Ideal? Hah.

Wherein Our Heroine Prepares.

I have had a few first interviews lately, and they all contained what I consider to be the worst interview question I have ever heard, and the one which invariably nets the asker the least valuable information: "What is your ideal job?" When I hear people ask that, I truly would like to either scream and rend my garments (not going to help in the job-getting unless you are interviewing for the position of professional mourner), or say something flip like, "Well - in my ideal job, I would like to be paid scads of cash for lolling about whilst being fed Oreos by Alan Rickman."

I have come up with a fairly typical (for me) answer. It is earnest and helpful in tone (hello, I'm Little Mary Sunshine, and I will be your interviewee today!), while completely avoiding the actual question entirely (thank you, Juris Doctor). [Wow - three parentheses in one sentence. Eeek.] I generally say that what I do isn't so important - what is important is that I work with fun people who are intelligent and enjoy working together. It seems to satisfy the HR-bots. For the few who catch that I didn't really answer the question, I tell them what I'm good at. That generally kills two birds with one stone, as they were usually going to ask that anyway, and it moves the conversation off of that particular square.

Via the mirificent Rana, I was led to this quote by Dorotha over at Caveat Lector, though, and it far more eloquently describes one aspect of why I have such an issue with these questions:

...I also figured out why I hate the “describe your ideal job” question. The emphasis is all in the wrong place. I don’t get job satisfaction from a job description, which is what this question expects me to spit back. Sure, there are things I like to do, but that’s the least of what makes me happy in a job. Truly, the least. I’m the chick who left a cushy sinecure for a vastly-lower-paying data-entry job that was murder on my hands, remember? And I was still far happier in the latter job than the former. That’s me. You can’t make me happy with a job description.

Besides, I’ve never, not once, had a job description that I didn’t change. Not once. Not even my first job ever: at sixteen, I started as busgirl and was speedily “promoted” to stockroom factotum. That’s just the cold truth, the way the universe deforms itself around me. I don’t sit around waiting for somebody to hand me interesting things to do. I go and find them. I don’t accept a job as handed to me; I figure out how to do it more accurately and efficiently. I don’t reject a new thing with “that’s not in my job description;” I invariably say, “well, I don’t actually know how to do this, but if you give me some time I’ll take a whack at figuring it out.”

That describes me pretty well.

Here's another reason why I don't like the question: it produces a useless answer. If what one really wants is a job (any job), they are going to basically spit back the job description you have posted. If they're artful about it, they are going to shift some of the details and rearrange the wording, but their goal is to get a job, because job = paycheck. Also, the question is invariably worded in a silly, pie-in-the-sky, idealized sort of way. It uses words like "ideal" or "perfect." Even allowing for hyperbole, the number of people who would consider their day "perfect" or "ideal" if it contained 8+ hours of standard office work (in standard office attire) has got to be vanishingly small.

So, I have another interview tomorrow - here's hoping I get some good questions.

Posted: Thursday - September 09, 2004 at 07:30 AM | |