A few days ago a friend who went for the ExxonMobil walk-in interview told me that he was turned down for interview because he does not have a solid 3 years of SAP experience for the jobs advertised (he has about 1.5 years).

He was registering himself and after submitting his resume to one of the coordinators who skimmed through his resume, he was told that they’re not short listing him for further round of interview.

I am sure he was not the only one who left the Mandarin Hotel feeling down and disappointed. In fact they were likely that many other hundreds suffered similar fate, if not worse.

Who’s to blame here? No one. Not you. Not the company.

Consider this scenario (estimations are rough).

A major IT company, say, DELL, decided to hold a walk-in interview in one of the hotels in KL, say Nikko Hotel in Jalan Ampang. They advertised the event on The Star newspaper which has a readership of about 1 million. 20%, or 200,000 people read through the advert. Discounting 80% who lives outside of Klang Valley will leave 40,000 remaining. Minus half of those who are irrelevant for the jobs advertised (e.g. students, housewives - in short, those who are underqualified or overqualified) will leave us with 20,000. 10%, or 2000 people made decision to come.

So we have a total of 2000 candidates for interview, to be screened within a few hours of screening and interviewing time. And for this 2000 job seekers who planned to attend the interview, here is what happened to them:

1. Only 60% of the 2000 actually turned up. The rest were either still sleeping, changed their mind, sudden emergencies and probably forgot about it altogether. Now we have 1200 people
2. 30% did not make it past the registration table, for many various reasons. Read on. 840 remains
3. 10% thought they had waited too long and could not wait any longer. They decided to go shopping at KLCC instead. We are left with 756 candidates
4. Out of the 756 candidates interviewed, 10% or 75 people were short listed for final interview
5. Out of the final 75 short listed candidates, 1/3, or 25 people were offered jobs

What’s the main point here?

For any walk-in interview, there are bound to be dissatisfaction, disappointment and even anger among the job seekers attending. Here is how walk-in can be an upsetting experience for you:

1. 3 hours wait, 2 minutes of interview

Some of the candidates reach the interview venue at 7am when the actual event only starts at 9am. And with so many other candidates cramping in, waiting for your turn can be such an agonizing wait.

And it gets worse. The real nightmare begins when you’re in the interview room. Horror and horror, it only lasts for 2 minutes!

“I take longer time peeing than sitting down for this interview!”, you screamed, in your heart of course. 2 minutes of interview for a 3-hour does not sound like a good ROI, isn’t it?

2. You are turned down for interview

There can be many reasons why you’re denied an interview, and the organizer or the company can be really nasty about this and practices a no-mercy policy. After all, look at how long the queue is behind you. For example, if you bring your resume but left other copies of transcripts and documents behind, you can be booted out immediately. Similarly, if your skills, qualification and experience are not according to the requirements and job specs, you can say bye bye to them.

There is also this bunch of job seekers who thought they can simply come for a walk-in interview wearing a torn down jeans and a sleeveless shirt. Their fate? Go figure.

3. It’s not them you’re seeing

Do you happen to know that many of the walk-in interviews out there are not organized by the hiring company but rather a third party? This third party could be an event management company, external consultants or recruiters. The problem with organizing such an event is that the company will always have problems of understaffing. So they turn for help from other parties.

You must also understand here that in most cases, hiring decision is not made during walk-in interview. Rather, it is a screening session, where the short listed candidates will be called up again for another round of interview, normally held in the office of the hiring company. With this in mind, the actual hiring manager is probably still in bed while you’re struggling to make use of the 2 minutes to impress the interviewer in front of you.

4. You’re meeting your (boss, subordinate… and so on)

What more could be embarrassing to discover that your supervisor, subordinates or other colleagues you don’t want them to know your doing also attending the same interview! You will have a wet Monday morning the next week.

Other posts you may want to read:

1. Motorola Walk-In Interview, 10 May 2008
2. ExxonMobil Walk-In Interview, 10 May 2008
3. Interview tip- come early or don’t come at all.
4. Bank Negara Malaysia Hiring Process
5. Going for SHELL job interview?