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I once asked an applicant what her goals were. She indicated that she hoped to
go to school to become an interior designer, as she felt she had a flair for
that type of thing.
ADVICE: If asked about your goals, stick with ones relevant to the job for
which you are applying. It's great to have other goals, but it might not be
appropriate to mention those that don't fit with the job at hand.
At one time I worked with an intern who did some copy-editing for us. After
leaving the internship he interviewed at another company and presented a couple
of our 300+ page manuals as examples of his work, stating he was entirely
responsible for creating them. What he didn't know was that our development
director was consulting at the company he interviewed at. After the interview
she was shown his writing samples & was told that he took credit for them. She
just laughed and tossed his resume in the garbage.
ADVICE: Don't lie, cheat, or steal. You quite likely will get caught sooner or
later. Had this applicant presented the manuals and indicated that he
contributed to the copy editing, rather than claiming authorship, he quite
likely would have been considered for the job.
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Someone asked if hiring managers were interested in people's motivation.
Speaking for myself, to the degree that an applicant's motivation means that
they will be a hard working employee committed to the job for at least twice as
long as it takes for me to train them, I'm interested. Other than that, I
really don't care whether their motivation is to feed their starving family
back in the home country, or is to fulfill a deep need to be apply their
technical knowledge and communication skill, or is to answer a calling. I am
responsible to my company to perform in a manner so that the company makes
money. An employee either helps me to do that or they don't. I'm not really
concerned with why. Sorry if that sounds harsh--again, this is my perspective
only.
