- about interview process that went wrong

I applied for a role at an agency and the director of talent sent me a questionnaire to answer. I submitted and then I got a replied saying they decided to pursue other candidates. The questionnaire was very silly and about things like: list films you’ve watched, describe steps you take to go to work etc etc. should I still ask for a feedback or no?

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Often those questions are more telling than you might think. I often ask how many jelly beans fit in a suitcase. I had someone recently answer “a lot” and they were done answering - not the type of critical thinking and detail orientation we need for the role they were interviewing for.

While likely it had nothing to with your answers, might be worth looking at those questions /answers again and consider how they could relate to your skill set.

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Every scenario and every budget is the job of production BD1. I’ve provided detailed explanation but happy to further clarify for you. What would you like clarity on? The point of the original question is to ask those clarifying questions.

I am guessing that the questions weren’t looking for your actual answers, but instead how you go about explaining them, to gauge your creativity and communication style.

For example, here’s two responses to “Describe steps you take to get to work”:

1.) I walk to the bus stop. I get on the bus. I get off the bus. I walk down the street. I go into the office.

2.) I wave to the man on the corner selling fruit. We always exchange a smile — I think I knew him in a past life. I jump onto the bus. I’m packed in like sardines with a gaggle of strangers from all walks of life — rich moms off to pilates, young professionals, families of tourists — a menagerie of ever-changing faces that I take this bus with Monday to Friday. It seems that I never see the same crowd twice. I people watch on these bus trips. I like to study what people wear — it says a lot about who they are and how they want to be seen. I’m lost in my own little world by the time we pull up to my stop. I scramble to get through the crowd of commuters and skip down the street to the office. The buzz of the city invigorates my spirit. After some chit chat with the security guard, I head upstairs to start my day — game on.

Do you see why you’d hire one of these responses for a marketing role over the other response?

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Good point, BD1. I would say for a more creative role, I would want to see some pizazz and storytelling like the second one.

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I bet it has nothing to do with your answers to those questions. They probably were already leaning toward one candidate.

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That exactly what I thought as well

That is super weird and honestly you probably dodged a bullet. Any company that has such silly hiring practices surely isn’t attracting and retaining top talent.

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Were there a lot of typos in your answers? I notice you have a few noticeable ones here so maybe they were checking your attention to detail. It wouldn’t hurt to ask for feedback.

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Great advice. This is something you could practice and improve.

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I think what’s being hinted at here is that your communication, at least as we’ve experienced it, isn’t polished. Grammar, word choice, flow… your response to the questionnaire may not have demonstrated that thing that’s in most job descriptions about “good communication skills.” All it takes is for them to see an answer that’s hard to follow-like has typos that are not just wrong letters but a wrong verb tense or a wrong article-and they think “pass on this one.”

likesmart

Welcome to the "I Heard Google Asks Whackadoo Questions, So We Should, Too!" section of interviewing. (For those that don't know, Google once asked questions like, "How many ping pong balls fit inside a school bus?" ostensibly to learn how interviewees think about complex problems. This went on for several years, and it was evidently dropped in the mid-2010s, when someone realized that fizz buzz programming questions told you more about complex thinking than musing about sizes of bus and whether ping pong balls were round or crushed.)

Anyways, it's a style of interview, it's not all that insightful, unless you want to get into pedantic discussions of stuff that has nothing to do with work, and it's yet another hoop for you (and possibly the HR person you talked to) to jump through. Ask for feedback if you want. It's likely the questions had nothing to do with what they were measuring, so you won't be able to tell what they're even giving feedback for, unless your background is in psych or sociology. Then you *might* be able to reverse engineer it.

If it was me, if I was morbidly curious and had time to kill, I'd ask. If, however, I had anything better to do, I'd let it go and do something more productive.

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Thank for take the time to reply all of this. ❤️ I got a bit frustrated because I really spent some time on that. But, I did saw some typos after I submitted (just like the other person here mentioned). Anyway, just another NO for my collection. 😂😂

Looking at your responses, I’d encourage you to consider taking a community college English class. It’s a good opportunity to brush up on your writing and grammar skills, bonus it’s inexpensive and most people there are very nice.

Having a degree doesn’t have anything to do with it. If you think you stop learning once you graduate, you’re setting yourself up for failure. I have a masters and I still take classes here and there to be better.

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