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Interview techniques
Aug. 24th, 2005 09:39 amA friend of mine, Ian, works for the Foreign Office. In fact he's rather highly placed these days, having just been posted out to Kuala Lumpur to be Our Man in Malaysia. However, what the civil service tends to do is post people to a lot of different areas to make them as knowledgable and well rounded as possible, so in the past Ian has also run the Iran desk during the last Gulf War (where it was his job to keep amicable relations with the Iranians whilst President Bush was calling them the 'Axis of Evil'), and he's been involved in recruiting people to work for the F.O. as well.
One part of the selection procedure for the Foreign Office is an interview. Unlike most jobs, where the interview takes the form of sitting in front of a panel and being judged on how glibly you can lie about your work experience and aptitude, the Foreign Office interview process works somewhat differently.
Candidates are asked to pick a subject - it can be anything, but contemporary and recent historical social and political choices are the most common and preferred - that they consider themselves knowledgeable about and then they are expected to have a debate on that subject as their interview. It's not a test of their knowledge of the subject (they're expected to be fairly well-informed as they chose the subject in the first place), but it's a test of how well they can present and argument, react to counterarguments, and remain persuasive and diplomatic whilst doing so.
The twist to this is this: the candidate choses the subject area, but the interviewer chooses what point of view the candidate must argue. There is a famous example of an Indian candidate who chose as his subject 'The Indian Nuclear Deterrent' and was completely stumped when asked to argue the case for Indian unilateral disarmament.
This preamble leads me up to my question to you lot for today.
Imagine you are applying to a job at the Foreign office, and you have been invited to interview. What do you choose as your specialist subject?
I'll be asking questions.
One part of the selection procedure for the Foreign Office is an interview. Unlike most jobs, where the interview takes the form of sitting in front of a panel and being judged on how glibly you can lie about your work experience and aptitude, the Foreign Office interview process works somewhat differently.
Candidates are asked to pick a subject - it can be anything, but contemporary and recent historical social and political choices are the most common and preferred - that they consider themselves knowledgeable about and then they are expected to have a debate on that subject as their interview. It's not a test of their knowledge of the subject (they're expected to be fairly well-informed as they chose the subject in the first place), but it's a test of how well they can present and argument, react to counterarguments, and remain persuasive and diplomatic whilst doing so.
The twist to this is this: the candidate choses the subject area, but the interviewer chooses what point of view the candidate must argue. There is a famous example of an Indian candidate who chose as his subject 'The Indian Nuclear Deterrent' and was completely stumped when asked to argue the case for Indian unilateral disarmament.
This preamble leads me up to my question to you lot for today.
Imagine you are applying to a job at the Foreign office, and you have been invited to interview. What do you choose as your specialist subject?
I'll be asking questions.
