To think it was weird they wrote my questions down.

[30somethingellla]

I had an interview for a job I really wanted. I didn't do anywhere near my best, can't have got the job based on those answers but will use the interview as exprience.

When it came to asking questions I had written them down as it was a job I had really wanted and wanted to make sure I remembered my questions. One was on a report that had been written two years ago on the company and I wanted to know what changes had been done to implement the suggestions.

As I asked the first question they all suddenly wrote down my question, asking me to repeat the wording for their notes.

My subsequent questions were all written down too.

My friend who also interviewed did not have her questions written down.

I'm a little nervous about this. There's no way I could have got the job based on my answers. Was there something wrong with the questions I asked do you think? An issue that wasn't discussed?

They weren't controversial in any way but I've not had an interviewer wrote down my questions at the end before.

I'm probably over analysing but just wanted opinions as it was a bit strange! :-s

This will be about providing feedback. We have to keep meticulous notes from interviews, particularly for grads as they almost always want feedback. But also, if someone claims they were turned down because of a reason like race/religion/gender etc then we've got evidence of their interview/tests/presentations.

I always write questions down like that - it helps me differentiate between candidates if we're interviewing tons of people, the ones who asked interesting questions really stand out.

When I'm writing notes btw, I am only writing down what you tell me, not any judgements - it's to make sure I remember properly and clearly and to help me overcome any unconscious bias by simply recalling what you said. You can of course ask for the notes and others will do this differently but you won't get much help from mine unless you want to analyse what you said.

We do small use them to try and give constructive feedback when we are asked, too, and we try to provide candidates with something useful. Unfortunately the issue is often not that you weren't great but more that someone else was marginally better.

Good luck with your search!

Normal to write questions down and take detailed notes. Good luck

Our organisation requires us to accurately record each interview in terms of the applicants answers to our questions as well as any questions they ask and our responses to them. It's about accuracy - applicants can merge after a long day of interviewing, this practice ensures we can fairly assess each candidate, make the right decision and give good quality feedback

Is it odd to have your answered written down in a notebook? I have always done this but my friends don't. I would be at risk of forgetting something if I didn't.

Questions not answered

There's nothing wrong with notes for questions you want to ask them, as long as you don't need to refer to the notes for any answers you give.

I have two standard questions, which I've been told are good questions,I use at any interview, along with anything I may have specific to the role.
"What attracted you to XX company and why keeps you here?"
"Where do you see this dept in X years time?

I've got no advice but once in an interview when I was answering one interviewer, the other took my copy of the job description that I'd jotted down a couple of questions prompts on and never gave it back, which i thought was a bit odd, took me by surprise - they were my personal notes, I wasn't expecting to share them, so they didn't even have anything of substance - just prompt words.

Just a thought, maybe they themselves were not completely aware or up to date on the report etc you mentioned, and wanted to look it up later?