A couple of nights ago, I was conducting interviews to pick a student representative for this MIT-wide committee. The first point I want to make is that while I’ve done my fair share of interviewing before, I never feel that I do a good job. I don’t contest people enough; I don’t think about stuff enough; I don’t pick up on things people say enough to ask them probing questions back. In general, I’m not a big debater, and I think the people who enjoy debating are the best interviewers. It’s about looking at everything critically. My approach is to look at everything acceptingly and not question unless there’s something blaringly wrong.

My second point related to interviews, and this goes back to the title of this entry, is the difference between women and men when it comes to interviewing. Men give succint answers to question; you ask them something, they give you a one line summary answer. Women like to tell stories; their answers are usually long-winded (not necessarily bad) with lots of backdrop so as to explain the significance of something.

Is this something that is universal? Interviewing made me think about myself; what would I do? How do I answer questions? I realized that I definitely go the story-route. I try to give one-line summary answers before going on to elaborate, but sometimes I just elaborate. I think part of the problem is wanting to fill the silence. It’s really hard to stop, sit in silence with a panel of people staring at you, and think about how to answer a question. Whenever I’ve actually tried that, I don’t end up thinking about anything.

So as an interviewer, which method did I prefer? I definitely preferred the short succint route. Tell me what I want to know. Don’t go meandering around tangents because then I just think that you don’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t have an answer to my question, and you’re just talking to fill up space and time.