On Tuesday, I went for a group interview at Cisco, Chatswood.
Including me, there were 5 interviewees, all from the same uni. 4 interviewers.
Activities were conducted:
1. Crossing the river.
6x6 grid taped to the carpet. Most were 'poisonous'. Before stepping onto the grid (the river), the group could decide on a strategy, talk, draw on the paper, etc. But once the first person stepped on the grid, the group could not talk. The group had to find the safe path across. Unlimited tries, but if one person stepped on poisonous ground, everyone had to go back to the bank.
We ended up sending one person at a time, and took it in turns. Finished well within the allocated time.
2. Identifying the problem.
We were given something totally out of our experience - some sort of machine that automated production of some sort of thread - a brief description of the problem - at 14:50 on day x, this one spool was black, and we don't know why - and were to attempt to find the source by asking questions of our client (one of the interviewers).
Unfortunately, as soon as we were told we could see a picture of the machine, we all focussed on that for many minutes. Even after we'd pretty much pinpointed where the problem could have been introduced to the product (it was not the machine's fault), we were stumped for where the problem could have originated from. We did not finish this activity within the given time.
Turns out that on the day, there was an emergency delivery at 14:50 and the diesel exhaust from the truck had gotten in through the air input, turning the thread black.
The client dropped so many clues.. like "we're hoping to tell our customer that it's not our fault", or repeating 14:50 many times. I think the new employee thing was a red herring, but we never really asked about that, so that might have ended up as another hint had we followed it up.
3. Individual interview with the interviewers
All the questions were on the activities!
Which one did you like better, and why..
What did you learn from the other one..
(I haven't done many interviews, and there were awkward pauses in both these questions, during which they all just stared at me in an expectant way that said 'yes, well, anything else?' which was sort of freaky and discouraging. More just stressed relying on team and interacting with people. Totally forgot to mention assumptions and how we'd just narrowly focussed on the piece of paper)
What were your hobbies.. (to this one, I answered that I spent my time job searching and mapping Achaea, which I'm sure they all rolled their eyes at once I was out of the room -_-)
The rest of the time was spent chatting with Jono, asking him questions like "What do we do" and .. other stuff that I don't remember anymore.
Was not expecting to get the internship, because of the blank stares. Said so on the train ride with the other interviewees on the way out to the city, and moaned about more job searching.
Received an email about having been given the internship. Was hyper for the next half hour or so.
HURRAH for a chance to actually use all that nifty networking knowledge!
YAY NO MORE JOB SEARCHING!!
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