Today was the last day in the office for someone I work with. Tuesday, they start with a very well known bank, and it's been a long road they've walked to get there. Altogether it took eight interviews. Why this number, no idea, nor do they probably, and I certainly don't know what went on in each of them. But after eight, you'd think the interviewers had pretty much got through to the core of the person they were hoping to pop the question to.

But what kind of questions did they actually ask? Job interviews, after all, are unreal; they're artifical states we enter willingly, or not in many cases, to get something. One side wants the job, whilst the other, it's the plain, simple reassurance they're going to get that ace for that particular place. In a sense, everyone involved wants to please the other (one more than the other, I'll agree).

Certainly some tough interviewers out there; I've twisted and turned in the wind limply, faced with some the things that have come my way, but they were n't real questions. Nothing based on what actually happens in that cockpit called the office. All the theoretical: "how would you deal with…if x happened ?" set-ups are easily batted away by the interviewee dipping into a portfolio of sanitised responses. Where's the upfront interviewer asking this: "your idea that you've sweated over for months has been casually stolen and passed off by someone else as theirs. How do you feel, no, how do you feel, tell me the mood, describe exactly what you would like to do? Don't hold back now. All out please"

An honest answer to a real question might stop some company hiring a dissembling sociopath who's memorised some form book on stock answers to standard questions.