To ace an interview today you have to be alert and able to quickly adapt your presentation to the style and skill of the person interviewing you. And if some of the stories you've sent to us are an indication, you also need a thick skin.

Take this tale from Morely, a Sault Ste. Marie reader. ``Wearing my best suit and coming straight from the barbershop, I entered the interview brimming with confidence. I knew I had the necessary skills... I felt ready... looked sharp. I was ready for anything, or so I thought.

"The first question fired my way was, `When was the last time you were in jail?' Without giving it a second thought, I said, `the last time I played monopoly'.

He bellowed, "next candidate please" as I was escorted from his office by the receptionist.
"Needless to say, I didn't get the job," Morely writes. "But I refused to acknowledge the interviewer's insolent behavior.... When an interview is granted, I expect a fair chance to answer reasonable questions."

When it comes to unreasonable interview questions, we'd have to go some distance to beat these two, offered by another reader: "We work as a team here," candidates are told. "If you were to see our team as a bowl of fruit, which piece of fruit would you be?" or, "How would you re-design an elephant?"

Well, you get the idea. Contending with insane questions seems to be part of the interview screening process these days. From what I can gather, there's no particular reason for them. Some people conduct 'stress interviews' to see your reaction. Others, ask gimmicky questions like: What piece of fruit would you be? In an attempt to see how creative you are or to assess your psychology. Still others are silly people who find themselves in a position of power and want to use it.

When looking for work you have little choice but to put up with such interview antics. The best strategy is to keep your sense of humor, respond as best you can and hope you can get through the screening process to an real interview with the person who would be your boss. (If the line of questioning is truly offensive, you have little choice but to leave.The truth of the matter is, you probably wouldn't want work for or with this person anyway.)

Beverly McKnight tells of the worst interview she ever suffered through.

"It took place with a social service agency," Beverly McKnight recalls."I was ushered into a room with a very long, narrow desk and the five people who were interviewing me sat at the very end of it. I was escorted (banished!) to the other end with nothing but a huge, empty space between.

"It was very sterile, cold, confrontation and a most unpleasant experience. I saw no smiles or warm greetings...."

"I had in fact, been quite looking forward to this particular interview as I had discovered that the person responsible for the interviewing and hiring process was related to a very good friend of ours. For obvious reasons, I never said anything to this woman until the end of the interview as we left the room (dungeon!) and she showed me to the door. When I mentioned our ( mutual relationship), her attitude and expression never changed. It was like being interviewed by a robot."

"On the drive home, I made the decision not to take the job, even if it were offered to me (which it wasn't)... I later met this woman socially and she smiled, shook my hand and acted as if we'd never met."

This half of McKnight's recollections illustrate a rather peculiar tendency on the part of today's employers. Here's how a Waterloo, Ontario marketing consultant, Gary Will, describes it:

"Organizations talk a lot about how important their people are. But so many use a detached, mechanistic selection process that creates a climate of distrust, removes the possibility of a dialogue between the two parties and alienates the very people that organization will depend on for its success. There is often more human interaction, openness, and empathy in a purchasing decision for machinery and office supplies than in the hiring process."

Why does this happen? Will faults the use of so-called, "trained experts" who recommend all kinds of questionable (in his view, at least) interview techniques, including the kind of highly structured format that Beverly McKnight encountered.

Interviewers trained to conduct structured interviews like these are coached to take a detached, objective stance and ask everyone interviewed the same question, in exactly the same order, scoring people according to their answers.

"There's no evidence that this technique produces better hiring decisions," Will notes. "But it is an excellent way to defend against accusations that the process was unfair."

Still, Will firmly believes, "interviewers need to stop being automatons and go back to being real people."

Beverly McKnight's agrees wholeheartedly. Her "absolute best job interview" was conducted by a real person, she says.

"I sent an unsolicited résumé to a Director of a large hospital," McKnight recalls. "She called several times, no doubt assessing my suitability and job skills. Finally she said that she felt I might be a good fit for a newly created position and asked if we could meet. Quite enjoyably, she said, 'maybe we could do this over lunch'.

"We instantly both knew it would be an excellent fit and although she couldn't promise when all the pieces would come together, it was sealed with a handshake. She promised to call me as soon as they dotted the i's and crossed the t's."

"The process took just over a year. But finally I was hired and single-handedly created and developed the position from scratch... I stayed in (it) for over six years."

People often complain about the length of time it takes employers to make a hiring decision. A year seems like a long time. But McKnight didn't mind, at least in retrospect, probably because the employer with whom she was dealing "had excellent communication and people skills and kept me informed of the bureaucratic process and progress on a regular basis."

In other words, because she was treated professionally and sensitively.

According to some readers, professional, sensitive treatment is all too rare when you're looking for work.

Of late, Nancy has run into what she calls "scanning interviews" which sound a bit like the "cattle calls" that actors and models have had to put up with for years. Scanning interviews last 10 to 15 minutes at the most, she says. You are given the once over, asked a couple of question, then sent on your way. There's no way to open a dialogue, no opportunity to ask your own questions.

Group interviews also seem to be gaining currency, at the moment.

Colin tells of being interviewed in a group of several people who had applied to be bilingual tour guides. The interview lasted three hours, he says. "Each person was given a picture of a gadget. Mine was a can-opener. I had to go in front of the room and describe the appearance of the object and others had to guess what (it) was. As I fumbled, in French, with phrases like 'a wheel with tiny teeth is connected to a knob that can be turned', four interviewers scribble furiously in their notepads.... We then played a survival game...we were put in the middle of the desert, given a list of supplies and instructed to devise survival strategies.... Finally, each person was given a local tourist attraction and a page of information. We were given five minutes to memorize it and prepare a dynamic presentation...all this for a summer job!."

There are both pros and cons to group interviews, according to June, who aced one last summer.

"We had different employment histories and were not the same age," she recalls. "We were applying for assorted positions....however half of our job entailed teamwork across departments... Our group session lasted about 40 minutes, with specific department interviews later."

June found broad questions such as: "What is the best/worst thing about this organization?" and "What do you know about activities within the organization?" easy to answer, she says. Still, the group dynamics were inhibiting. "After each question, I waited for a few moments... It was almost like school: no one wanted to be the first to raise their hand. ...Perhaps had we all been applying for the same position, I would have felt more comfortable demonstrating my knowledge..."

Group interviews can set up a competitive atmosphere and you sometimes have to put up with "unfriendly remarks" June adds. But they.. let...you listen to other interviewees, compare your own performance to theirs and take confidence, "if you've prepared well," she says.

June had prepared well and it paid off. "I am still happily employed," she writes.

In the final analysis, preparing well is the only interview strategy over which you have full control.