The joy of interviewing

I had my third set of interviews at the CPA firm yesterday. I wish I could say that I felt it went well. I met with five different people yesterday afternoon. I was early – I got off at 11, had lunch and drove out there. I was there at around noon – my first interview wasn’t until 1:15 – so I went to Ralphs and killed about 30 minutes. I still got there at about 12:45. At 1 p.m. the receptionist called the HR manager, and she came out briefly at around 1:05 – and made a comment that I was still a little early. She came back at around 1:20 or so. I met with the HR manager first, who I had met before. One of her first questions to me was on a scale of 1 – 10, how excited are you about this job? I said 7 – then she asked me why not 9 or 10 – so I amended my answer to “I guess closer to a 9.” Not a good way to start off…I asked her about the interviews and she said each one would vary in style. Each interview was scheduled for 30 minutes.

First I met with the Regional Tax Administrative Coordinator from the San Jose office. Very sharp lady – who had some interesting questions. I felt pretty confident about most of the answers that I gave her – she had some interesting questions – She gave me a list of five things and asked me to rank them in order of importance: Timekeeping, Attendance, Professionalism, Personality, and Communication. I ranked them Professionalism, Personality, Communication, Attendance and Timekeeping. Then I explained why – I said it is important to always be professional, timekeeping was last because it was least important of the list. I don’t remember what I said exactly.

A second list – much easier was: rate the following in terms of a project: Accuracy, Speed, Timeliness, and Overall Presentation. I ranked Accuracy first, then Overall Presentation, Timeliness and Speed. I said that you would think that timeliness and speed would be the same thing – but timeliness is more important – speed may mean mistakes. Another interesting question was if I were an animal – what animal would I be? My first response was a monkey because that was the first thing that popped into my head. She said I didn’t seem like a monkey. So I said a bird because I would like to be free and be able to fly. I asked her what animal she would be and she said a cat. Why didn’t I come up with that when she asked????

Next I met with tax partner 1. Very nice gentleman – seems easy going but expects you to file the stuff on his desk. He said that it was a very high stress environment. He stated that most of the stuff on his desk is completed. If he is out of the office and needs a file, I would be expected to find it in his office. I was imagining a list of files and their locations on a spreadsheet. First thing every morning he would like me to come into his office and discuss the priorities of the day. I may have talked too much about this – I said that I liked the idea because I had a boss who was hard to pin down sometimes and hard to get 5 minutes with. Not sure that was a good example.

Towards the end of the interview I asked him what type of person he was looking for. He said someone who is high energy (mentioned it two or three times) and someone who is not highly emotional. I sat there wondering how do you portray "high energy" in an interview? I do not perceive myself as coming across as high energy in an interview setting. I said something about that when there is an error, more important to fix the error than focus on why the error was made. When he asked me about my weakness, I said my weakness was lack of attention to detail – which is true – but I’m not sure the best answer to give.

I then met with partner 2. I wasn’t quite sure what to think about this guy. He didn’t have any questions prepared and so he asked me if I knew the differences of working in a professional firm, like a CPA firm. So he explained how professional firms are people who were managing their own clients, as opposed to supporting projects or groups as in aerospace. He comes from a law background and has been in the accounting business for the past ten years. He kept asking me if I had any questions, and I couldn’t think of any. I did mention at one point that if I am not busy, I will find work to do. He cautioned me that that is not a good idea at this company.

Tax partner 2 never really mentioned what he would need me to do for him. Explained that the company was very friendly and peopled moved up if they wanted to. He said that if you find something to do – then the responsibility becomes yours. He asked what I liked to do and I said traveling, photography, and knitting. He cringed when I mentioned knitting – his wife is a knitter and apparently he was knitted things all over his house. Then I mentioned music (he had a poster on his office wall that was from a Bach concert) and he told me that he plays the cello and we talked about music for a while. On the way home, I remembered that on my second set of interviews, the administrative assistant that was part of the interview team, mentioned that there was one tax partner who would come and want to talk for an hour or so - I have a feeling this is who she was talking about.

The final person was the junior member of the team, the tax manager. Very friendly, easy going person – didn’t have any questions – said he only needed a letter typed from time to time. Very low maintenance. He said he enjoyed working there and everyone was really easy to work with.

Lastly, I met with the HR manager again. She asked me how I thought it went, I said fine but mentioned that I didn’t feel that Michael was very prepared but how he had explained the differences of working for a professional firm. She kind of surprised me, because she said that she had been looking over my resume. She saw my extensive HR experience, working with projects etc. Why I was interested – how would this job be a challenge for me? I don’t remember my specific answer to this question. She then asked me where I would like to be in 1 to 5 years. I said either a consultant or manager. She asked in what field – and I said probably HR. I should find out by Monday at the latest.