a friend once got me a job interview with his company. he listened into the interview, and i could hear him audibly gasp when the interviewer asked, “why do you want to work for us?”. I replied plainly, “To make a living so that I may pursue my real goals.” I didn’t get the job…
I’m not technically NT but I have ADHD and I don’t have problems picking up this sort of neurotypical social cues.
When I interview people myself, I’m extra wary of catering to ND people, and for questions like this, I phrase them very carefully to mean what I want to ask:
“Why do you want to work for us? I’m sure there were other jobs out there that would result in a salary, but what made you apply for this one specifically?”
I make clear in the conversation that I want to know their motivation, their alignment to the specific role, and not the fact that they need money to live. I already know that! So I tailor the questions to give me exactly what I need even if the person is, say, autistic and takes things in the most literal way.
This post has, however, made me realise that in the job posting I have open right now, I’m going to add a note in the vein of “this is a wishlist of all the things the ideal candidate would have, but we acknowledge nobody is ever a 100% perfect match - feel free to apply even if you only meet some of the criteria as you might be more qualified than most applicants”.
I have always appreciated the listings that divide the list between the “must haves,” even soft ones (e.g. 4yr degree, knowledge of X tool, Y years of experience, solid communication skills), and “our ideal candidate will have most of the following” (e.g. Y+3 years of experience, prior role in management, knowledge of Z regulation).
The 4 year degree one is still never a must have. The only things that are true must haves are certifications for federally regulated jobs, like requiring a PE.
I was going to say; the OP is something I feel on a deep spiritual level but the worst part is that there are still some things that are 100% required to the extent that falsifying them can lead to being charged with a crime. Even as a nurse I have a license that I sat through board exams for and if I’d tried to apply to jobs saying I was licensed before I was I could have picked up charges.
There are nursing jobs you can get between graduation and sitting for the NCLEX (it can take a few months to get scheduled and if you schedule before graduation then don’t graduate there’s a cancelation fee) but those jobs say so explicitly in the listing and the title of the listing usually says something like “New Graduate Residency Program” and specifically say somewhere that continued employment is contingent on passing the boards. Some places also have “nurse internships” where you work essentially as a CNA for your last 1-2 semesters. There’s this big “nursing shortage” (there’s actually a nursing pay and safe working assignment shortage but we won’t get into that right now) so a lot of places have strategies like this to snap us up ASAP right outta graduation when we still have a fresh desire to ~*save the world*~ and no standards yet. After about a year we start caring about silly nonsense the hospital doesn’t like like safe staffing and not getting beaten to death by a veteran who picked up dementia and other cognition altering illnesses from all the drugs they did to deal with the PTSD.
The upside is that once you have a license and especially after you have that first year of experience, getting hired is pretty easy. I in particular work in a very high demand specialty that I have a ton of experience in so I can basically know I’m getting a job offer if I put in even the barest effort (I’ve definitely also applied to jobs where I just wanted to know more about the position and see if it was something I might like, but me and the interviewer usually know by the end that it’s not going to be my cup of tea). But I actually super recently made a gratitude post to c/nursing about how nice it is to not be getting jerked around by employers in this shitty economy.
One trick is to have the mindset that you are in high demand
“Well, I enjoy doing my job anywhere but I’d prefer to do it somewhere that I want to be. I’ve checked out this company and didn’t see any red flags, but later on when you ask me if I have any questions, I’ll be asking about what it’s like to work here and if there are any unique challenges that come with working here”
I see what you mean, but you have to read in between the lines a little bit. When they ask that question, they want to know why you’d rather work for them than anyone else hiring in that space.
Your answer makes it sound like you have zero interest in the company. I’m sure that you’d rather work for them than a myriad of other places if you actually applied. Think of why that is and focus on the positives. It’s not lying unless you literally had zero reason to work there as opposed to anywhere else.
Oh? I am not supposed to take a question at face value? I need some form of, wink wink, unspoken knowledge of human interaction that was not specified in the job offer? jfc
You’re supposed to lie. Because everyone who is not a true believer in the cause - of the product, the company, the industry, the economy, capitalism, whatever it may be, is also lying. Because the whole system depends on everyone going along with it, otherwise it all falls apart. That you have to slave away at your shitty job with shitty managers so that one day you can become the manager and be shitty because it happened to you, all in service of the exploitation of natural resources and people and society to make line go up and make the people who managed to step on the most amount people on their way to the top that much richer.
Yeah they don’t specify every parameter of human interaction in writing before you have a meeting. I’m not saying that it’s easy, but it’s just one of the challenges of dealing with people. Best of luck with future interviews though. The whole way we hire people in the corporate world has this crazy song and dance to it, but IMO it’s better to learn it a bit. Try not to let it influence your style so much that you’re not telling the company about yourself at all, but learning what kinds of answers the company is looking for can make it much easier to know what the heck to talk about when asked these weird questions.
a friend once got me a job interview with his company. he listened into the interview, and i could hear him audibly gasp when the interviewer asked, “why do you want to work for us?”. I replied plainly, “To make a living so that I may pursue my real goals.” I didn’t get the job…
I’m not technically NT but I have ADHD and I don’t have problems picking up this sort of neurotypical social cues.
When I interview people myself, I’m extra wary of catering to ND people, and for questions like this, I phrase them very carefully to mean what I want to ask:
“Why do you want to work for us? I’m sure there were other jobs out there that would result in a salary, but what made you apply for this one specifically?”
I make clear in the conversation that I want to know their motivation, their alignment to the specific role, and not the fact that they need money to live. I already know that! So I tailor the questions to give me exactly what I need even if the person is, say, autistic and takes things in the most literal way.
This post has, however, made me realise that in the job posting I have open right now, I’m going to add a note in the vein of “this is a wishlist of all the things the ideal candidate would have, but we acknowledge nobody is ever a 100% perfect match - feel free to apply even if you only meet some of the criteria as you might be more qualified than most applicants”.
I have always appreciated the listings that divide the list between the “must haves,” even soft ones (e.g. 4yr degree, knowledge of X tool, Y years of experience, solid communication skills), and “our ideal candidate will have most of the following” (e.g. Y+3 years of experience, prior role in management, knowledge of Z regulation).
The 4 year degree one is still never a must have. The only things that are true must haves are certifications for federally regulated jobs, like requiring a PE.
I was going to say; the OP is something I feel on a deep spiritual level but the worst part is that there are still some things that are 100% required to the extent that falsifying them can lead to being charged with a crime. Even as a nurse I have a license that I sat through board exams for and if I’d tried to apply to jobs saying I was licensed before I was I could have picked up charges.
There are nursing jobs you can get between graduation and sitting for the NCLEX (it can take a few months to get scheduled and if you schedule before graduation then don’t graduate there’s a cancelation fee) but those jobs say so explicitly in the listing and the title of the listing usually says something like “New Graduate Residency Program” and specifically say somewhere that continued employment is contingent on passing the boards. Some places also have “nurse internships” where you work essentially as a CNA for your last 1-2 semesters. There’s this big “nursing shortage” (there’s actually a nursing pay and safe working assignment shortage but we won’t get into that right now) so a lot of places have strategies like this to snap us up ASAP right outta graduation when we still have a fresh desire to ~*save the world*~ and no standards yet. After about a year we start caring about silly nonsense the hospital doesn’t like like safe staffing and not getting beaten to death by a veteran who picked up dementia and other cognition altering illnesses from all the drugs they did to deal with the PTSD.
The upside is that once you have a license and especially after you have that first year of experience, getting hired is pretty easy. I in particular work in a very high demand specialty that I have a ton of experience in so I can basically know I’m getting a job offer if I put in even the barest effort (I’ve definitely also applied to jobs where I just wanted to know more about the position and see if it was something I might like, but me and the interviewer usually know by the end that it’s not going to be my cup of tea). But I actually super recently made a gratitude post to c/nursing about how nice it is to not be getting jerked around by employers in this shitty economy.
There are things they actually care about enough to throw out your resume on pre-screen though. That’s de facto required for that particular job.
Hit them back with “why do you want to hire me?”
Or even better: “why should I pick your offer?”
One trick is to have the mindset that you are in high demand
“Well, I enjoy doing my job anywhere but I’d prefer to do it somewhere that I want to be. I’ve checked out this company and didn’t see any red flags, but later on when you ask me if I have any questions, I’ll be asking about what it’s like to work here and if there are any unique challenges that come with working here”
I see what you mean, but you have to read in between the lines a little bit. When they ask that question, they want to know why you’d rather work for them than anyone else hiring in that space.
Your answer makes it sound like you have zero interest in the company. I’m sure that you’d rather work for them than a myriad of other places if you actually applied. Think of why that is and focus on the positives. It’s not lying unless you literally had zero reason to work there as opposed to anywhere else.
Oh? I am not supposed to take a question at face value? I need some form of, wink wink, unspoken knowledge of human interaction that was not specified in the job offer? jfc
You’re supposed to lie. Because everyone who is not a true believer in the cause - of the product, the company, the industry, the economy, capitalism, whatever it may be, is also lying. Because the whole system depends on everyone going along with it, otherwise it all falls apart. That you have to slave away at your shitty job with shitty managers so that one day you can become the manager and be shitty because it happened to you, all in service of the exploitation of natural resources and people and society to make line go up and make the people who managed to step on the most amount people on their way to the top that much richer.
Yeah they don’t specify every parameter of human interaction in writing before you have a meeting. I’m not saying that it’s easy, but it’s just one of the challenges of dealing with people. Best of luck with future interviews though. The whole way we hire people in the corporate world has this crazy song and dance to it, but IMO it’s better to learn it a bit. Try not to let it influence your style so much that you’re not telling the company about yourself at all, but learning what kinds of answers the company is looking for can make it much easier to know what the heck to talk about when asked these weird questions.