The sham interview
Believe it or not, the chances are very high that at some time you will be involved in an interview that is being carried out with no intention of hiring any of the applicants. Occasionally, it is a question of the organization going through the motions to satisfy some legal requirement (e.g. E.E.O.) without any real commitment to employing anyone. Or it may be a case of the interviewer having already made up his or her mind. Perhaps the interviewer is conducting the interview to be polite, or maybe his or her superior has demanded that he or she talk to a certain number of people. Whatever the reason for the sham, there is little you can do to get the job because there was no question of hiring you in the first place.
About the most you can do in this situation is to try to discover if this is really the case and act accordingly. For one thing, you won't have false hopes about the job. For another, you can relax and use the interview as a practice session. The trick, of course, is finding out if the interview is genuine.
One way to decide this is to listen to what the interviewer says, or doesn't say. In my experience, the individual will give him or herself away by speaking in gross generalities; refusing to answer questions directly, in detail; and, making negative asides about the job and/or the organization itself.
Another clue to the deception can be seen in the way the interviewer acts. As was indicated earlier, contemporary research in nonverbal communication tells that people give themselves away when they lie. Arms folded across the chest, a hand placed against the face while talking to you, averted eye-contact during discussion about the position; these are all clear indications that either the interviewer is lying outright or holding something back.
The best advice about the sham interview is to rely on your instincts. If something doesn't seem right, listen carefully and watch the employer. Sooner or later he or she will give him or herself away.
The round robin interview
As often as not, employers do not tell you that you are going to be interviewed by a number of people during one visit. Either they forget or they deliberately don't tell you so that you can't prepare for this type of situation.
The round robin interview isn't really much of a threat if you are truly prepared; but, it can be unsettling if you don't expect it.
One of the most important things to remember about this type of interview is to be consistent in your answers. Whatever you tell one interviewer you must tell the other. If you contradict yourself you will be perceived as confused or lying, and your credibility will slip proportionately.
Another thing to remember is that you must stress your good points more emphatically than you normally would. This is because you want all of the interviewers to agree on your main strengths. As it is, there will be a significant difference of opinion about you from one interviewer to another, so it is your job to minimize that difference.
The group interview
From time to time you may find yourself in a situation where you are unexpectedly being interviewed by a number of people at the same time. Usually, employers do this because the candidate will be working with, or for, all of the interviewers, or each of the interviewers has an area of expertise that he or she will ask questions about.
The first thing you must do is find out who the “leader” is and make a special effort to please him or her by taking extra time to answer his or her questions and agreeing with everything he or she says. Occasionally, you will be told who this person is; at other times you will have to figure it out for yourself. One clue to determining who is the leader, is who speaks first to introduce the others, or to explain the interview situation. Another clue is, who the others defer to when several people begin to speak at the same time; still another, is who controls the flow of questions.
Once you have located the leader it is time to seek out a friendly face; someone who seems empathetic. It is important to find this person because he or she is the one who may be able to swing the others to support you for the position. Once you have found him or her try to cultivate the individual by directing answers to him or her and confirming anything he or she says.
It is possible that there will not be a "friendly" or particularly supportive interviewer in the group but that would be very rare. It is my experience that there is always someone who seems more understanding or interested than the others. Again, your chances of getting the job may well rest in the hands of that one person.
