Are you being interviewed - or rinsed for information?

Not every job interview is really about giving you a job. You leave the interview thinking it went brilliantly. They were fascinated by your experience and wanted to know exactly how you won that major client, how your team is structured, who your strongest people are, how your firm prices its work and how you solved a particular operational problem. You talked for 90 minutes. They took plenty of notes and then… nothing.

You may just have been rinsed for information.

When an interview becomes an intelligence-gathering exercise

In my experience, the vast majority of employers interview candidates in good faith. They have a role to fill and genuinely want to understand whether someone can do it. But occasionally, an interview can also give an organisation access to something potentially very valuable: your knowledge.

Experienced candidates may know a great deal about competitors, clients, pricing, processes, organisational structures, talent, technology and business development. So how can you tell when legitimate questioning starts to cross the line?

The free consulting session

Consider the question: “You mentioned that you solved a similar problem at your current firm. Talk us through exactly how you did it.” That is perfectly reasonable. An employer needs to understand your experience and how you approach problems.

But what happens when the questions become increasingly specific? You might be asked, “What would you do in our situation?”, “What would your first 90 days look like?”, “Could you map out the process?” or even “How would you restructure this function?”

There is nothing inherently wrong with hypothetical questions. Employers are entitled to test how you think and how you would approach a problem. The distinction becomes important, however, when you are no longer demonstrating your ability to do the job and are instead being asked to solve one of the employer's actual problems.

One useful clue is whether the questioning focuses primarily on what you have done in the past or on ‘hypothetically’ solving their problems. Your past achievements provide evidence that you can perform a similar role in the future. If the interview increasingly becomes a detailed discussion about the organisation's current challenges, you may be doing part of the job for free.

The unofficial headhunting exercise

Sometimes the questions aren't really about you at all. They’re about your colleagues. An interviewer might ask about the structure of your team, who your strongest performers are, who owns particular client relationships or, more directly, “Who would you take with you?”

Perhaps they’re assessing your leadership capability and understanding of talent. But they may also be identifying people they would like to recruit.

Your colleagues haven't given you permission to disclose their personal information, so treat them — and information about them — with the respect they deserve. You can describe the structure and capabilities of your team without necessarily providing a ready-made recruitment list.

Competitive intelligence disguised as curiosity

This is particularly relevant when you work for a direct competitor.

Questions such as “How does your firm win mandates?”, “How do you decide which opportunities to pursue?”, “How do you price?” or “Who makes the final decision?” may all be legitimate in isolation. But if the questioning becomes increasingly detailed, you should consider whether the interviewer is trying to understand your firm's competitive approach rather than simply assess your suitability for the role.

You should be able to explain what you achieved and the role you played without revealing information that belongs to your current employer.

The same applies to detailed questions about clients, budgets, pipelines, technology, strategy, salaries and headcount. There is a difference between demonstrating commercial capability and handing over information that could be useful to a competitor.

For example, saying that you’ve originated approximately £X of business across particular sectors demonstrates your commercial track record. Providing the names of your clients, their decision-makers, what they spend and which contracts are coming up for renewal could give a competitor a very useful prospecting list.

Context matters, but pay attention when curiosity becomes unusually granular.

How do you protect yourself?

The answer isn't - of course - to treat every interviewer as an industrial spy. Good interviews involve detailed questions, and experienced candidates should expect to demonstrate how they think. The skill is learning to demonstrate expertise without giving away the underlying intellectual property.

If you’re asked to explain a proprietary process, for example, you might say: “I developed a structured approval process that significantly improved speed and commercial discipline. I can't go into my employer's proprietary process, but I'm happy to explain the principles behind my approach and the role I played.”

Similarly, if you’re pressed for names, you could explain that you’d rather not identify individual colleagues without their permission, but would be happy to describe the structure of the team and how you managed it.

And if you’re presented with a suspiciously detailed business problem, you can explain that you’re happy to talk through the framework you would use, but would probably stop short of designing the complete solution at interview stage.

These aren't evasive answers. They demonstrate judgement and discretion.

There’s another useful test. If you freely disclose your current employer's confidential information to impress a prospective employer, what does that tell them about how you might eventually treat their confidential information?

Watch the balance of the interview

A genuine interview is normally a two-way exchange. They want to understand you, but you should also be learning about the role, the organisation, its challenges and expectations. This belief underpins Career Mentor’s approach to interviews in our Foundation Coaching programme.

If most of the conversation consists of extracting detailed information about your employer, clients, colleagues and processes, while surprisingly little is said about the supposed job, pay attention.

Ask and plan for questions of your own. Why is the position open? What does success look like? What happened to the previous incumbent? What are the next stages? What is the recruitment timetable?

The answers can tell you a great deal about the opportunity — and may also help you understand what the interviewer is really looking for.

Your knowledge has value

Your knowledge and relationships have value. So does the intellectual property and commercial judgement you've accumulated throughout your career. A good interview requires you to share enough to demonstrate your value. It does not require you to give all of it away.

So the next time an interviewer becomes intensely interested in exactly how your firm wins business, who your best colleagues are, which clients might move with you, or precisely how you’d solve a problem they currently have, take a moment to consider what is happening.

If you have an interview coming up and would benefit from a no-strings-attached call on how to approach it, let’s talk. Use this link to book a call at a time that suits.