Don't Play Interview Battleships

Your skills are there somewhere. Let's see...nope, nothing on A4: how is your department organised? Let's try B7: what do you do in your current job? Maybe H6: tell me about a time you had to respond to a client request quickly. And on it goes. A bunch of questions that make sense if you are already doing what they want you to do for them, but not otherwise.

They don't want to ask straight out if you can do X, Y and Z, because that makes it too easy for you to say Yes with whatever varying degree of truth is involved. To get round that they would have to give you a test, and of course no-one who works there would pass the test. If you did, the chances are you would realise you were working below your abilities in about, oh, a week. And they know that. Tests are fine for commodity code-cutters or people who have to know the official regulations around their jobs, but not for companies hiring non-cookie-cutter jobs.

So they shoot random questions at you and see if you mention any magic words. Recently I was so puzzled by one interviewer's repeated questioning about "what I did" at The Bank, that I eventually cam straight out and said "you want to know what I can do?" And then told him. He fired a quick test at me, which I passed (because I am actually that good). From then on the interview got back on track.

I vowed that the next time someone asked "what do you do at The Bank" I would say "not much of any real interest to you, or to me, which is why I want to work with you. What's interesting to you is that I've picked up skills in (insert relevant stuff here) and some experience of (insert more relevant stuff here). But how I use them at The Bank is more or less irrelevant to what I can do for you." Then go on to talk about their business and my understanding of it.