3 ms·
I've been asked that question a few times. Currently interviewing and was asked that by one company by the guy that runs the dept, he also went on to ask me why
by firstplacelast 7y ago
I've been asked that question a few times. Currently interviewing and was asked that by one company by the guy that runs the dept, he also went on to ask me why I "want to work in this field". It was for a job that was pretty much the exact same as what I'm doing now (just trying to move cities). I found it incredibly insulting to have to justify why I want to do the work that I do, when I've been doing it for many years.
When they offered me a second interview I immediately turned it down.
- eru 7y agoI wouldn't judge them to badly for such an inane question by itself. Being an interviewer is also hard. (If they did other weird things before, it might just be the straw to break the camels back.) The status quo needs justification every once in a while, too. Though you could formulate the same question nicer as: "If you could do it all over again, what other fields would you be interested in? What are the pros and cons? What do you love and what do you hate about your chosen field?" As an candidate, I often ask a variant of the latter: "What's great about the company? What sucks?" Even the greatest company has some aspects that suck, and it would be a huge red flag if they lack an honest answer. That would mean either it's a "cult" or stuff is so embarrassingly bad that they don't want to break the floodgates. All the good places I ended up working for had decent answers about their downsides.
- firstplacelast 7y agoThat's true, but there were several other points of contention too. The guy that interviewed me was the head of the group I would be working in and I could tell the things we valued were incompatible.
- eru 7y agoI guess you dodged a bullet then.