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      CalSWEC

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      Fiscal Assistant Interview

      21 Jul 2009
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Berkeley, CA
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      The process took 1 day. I interviewed at CalSWEC (Berkeley, CA) in Jul 2009

      Interview

      I was interviewed by two employees. One of whom was the HR person for the department, the other being the position's immediate supervisor. The bulk of the interview was essentially a review of my qualifications. We went into the responsibilities of my current job in great depth. I had combed through the job description thoroughly and in summarizing my experience I covered every last bit if my responsibilities while trying to hone in on the parts that were most relevant to the opening. They asked pretty typical questions regarding my ability to perform under certain conditions (distractions, pending deadlines, multi-tasking) and I was able to stay positive and give assuring responses. All and all it was a relatively stress-less interview; to the point of being so generic that I didn't feel the interviewers really got a chance to or were intent on trying to get to know me. I was able to direct the flow of the interview to a strong degree, and thus try and put forth what I thought was most noteworthy and appropriate about my experience and skills, but the interviewers were so focused on sticking to their several page, scripted interview that it seemed this was all that mattered to them. So after being subjected to the interview, and all it's a-typical questions (Where do you see yourself in five years?) I heard nothing back from their department. So, advice? Like most University of California jobs, the end result of this interview seemed to fall in line with the rest of the UC jobfield. Interviewers are most only interested in applicants who are coming straight from a position of the exact same responsibilities as those of the job their being interviewed for. UC employers give preference to current UC employees, and will almost always hire an applicant coming from within the system who is already working the same job elsewhere in a different department. It doesn't matter how qualified you are or how remedial the responsibilities of the job are. In the eyes of the UC's Human Resources; who cares if you have an MBA or a PHD, if you haven't ordered staples or paper towels before in a previous job then clearly you aren't qualified to perform to this capacity in a potential job. Maybe other's experiences with the University have been different, but after interviewing for several different positions across the campus and seeing the resulting staffing decisions, it really seems that all the non-academic jobs go to low skilled, long time university employees who learned a few simplistic, aging operating systems twenty years ago. I'm of the attitude that the policies in place for hiring representatives here on campus, are designed to just close the door on outside applicants without direct working experience with financial systems exclusive to the university. --Of course a non-university applicant has no experience with a program only used on the UC campus! In any case, judging by the interviews I've had over the past months, it really seems that no one involved with the official hiring process has any sort of agenda to actually feel an applicant out, and assess their expertise. The UC Berkeley campus as a workplace seems to be an incestuous pool of the same employees, stroking each others egos and suffering horribly from the inability to think outside the box.

      Interview questions [3]

      Question 1

      Walk us through the steps of reimbursing a travel expense.
      1 Answer

      Question 2

      What do you feel has been your greatest professional accomplishment?
      Answer question

      Question 3

      Describe a difficult or trying situation you were forced to resolve at the workplace.
      Answer question