Job 7: When the people interviewing you are looking for the chicken and the egg

Job 7: When the people interviewing you are looking for the chicken and the egg

Company S is a major oil producer in Australia. The job was about analyzing production data, divestments and greenfield projects.

Process: Screening-> Phone Interview -> Panel Interview -> Direct Interview -> Offer

The panel interviewing me consisted of a lady from HR and two mid-managers. The two mid-managers seemed concerned that I knew too much about supply side pricing metrics and basically cut me off when I showed a level of mental computation that went above third grade.

What I have subsequently learned is that I lost out to other candidates who had spent years in the upstream field who had ready to go examples to prove their performance capacity. Aside from making up examples (a definite no-no), it comes back to the egg and chicken dilemma, sometimes you need the experience to get the job, but you need the job to get the experience... Company S just called with some solid feedback from the interview, and I am happy to get the thumbs up from them, and no shame in losing out to candidates who are ploughing through the straightaway in their field, rather than making a slight side-step like I was trying to in this case.