I have always hated interviews because all you are doing in most is trying to make instant friend-like connections with the interviewer, who more often than not will judge the interviewees on things that have no effect on competency to perform a given job description. Many of them even create little lists of "deal breaker" mistakes that have not a damn thing to do with how effective someone will be on the job...like were their shoes shined as well as they could be? Was their tie annoying? Were they wearing a cheap watch, even!
If I am looking for a good technician, I don't care about his or her handwriting for instance - they are going to use an automated reporting system. I don't care about the particulars of what colors they wore to the interview - we are going to provide a standard dress code for field technicians. But in the company I used to work for, the HR people were definitely NOT persons with a technical background, they were geared towards sales and they all hoped to transfer over to sales or customer training positions. As a result, a good many of the candidates that I, as Systems Division Manager, finally got to interview were very nice, polite, cordial, and mostly incompetent for the job they would have to perform.Don't get me wrong, people skills are important for this job, but mostly in the area of keeping your cool and just being patient with stressed-out customers. It took me months of arguing to finally convince the owners of the company to let me do the initial screening prior to our little HR department, once I got the changes I wanted, the HR people could simply not believe that I had chosen the candidates that I did. But, finally, I got people who could actually perform the job requirements.
I would have given up part of my paycheck to have had an automated simulation in place that could effectively test people for the aptitude and skills they possess!
