyD]

Cliffs:

- Found the perfect job, great pay, great benefits, lots of growth in the direction I want to go in
- Had a great interview
- Got along well with prospective co-workers
- Did not get an offer because I was honest about what I perceived as my character flaws

Apparently I was misunderstood on what I meant when I said "Sometimes people misunderstand/misinterpret what I am trying to say..."

I guess the moral is lie about yourself whenever possible.

 

[OdiN]

Colassal speelling FAIL!

 

[Joemonkey]

I just had an interview where they asked 3 words my friends/co-workers would use to describe me... my 2nd answer was "sarcastic"

 

[KB]

Well let that be a lesson to you. That question is so completely rehearsed by most people that your answer didn't sound very good. You must turn the character flaw into a positive either by describing how you are overcoming this flaw or how the flaw can be an asset.

Also I am certain that single question wasn't what hurt you. Perhaps you were the more expensive of the candidates or you had a misspelling in your resume.

 

[olds]

OP, what are you trying to say?

 

[Tim]

The easiest and best answer to that question IMO is pefectionism. Works like a charm everytime.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: KB
Well let that be a lesson to you. That question is so completely rehearsed by most people that your answer didn't sound very good. You must turn the character flaw into a positive either by describing how you are overcoming this flaw or how the flaw can be an asset.

Also I am certain that single question wasn't what hurt you. Perhaps you were the more expensive of the candidates or you had a misspelling in your resume.

Actually, I was the only qualified candidate to date that was technically proficient (I was all but told that). Salary was not even negotiated at that point, but was well in line in what they were expecting to have to offer (working through a recruiter). Resume wasn't an issue.

It literally was that line that killed it - the company is customer focused, and despite my clarification as to what I meant, HR seemed to infer that it would directly translate into customer focus. Needless to say I have several solid years of exemplary customer based experience (about 4 years of various technical support roles).

And wtf with this the weirdness in the title - I typed Colossal. Does FireFox have a built in spellcheck-autocorrect thing?

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: theplaidfad
The easiest and best answer to that question IMO is pefectionism. Works like a charm everytime.

I take the perfectionism a step further. Tell them you have OCD, and get obsessed when working on something. For me I can say this truthfully as when I get deeply involved with a work project I'll be thinking about it even when I'm trying to fall asleep at night.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Juddog

Originally posted by: theplaidfad
The easiest and best answer to that question IMO is pefectionism. Works like a charm everytime.

I take the perfectionism a step further. Tell them you have OCD, and get obsessed when working on something. For me I can say this truthfully as when I get deeply involved with a work project I'll be thinking about it even when I'm trying to fall asleep at night.

Yeah, I use that one (and it's true to some extent) in every interview.

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

And wtf with this the weirdness in the title - I typed Colossal. Does FireFox have a built in spellcheck-autocorrect thing?

Teh computr dosn't lye.

 

[thespeakerbox]

why would anyone hire someone who says "people dont understand me"

Unless youre applying at the local emo rock club, that my friend , was a very stupid thing to say.

The moral of the story should be "try not to F-up interviews and lose out on life in the process"

 

[OdiN]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
And wtf with this the weirdness in the title - I typed Colossal. Does FireFox have a built in spellcheck-autocorrect thing?

If it was doing that, it would have corrected your error, not made an error out of a correctly spelled word.

 

[Gunslinger08]

I hate this crap in interviews. When I'm interviewing a guy, I just want to know about his skills in the technologies we work with. If he can communicate that to me, his soft skills are good enough for me.

 

[Row1and]

That sucks... but you learned your lesson.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: OdiN

Originally posted by: SunnyD
And wtf with this the weirdness in the title - I typed Colossal. Does FireFox have a built in spellcheck-autocorrect thing?

If it was doing that, it would have corrected your error, not made an error out of a correctly spelled word.

Interesting, because I've actually had the pleasure of correcting typos in the MS Office dictionary before... thanks for wasting posts.

Originally posted by: thespeakerbox
why would anyone hire someone who says "people dont understand me"

Unless youre applying at the local emo rock club, that my friend , was a very stupid thing to say.

The moral of the story should be "try not to F-up interviews and lose out on life in the process"

Obviously YOU don't understand what I'm trying to say either. I'm not saying "Hey I'm emo, cuddle me". I'm saying the way I use my vocabulary people sometimes get alternate meanings which they misinterpret. Case in point.

 

[OdiN]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: OdiN

Originally posted by: SunnyD
And wtf with this the weirdness in the title - I typed Colossal. Does FireFox have a built in spellcheck-autocorrect thing?

If it was doing that, it would have corrected your error, not made an error out of a correctly spelled word.

Interesting, because I've actually had the pleasure of correcting typos in the MS Office dictionary before... thanks for wasting posts.

Did you correct "colossal" to "colassal" in there too?

Also MS Office != Firefox

Also, if it was spell checking, you'd know. Unless you're daft. Which at this point I don't think is much of a stretch.

Maybe you could put that on your resume. "Daft since birth"

Thanks for wasting oxygen.

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: thespeakerbox
why would anyone hire someone who says "people dont understand me"

Unless youre applying at the local emo rock club, that my friend , was a very stupid thing to say.

The moral of the story should be "try not to F-up interviews and lose out on life in the process"

Obviously YOU don't understand what I'm trying to say either. I'm not saying "Hey I'm emo, cuddle me". I'm saying the way I use my vocabulary people sometimes get alternate meanings which they misinterpret. Case in point.

[/quote]

So you have vocabulary problems as well as spelling problems?

 

[clamum]

That sucks. If I was the interviewer I'd rather the person say something like that than "perfectionist". That's such a cliche thing so say I'd probably cringe.

 

[lokiju]

Reminds me of my brother in law when he was interviewing for a local PD, they asked him something along the lines of "if someone in a dark alley were to pull a gun, what would you do?" and he said "shoot them".

They didn't like that answer and told him pretty plainly that even if that is what someone in his shoes would do, they don't want to be told that, they wanted to hear that he'd try and talk his way out of the situation basically.

 

[acheron]

Sometimes I'm too awesome.

 

[yoda291]

I hate that question. as an interviewer, I never ask it because it's stupid. It serves no purpose, gathers no useful information because it's so cliche.

my standard answer to it is "kryptonite" and the response tells me if they genuinely wanted a significant answer to it.

also, I am in fact, weak against kryptonite.

 

[lokiju]

Originally posted by: acheron2112
Sometimes I'm too awesome.

:laugh:

 

[CountZero]

Originally posted by: yoda291
I hate that question. as an interviewer, I never ask it because it's stupid. It serves no purpose, gathers no useful information because it's so cliche.

my standard answer to it is "kryptonite" and the response tells me if they genuinely wanted a significant answer to it.

also, I am in fact, weak against kryptonite.

Amen, the question sucks. If anything the cliched answer would give me reason to pause. I mean you are clearly not willing to tell me what your weaknesses might be, will you tell me when something goes wrong that you might be at fault for?

And really if you are a perfectionist it will come through in the rest of your interview.

 

[thespeakerbox]

did YOU talk like THIS in the interview?

"the way I use my vocabulary people sometimes get alternate meanings"

So you use words that others don't understand.
So you have a poor use of your own vocabulary.
So you cant communicate effectively.

I have no clue why you didn't get the job?? Who cares how qualified you are if you cant communicate.

 

[jjones]

Why admit to a character flaw? If anything, I would say that sometimes I have a tendancy to be a perfectionist but I've learned to temper that with efficiency.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Never tell the truth on the honesty assessment. LAWL but sadly true.