I have to admit that I’m probably a bit unusual in that I actually generally like interviews.  I’m still nervous, of course, and still worry that I’ll have the wrong answer to an important question or that I’ll draw a complete blank on something that I know cold.  But, even so, I view them as a opportunity to meet new people and learn about a company, and hopefully gain some new interesting coworkers .

I’ve had a few rather unexpected conversations during interviews, and perhaps that is why I find them so interesting.  That moment when the script gets put aside, you have an entirely different experience, and I love those moments.

When I was just out of grad school, looking to use my MA to make a difference with a great organization, I managed to score an interview with the one at the very top of my list.  After sitting down to take a logistics test (which included a question about how many solar panels I would need to use to maintain a proper cold chain, which made me laugh out loud, because that was not something I knew the answer to, and certainly couldn’t come up with one in the time I had for the test) and a budget/admin test (that had questions I actually could answer), I sat down with my recruiter.  After my clear lack of technical logistics prowess, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be interested in me, so in desperation, I decided to be brutally honest:  I would do whatever they needed me to do, in whatever way I could best help a team, because I really believed in what they did and why they did it.  It took a few months, but eventually a position that required more admin, planning, and financial ability than technical logistics knowledge was available, and off I went.  Best decision I ever made in an interview was to just honestly state that I was much more interested in helping the organization than in what job title I would hold within it.

Years later, having just completed my first year of law school, I went in for an interview for a summer legal internship.  Somehow, in the course of the interview, the topic of my master’s research came up, and we spent a few minutes sidetracked by a discussion of malaria, vectors, drug resistance, and combination therapies.  It was so much fun to discover a very unexpected mutual interest that had nothing to do with the position for which I was interviewing.

More recently, I was interviewing for position, and I decided that I was tired of giving the “coached” answer about why I had left my last position and had been doing project work since.  I admitted that I had taken a break from full time work so I could provide care for my father in his last years of CODP, that he had recently passed, and that I had prioritized providing care for him over a full time career.  While every career coach I’ve ever talked to advised me to focus the discussion on how I had kept my skills updated and relevant, I opted to explain how watching my father struggle through an incurable lung disease made me particularly interested in the position for which I was interviewing – which was focused on lung disease.  They say that you should not mention family care in an interview, as it will make them see you as less committed to your work, and perhaps for some companies that is true.  But in that moment during that interview, the connection I found was one of the brightest moments during a difficult time.

In each of these interviews, I had no idea I was going to have the conversations I ended up having.  And yet, they ended up being some of the most memorable moments, and always make me smile to think back on them.

Have you ever had an unexpected conversation during an interview?