By Audrey Gup-Mathews

Guest contributor

What is a “Marathon Interview?” It is an interview process that goes on and on and on. It is “the interview that wouldn’t die.” I recently wrote on my Facebook page that I had just gone through an afternoon of five, half-hour interviews with five different people at the same company. One of my friends wrote back, “Five interviews for one job? Sounds mindboggling!” Mindboggling indeed! Just one day earlier I had undergone a similar interview process with a different employer. Be prepared: If you haven’t had one already, there may be a “marathon interview” in your future!

Surprisingly, I have come to appreciate this form of applicant screening. I’ve never been a big fan of the “firing squad interview.” Having four or five people sit across the table from you and fire off questions, as you perspire under their critical gazes, has never been one of my favorite scenarios. Not only is the interviewee in “the hot seat,” but he does not have the opportunity to know his interrogators as real people, or to ask them questions that might give him valuable information about the company for which he may end up working. Meeting with a series of individual interviewers, however, allows employers and job candidates to engage in a more natural exchange, during which each can learn more about the other. 

For example, one of my hosts at the above-mentioned, “marathon” session let down her guard a bit and admitted an interesting fact to me. She confessed that she had always been the type of person to work in a position for a few years – just enough time to accomplish what she felt needed to be done – and then move on to the next position. She was a “job grazer.” However, she added that she was still at her present job, 12 years after being hired, because she loved the people with whom she worked. The staff members had become her friends. Interestingly, another interviewer at the same company made a similar confession. He, too, credited his terrific colleagues for his long tenure at the company. “Hmmmm…,” I thought. “Score one for this company!” I doubt that I would have gotten such valuable information had the interview been in a “firing squad” format. 

This type of interview also allows the job candidate to ask several people at the company the same question and get multiple viewpoints in response. I like to ask prospective employers what they consider to be the single greatest challenge for the newly hired person in my target job. The answers can vary quite a bit, given different administrators’ perspectives and experiences, some of which they may be more willing to share in a one-on-one interview situation than in a group session among their peers.

There is no doubt that undergoing a series of interviews, instead of a single one with several people, can be grueling and energy-draining, but it can also be an eye-opening experience. It is an opportunity to get to know your potential employers or fellow staff members and to compare their individual viewpoints about how the company operates. A series of meetings also gives you each interviewer’s undivided attention, enabling more natural conversation and taking you off the “hot seat!”

Gup-Mathews can be reached  at www.writeimpressionmaine.com.