The question is simple:

Imagine if you are extended multiple job offers from different companies, and you are trying to decide which one you will accept. Imagine that the way you go about this is that you write down the things that matter to you from most to least and that you use 3-5 things at the top of that list to decide. Those are your decision drivers. What are they?

There are several things in play here.

Good interview Qs to ask marketing candidates

This is what passes for interview "advice." My DJ students are going to rule the world.

Not going to say the company, but it's got thousands of employees.
I interview anyone from entry level developers (if in our unit) to executives (that I would work with if they are hired).

"What is your greatest weakness?" Take a cards from your pocket, put it on the table and slide it to the gentlemen with one finger. Tell them to turn it over. Card: "I tend to be over-prepared."

Excellent comments about Atlantic article on jobs...deep dive on psychology of people who THINK theyre searching hard for jobs, but really aren't

Another great set of comments on the Atlantic article on jobs....here people cover common mistakes job-seekers make

Call the hiring manager again and get it clear whether they are paying for the trip or not. One way to broach it is to say: "As you have asked to meet me in person at your office, can you tell me the arrangement for how I will be reimbursed for my travel and incidental expenses?"<br />
Put it as a question that assumes that you will be reimbursed, so the awkwardness is on them if they don't actually want to front you the money. Then you can feign surprise and say calmly: "Well, I'm surprised at this arrangement since you requested the meeting." And then STAY SILENT until they speak, even if it means having dead air for 30 seconds or more.<br />
The incidental expenses are for things like meals and taxis.<br />
Of course, if you have decided to pay for the costs yourself, then if you hear a no they won't pay, just say OK and make the travel arrangements.

The Toughest Companies for Job Interviews (fins.com)39 points by cwan 52 days ago | flag | comments

"They then asked me about a time where I disagreed with a superior and how I handled the situation"<br />
"I told them that every situation is different and that to me... there's no one right answer."<br />
I would have made the same mistake right out of college. The right answer would have been to "tell them about a time where you disagreed with a superior and how you handled the situation."<br />
The question was not designed to produce a report on how you handle disagreements with superiors. It was not even designed to see if you could follow instructions like a lemming.<br />
I suggest you look the real reason you didn't want to give an answer: the fear that it would be the wrong answer.

Ms. HYUN: In an organization, you do need to understand how to promote yourself in a graceful way to get ahead and to let people know what you're doing. And I think if you talk to most of the Asian individuals who are working in these organizations, most of them are uncomfortable with that because they didn't grow up with that as something that was valued, the idea that you can actually boast about your accomplishments and talk about what you've done and really, you know, pitch yourself in a pretty open way.And so that moment was kind of turning point for me to realize wow, you know, there's some cultural - deeply embedded cultural messages, scripts, that I operate under that maybe I need to understand better so that I know how to work effectively across a variety of different spectrums.

hey dennis, yeh I was planning on being in ny tomorrow [i was in LA at the time!…and no, i definitely had zero plans to be in NYC] how about we meet up live at your offices?

The masses believe getting hired is difficult because the masses go about it just like everyone else, which is why they’re “the masses.” It’s difficult to stand out from a crowd when there are hundreds or thousands of applicants for a single position. You might be thinking, “Well, that’s how the job application is set up. What am I supposed to do?”

90% of the questions we'd prepped for didn't come up, and we should've made them come up.

When you get into the interview room, start by explaining what it is you do even if they don't ask you. Even if one of them starts by asking a specific question, it's best to start by explaining the whole idea from scratch. Just pretend it's like The Bourne Identity, and assume that they have zero memory of everything on the application.Have a mindmap with the answers to all the questions they might ask. Having a word document with notes is no good, because as soon as you start scrolling through they'll get impatient and just ask another question. Whereas with a good mindmap you can answer every conceivable question in real time, even if you're drawing a complete blank. Here is an example of the mindmap I made for my interview, with the caveat that I've removed most of the answers: alexkrupp.com/yc.html. 

Guy gets crushed in interviewing because he didn't prepare and not skilled enough, is refreshingly honest about it

Point to your biceps and say "Well it's definitely not these babies."

What questions do you ask when an interviewer asks, "Do you have any questions for me?

It is highly unlikely that a company will go through multiple rounds of interviews just so they can get a free case study out of you.

What is more likely is that your candidacy is strong but not a no-brainer and someone in the executive team suggested the case study as a small way of gauging how you well you understood or can relate to their business.

What's the best response when an interviewer asks you what your weaknesses are?

Brain teasers? Banned. (Of course, everyone has a different definition of a brain teasers.) If an interviewer were to ask a candidate a brain teaser, despite the policy, the hiring committee would likely disregard this interviewer’s feedback and send a note back telling the interviewer not to ask such silly questions.

Go to the Glassdoor blog for the top 25 oddball interview questions, but below are the ones from technology companies, since I reckon you’d be most interested in those.

Q. And what are you listening for?

A. Stories. You’re interviewing me now, but we could just as soon be having a job interview. You’re going to walk away from our session right now with a perspective about me. And it’s not focused on my career accomplishments, like what I did in 1987 when I was the vice president of marketing in the grocery division. It’s a conversation about a person.

Only suggest a competing offer when you know you're on track to get the job your interviewing for (past the first round), or mention it to the hiring manager when s/he asks you if you have any questions.

Am I fit for this job? Yes--> What is the process for me to get an offer, I have an outstanding offer that I don't want to lose if this doesn't work out.

Link to Google interview questions for:
Product Marketing Manager
Product Manager
Software Engineer
Software Engineer in Test
Quantitative Compensation Analyst
Engineering Manager
AdWords Associate

Interviewer: Now comes the part of the interview where we ask a question to test your creative thinking ability. Don't think too hard about it, just apply everyday common sense, and describe your reasoning process.

Here's the question: Why are manhole covers round?

The basic reason why it is polite to give people flat, euphemistic turndowns -- not just at the end of interviews, but in lots of breakup situations, including exit interviews, declining of contracts, and breakups with SOs -- is that you don't want to prolong the agony or send mixed signals. You don't want to appear to be negotiating. You don't want to appear to be trying to cause excessive pain. You certainly don't want to provoke the person to burst into tears, physically attack you, stalk you for weeks, months, or years, or file a lawsuit.

You also don't want to tell a person that they're hopeless and will never succeed in the industry and then wake up to find out that they're Steve Jobs. That happens. It happens all the time. Interviewing

When I worked at Apple my VP was Jennifer Bailey who was interviewed by Steve Jobs for the job. She told me he asked her what her greatest strength was. She said something like realizing when there was an opportunity and acting on it. He said, "Wrong answer. The right answer is that you hire great people."

Former recruiter. (IT, quant finance, and trading) Jobs
The best way to deflect a bad question from a non-expert would be to say "That's not how I would typically frame it." You can usually sort of tell what someone wants, or what they should want, and if you can meet them halfway you can demonstrate that you're qualified and an expert.

Ask not what our company can do for you.
Ask what you can do for our company.

Self-imposed barriers: The second reason I never considered applying to Google is perhaps another misperception on my part. My view was that Googlers seem to fit a particular profile. That profile is of being a graduate of a top school (think Stanford, UW or MIT), typically in their mid to late 20s. That’s not to say all fit this profile but your path is certainly a lot easier if this is you. Again, I’m not claiming this is the case but it certainly was my perception.

Great article on when to ask questions, when to shut up in meetings, etc

Guy wants job with advertising agencies. Buys ads on names of top creative directors. Gets 2 job offers

Very good example & discussion about why companies don't tell you why they rejected your job application

So you just finished up the year at Harvard/Wharton/Stanford/NYU, etc. and since your lifelong dream of being a banker doesn’t seem like a viable route anymore, you’re thinking that a startup might be the place for you. (You’d much rather be a VC, but you’re smart enough to know that there are like 8 junior VC positions open a year, so you’re looking for a backup.)

Well, let me break the news to you bluntly—most of you are going about this startup thing completely ass backwards and no early stage startup that I know of is really dying to hire an MBA. What they want is a ninja, and a hundred grand or so later, your diploma is not universally recognized as a “I haz ninja skillz” card.

Read more: http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2010/01/dear-mbas-who-want-to-work-at-startups.html#ixzz0e1JwBBCG

If you're nervous about an upcoming job interview, Better Talking can help you practice and smooth out the bumps in your delivery.

Better Talking offers free automated phone interviews. Visit the web site, sign up with your name and email, and you're given a phone number and a pin number. Call the number and you'll be prompted with various questions like "What type of work motivates you" and other common but generic interview questions. When you're all done, you'll be emailed a link to your interview so you can listen to see how you sounded.

A. One of my favorite interview questions is, “If I had four of your direct reports sitting in a room, how would they describe you?” Just the adjectives they would pick are always pretty instructive. Then I turn it around and say, “If I had four of your last bosses in the room, how would they describe you?”

You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:

* Sales
* Additive effort
* Initiation

Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.

Far better to reach a level of confidence and skill that you can describe solutions rather than ask for tasks.

Last week I published an article in BusinessWeek entitled an Insider's Guide to Tech-Job Hunting. Here I try to expand on this article to summarize all my advice for job seekers in one big post. I look forward to your thoughts and comments...

Remember the “extreme job hunters”? That MIT grad who wore a sandwich board and handed out resumes on Park Avenue? The MBA-holding taxi driver who posted his resume in the back of his cab?

Their techniques garnered plenty of media coverage, but didn’t ultimately land them a job. Today the Wall Street Journal spoke with them about the lessons they learned from their “extreme job hunting” techniques.

Sell yourself in the cover letter. If you are hard working, dependable, and loyal, then make that your case. It’s up to you to sell yourself, not for an employer to read your mind.

Kristin Konopka sent out nearly 100 copies of her résumé in January in search of receptionist work, but got only one callback. That's when Ms. Konopka, a 29-year-old New York actress and yoga teacher, took her master's degree and academic teaching experience off her résumé.

The calls started coming in. The slimmer version of her résumé landed in 30 in-boxes and earned her three callbacks and two interviews. "It definitely picked up the interest," says Ms. Konopka, who realized quickly that people don't "want to hire anyone who is overqualified."

Brad Feld writes up outstanding post on how to prep before meeting him. Is somewhat crucified in comments section for being pompous, but he's right on. This is a great post

Andrew on interviewing non-technical people: Make it concrete: "Let’s say that you were going to hire a product manager who needs to have a strong background in user acquisition via search engine marketing. Ideally, you should be able to sit them in front of a blank spreadsheet and they should be able to model out the user acquisition process from start to end. This means they’ll know how to think about the problem like a funnel, show the different steps, be able to roughly approximate what the numbers might be, and then calculate the cost per acquisition."

Now Glassdoor has launched an interview resource where you can report what sorts of questions you got from a given employer. This is a great moment in altruism, really, because you are helping other people to get a job without knowing how doing so will help you. So I like Glassdoor’s new idea right away, because of that. Because the very being of this tool assumes that people want to help each other.

Calacanis on interview scripts / how to out-work everyone. Extreme, but it's certainly one way to do it

Charlie: "Your friends who don’t care or are stupid will use Monster, CareerBuilder, and Craigslist (I was one of these stupid people for a few weeks). They will compete with hundreds of people for mediocre jobs that they won’t get. There will be exceptions to this rule, of course, but not many. Your smarter friends will search for jobs through their network (e.g. a friend’s dad, their cousin’s former boss, etc.). Your smartest friends will travel. The ambitious will start their own company."

Clever microsite: How to nail an interview

These questions were so good that I got Alan’s permission to share them on PPND. If you use them, ask potential employers and peers for specific examples so you can figure out what they mean by words like teamwork and collaboration. Do these terms represent strongly held cultural values, or do people just give them lip service? 1. Who will I learn from and how? 2. Who is held up as a hero here? What for? 3. How do you resolve conflict here? 4. How willing are people to help each other? 5. How do you celebrate what’s working? 6. What keeps you going when things get stressful? (Ed: Conversely, be prepared to answer these questions when interviewing someone)

Earlier in my career I spent four years working in a management consulting company creating models to use in hiring people. Our clients, mostly large public companies, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on research we performed in their companies to predict who would be a star performer. What do you do in your spare time?

Right on: Here’s a tip from someone who has read thousands of resumes. When you’re applying to a startup, or a software company with less than, say, 100 employees, you may want to highlight the Banging Out Code parts of your experience, while deemphasizing the Middle Management parts of your experience.

Technical interviewing -- by Eric Ries

And Couric displayed one brilliant technique I recommend to all future questioners. When Palin ducked a question about financial-bailout provisions, saying that "John McCain and I" had not yet reached a decision, Couric asked the deadly question: "So what are the pros and cons?" There is no way to fake your way around that.

Part 2/2: What to ask once you get an offer at a startup

Great article on interviewing with links to other articles. Includes technical details and psychological factors.