Expert's Corner: How to explain the hobby part during an Interview? Passion or Manipulation.

By: Amit Sharma

Interviewers are sometimes are not bothered about your responses to the questions they ask. They are not concerned about whether you are going to be right or wrong in the conceptual aspect but the real motive is to analyse your attitude towards the issue. At times, your own answers give them a suggestion for a new question to start with while at other times, they have their fixed mindset about the questions they are going to ask, irrespective of the responses given by the candidate.

Interview: The name is enough to create a sense of nervousness in most of the students who are preparing to get placed in reputed organizations. Is it actually so scary or serious situation to deal with? If yes, why? If not, why most of the students even after scoring a good CGPA, having strong communication skills along with good command over the language and reasonably high level of confidence, get washed out during the interview round. The answer is simple as the word itself suggests, “INTERVIEW”—it reckons the internal views of an individual. The assessors always try to assess your internal views, your thought process in the context of a situation and the task or the question assigned to you. This is actually what the interviews are meant for because your high CGPA or high confidence and strong communication skills do not guarantee the thought process and the behavioral pattern required for the job. That is only possible to assess through one-to-one interaction, at times, in the form of a panel discussion or by putting you into different situations or even by creating a simulated stressed environment.

Interviewers are sometimes are not bothered about your responses to the questions they ask. They are not concerned about whether you are going to be right or wrong in the conceptual aspect but the real motive is to analyse your attitude towards the issue. At times, your own answers give them a suggestion for a new question to start with while at other times, they have their fixed mindset about the questions they are going to ask, irrespective of the responses given by the candidate. Based upon this, we can categorize interviews into different types such as panel interviews, individual interviews, structured interviews, unstructured interviews, in-depth interviews and panel interviews.

Anyways, I am not going to touch these theoretical parameters in detail here but let us discuss the most important part to start with during an interview process, ‘Introduction’. It is one vital aspect that every organization focuses on, whether they go to IIMs, IITs or for placement drive to any B-category private university. I will also be discussing the possible appropriate response for the introduction part.

Interviewer: Introduce yourself

What is the appropriate response? Usually, students start replying to this part with their first name. Say for example, if the interviewer says, “Arun introduce yourself” and Mr. Arun starts like, “Sir, my name is Arun”. The point to note down here is if somebody is already calling you by your first name and you also start with the same, doesn’t it sound illogical and different? Even though there is no harm at all in starting your introduction with the name, but it does not appear to be a logical reply.

Candidate can directly start with their educational background (if fresher) or work experience (if any). Briefly, discuss the family background starting with the head of the family (probably father). Please do not discuss the family of your siblings, in case they are married. Discuss your educational background starting with the highest or lowest qualification. The point of consideration is that it should be in sequential order from either end (lowest/highest). You can intimate them about the place you are from and keep the discussion limited to these points only.

Mostly, what students do is they start talking about their hobbies, strength and weaknesses. I must tell you, hobby is one of the most important and gravitating parts of the interview. Students in general, try to discuss the hobby part as the factor of influence. They give fascinating answers to impress the interviewer and get trapped in their own responses. Please do not touch the hobby or strength/weakness part until and unless you are asked for the same. For example, one who has mentioned jogging as a hobby should have a clear idea as to how much they jog in a day and how much time it takes to cover that specified distance.

One of my students mentioned the same in his resume and started talking about the same in the interview also. When he was asked the questions in this regard, the responses were quite embarrassing for the student as well as for the institution. He said he covers 10 km in just 7-8 minutes. One of the students said that reading newspapers is his hobby and when he was asked about the recent happenings, he was not at all aware. During the placement drive of the year 2018, one of the students mentioned reading novels as his hobby and he was asked to explain the same in detail. He said, “I have gone through only one novel last year” and that too, he was referring to the first publication of Chetan Bhagat from the year 2008 or 2007.

So these types of responses clearly reflect that the candidate is trying to manipulate, trying to influence and to be precise, is lying. Therefore, it raises the question mark on your honesty, integrity and loyalty towards the organization (if you get selected). Ideally, honesty is the best policy and does not require any special effort to maintain the same. In this practical world, even if you feel and think that the situation cannot be handled without manipulation then the only suggestion is to be wise and do it logically. One of the selected candidates once suggested that an interview is a game of twenty minutes, “either perform or fool them”.

Being a teacher, I would not recommend this suggestion. What I can suggest is you do your homework properly before you start mentioning about your hobbies. I hope this article would be helpful for you in improving the introduction part more specifically and would work as a positive reinforcement to shape your hobby aspect during interviews. In the next article, I will try to cover the rest of the important interview questions, until then I wish that all of you could develop healthy and good hobbies so that there will be no scope of manipulation and we could present ourselves as a true and honest human being. Stay well and happy. All the best!

About the Author:

Amit Sharma is serving as an Assistant Professor at Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, since 2013. With an experience of seven years in academics, Sharma conducts faculty development programmes at school level and management development programmes at organisational level across the industry.