In interview situations such as this, your looks are typically more important than your specific skills since the organization may wish to place you in nearly any job. What they are looking for is a so-called cultural match. In other words, what they are trying to do is to match the personality of the person that they hire with the overriding philosophy of the organization. For instance, the company may be one that stresses teamwork, sharing, and cooperation so they will try to find new employees who will be able to flourish in that environment.
As a rule, they will qualify in the interview by asking you prepared, general questions, at the beginning and then seeing how you respond. Then, the interviewer will ask you spontaneous questions based on your reactions to the original questions. This will continue for 30 minutes or so and then the interview will end on what one recruiter I talked to call a "warm note."
If you get to the point of actually being interviewed by most recruiters, there is every reason to believe that they will end up offering you a position sometime later. As one recruiter put it, "Usually, when I decide to interview a student, I have a pretty good idea that he or she has the necessary skills. For one thing, if I have asked the placement office to schedule business majors, I know in advance that they have the necessary business course background I want. For another, I always tell the placement office to schedule only seniors with a 2.5 (B+) average. So I know they are reasonably bright and capable. "Frankly," she concluded, "I find very few that I can weed out." It becomes a question of matching the candidate to the company, in general, and in management trainee interviews the college recruiter is authorized to make the final hiring decision him or herself. The recruiter simply tells the new employee's boss that he or she has hired a person who will begin to work on a particular date.
It should be clear to the reader that this situation is ideal for the candidate. Since you can control your answers, even prepare and rehearse them in advance, you can also control the direction the conversation takes.
If there is a danger here, it is that in the informal interchange it may be very tempting to relax and make off-the-cuff remarks that leave the wrong impression. Avoid this temptation by sticking to your prepared answers. Again, this type of interview allows you to decide what direction the discussion will take so why not take advantage of the situation?
