This quote by hiring authority is usually followed by a statement like “… It really doesn’t matter what they think or what they say about you, we just like to get their opinion since you’d be working with them”..DON’T BELIEVE THIS LIE!…
The team is usually a group of five or six people who are peers to the person being hired… the manager read some management book somewhere and came up with the idea of “wouldn’t it be nice if all of the people in the group talked to the candidate to see if they might all get along”… there is no proof that this kind of step in the interviewing process helps hire a better candidate…in fact, it usually has more of a negative impact than a positive one… the idea is that everybody will get a chance to meet the candidate…kumbya!
What really happens is, if the “team” or some member of the team doesn’t like the candidate or, more importantly, is threatened by the candidate, they won’t outright say they wouldn’t hire the candidate or they don’t like him or her, they’ll say things like “well, I’m not sure they’ll fit in”… or… “I don’t really know…” or something pejorative like that… the truth is that these people do have something to say about who gets hired… no matter what any hiring authority says, they are going to listen to the input of the “team’…
The truth is, that this whole exercise is a waste of time at best and detrimental at worst. A month or so ago, I had a candidate with a stellar background and 15 years of experience… he went to the “team” meeting/interview and some 22-year-old kid who had only been with the company six months… the same amount of time he had been out of college. He asked my candidate, in front of five other people “what motivates you?”… my candidate simply looked at the kid and after a long pause, clearly expressing his being relatively insulted, said something like, “my family”… needless to say the candidate was not impressed with the interviewing process and refused to go back to the company even though they thought he was a great candidate…Interestingly, the hiring authority was so upset with the result, he decided to quit organizing the “team” meeting step in the interviewing process…amen!
If you, as a candidate, are faced with this insanity, you can’t call it that… you’d best realize that these people do have something to say about you getting hired and you better play it cool… do not take the meeting for granted… realize that it is a real interview…
Most of the time these “interviews” become more conversational with the candidate and in that conversation the most important thing you can do is to ask the ‘team,’ both as a group and individually, about themselves…about what they like about the company, why they work there, etc… Engage with them as much as possible and get them to talk about their favorite subject… themselves…
What you’re really trying to do here is to at least “neutralize” their opinions and maybe get them to wildly support you… obviously I don’t think highly of these encounters but what I think doesn’t mean a fig to hiring authorities… there are lots of things that I think are absurd in the interview and hiring process. But, what I think, doesn’t matter…
Be prepared to “meet the team”… remember, it is an interview… treat it seriously
