Today I had my first interview from the recruiting side of the table. My contract will end in less than 6 months so we’re looking for someone to replace me in job. Right now I’m working 50% on technical administration and 50% on functional administration. My replacement would take 100% of the technical stuff and if I were to stay after my contract, I’d take 100% of functional responsibilities.
Anyways, this was a really interesting experience. First it’s much harder than I thought: trying to steer the conversation with meaningful questions, helping the candidate to get out of tough spots, etc. All the while I noticed lots of errors that I also do when interviewing for a job and seeing it from the other side I learned a lot.
For example, some questions that I used to think are hard to answer and don’t look so relevant reveal themselves as being the turning point of the interview:
- What do you want to do in 3 years?
- What is your career plan?
Having an answer that makes sense to these questions really marks a lot more points than I thought when I was looking for a job 2 years ago, fresh out of school.