An unexpected pleasure...

So yesterday I had a job interview for a technical writing job in the suburbs and it was by far the most unusual/entertaining job interview I've had yet and it caught me totally off-guard. See, the company is a rather large one so I went in with my best professional demeanor expecting to wow the socks off the interviewer -- or as I was to discover "interviewers" – with my stunning skills and to do my best to land the job. I was rather excited about this job as well since it seemed like it would probably be pretty demanding and force me to think quickly on my feet and be flexible. Those are all qualities that I look for since I'm actually the kind of sick-o that likes to be challenged by their job. There's nothing I can think of more petrifying than sitting in a cubicle repeating the same task over and over and over again.

So anyway I walk into this interview and am immediately bombarded with questions like "What animal are you?" and "Name the Scooby Doo characters?" and "How exactly does one bowl buttered babies?" (Um, I should explain the buttered baby part...when I first entered the Internet via AOL seven or eight years ago I created a profile, that I completely forgot about until yesterday, wherein I entered "bowling buttered babies" under hobbies. I think I just liked the sound of it. There's also a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion quote under there as well that one of the interviewers informed me had so enraged one of the copywriters at the company with the lyric's poor grammar it was all they could do to keep the copywriter from coming in and forcing me to correct Jon Spencer's english. How could I not love this place?)

Needless to say, as far as interviews go, this one was on the more unusual side and it got me to thinking that this method of reviewing applicants may actually be more useful than following some tired old HR formula of asking questions and gauging responses against charts and character types. I mean, the interview I had yesterday certainly touched upon all the important points of the job they were interviewing me for and I feel they did a rather thorough job of that...but at the same time they probably got a better gauge of how I am personally, how adaptable I am and -- most importantly -- what my personality was like so they could judge whether I would actually fit into their company. I get the impression too many companies look at nothing but stats and then get confused when they get stuck with a staff of in-fighters and a generally dismal working atmosphere.

I do hope I get the job but even if I don't I can honestly say I had one of the most illuminating interviews of my professional career and it'll probably keep me motivated through every other interview that has questions read in monotone like "What's your best quality" and "What's you worst quality" when they could be finding out what I'm actually like by engaging me in a more spontaneous dialogue.

Just my two cents I guess.