Small talk is nice. I like small talk. (Sometimes, other times my introvert side comes out and I’m like, no I’m good not knowing one here at this party, I’ll just casually eat 15 brownies). But, in a job interview, small talk can make it look like you’re planning to discriminate against someone.
When you’re conducting a job interview, you need to be careful to ask only questions that are legal and useful and save the small talk for after the person is hired.
To keep reading click here: 10 Questions Employers Should Never Ask in a Job Interview
#9, “…hate about your last job…” I agree that’s not good, at least not phrased that way. But engineers are an odd lot as a group, I’ve heard that most of us can be placed on the autism spectrum somewhere.
Why do I say that? Need to as engineers a question or two to figure out if they can fit in with the group. A question that I’ve been asked is “this job (interviewer picks out something specific on the resume) what did you dislike the most about working on that”? and a followup pointing a different job, “what did you like most about working on that”? Not open ended, but directed at specific work items on a resume.
Loving an accent: As my dear departed great aunt Estelle from Arkansas used to say, “where I come from, we don’t have accents, buy y’all do!” I suppose it would be rude to say it to an interviewer now, but when she came north to work in an airplane factory in WWII and use that line, she was hired on the spot by my great uncle George.
She was a pistol and she made the best fried pies ever.