Asking Me For A Job

[Lobo Lurker]

I totally hear you barsoomcore. I've only had to do a couple interviews but those are a total pain. My number one pet peeve when revising resumes?

DO NOT SEND ME A RESUME WITH MORE THAN ONE PAGE ! ! !

If you cannot explain to me in the space of one page why I should hire you, I've got 100 other people here who can.

Heh, I too have received stupid statements... in interviews...

"So what system do you guys use here? Doesn't really matter, I'll pick it up in a day. I taught myself English in like 2 weeks."
- Yeah buddy, I believe you. Note: Applicant is a liar and is boastful. I do not think he will work well within our team. --> round file

Oh, sorry, but I'm only interviewing one person... Jane Doe.
"Oh, I'm her husband John. We're a team, you can hire both of us."
Note: We only need one person, not two. Decent resume, she's an MIT grad... but he's got no real skill in the area we're looking for. --> round file

Also...
Umm, who are you sir?
"Oh, I'm her dad."
...her dad? What are you doing here?
"I'm helping her out."
...right. Note: Applicant must be hand-held and does not display the ability to perform on her own without direct supervision. --> round file

 

[Laurel]

So I've spent pretty much the entire day reviewing resumes for a couple of positions we have, and my brain is overflowing with all the annoying things people do in their resumes that shoot themselves right in the foot.

I used to help recruit for one of the top law firms in the US, so I have seen most of this. I have to say the worst is when you see Harvard Law School Cum Laude and top grades at the top of the resume, and then see they spelled your LLC name incorrectly. That actually was our first cut-
1) did they spell the company name correctly
2) did they address it correctly (three clicks on the internet can tell a person exactly who to direct thier resume to!)

Then we would actually look at the rest of thier qualifications.

Law firms as other specialties tend to be different animals from one another, but from reading your post the basics do apply to all

 

[barsoomcore]

Hiring is one of the most significant operations any company does. Bringing a bad person aboard will cost you a tremendous amount of money. It will hurt morale throughout the company. It will drive away good people, which will cost you money and hurt morale further. And it will irritate you to no end.

What people who are looking for me to give them a job seem to fail to realise is that my primary motivation when I'm reviewing their application ISN'T to ferret out all the details that make them a superstar; I'm looking for ANY excuse to pitch this application out and go on to the next one. I try to find the best people by weeding out all the losers. Whoever doesn't get tossed gets looked at in detail, compared with the others and evaluated against our needs. But I'm trying to reduce several hundred applications down to two or three, so you bet I've got all sorts of very broad, very easy-to-apply filters. If I miss a couple of winners in the process, oh well. I'm more concerned with NOT hiring losers. So when asking me for a job, include as few reasons for me to pitch you as possible.

Maldur: We're looking for DB2 admins, intranet developers (Python/Plone experience a bonus), reports developers and somebody to manage our data warehouse.

LightPhoenix: It's true, many companies act as though computers don't actually exist. It's weird to me.

WHY ARE YOU PRINTING THESE THINGS OUT?????

Sorry, not directed at you but at bonehead people who PRINT OUT their frickin' email. Sheesh. I would denude a significant portion of British Columbia if I printed out my daily email.

Laurel: I think what it is that in a profession like law, somebody's "soft" qualities (attention to detail and communication skills) are very obviously right at the forefront of what they'll be doing every day. The truth is that those skills are fundamental for just about any job that's worth anything, so when hiring you really really ought to be looking for those.

fu: that's what trenchcoats are for.

 

[DaveStebbins]

I think what it is that in a profession like law, somebody's "soft" qualities (attention to detail and communication skills) are very obviously right at the forefront of what they'll be doing every day. The truth is that those skills are fundamental for just about any job that's worth anything, so when hiring you really really ought to be looking for those.

One of my favorite moments at college was spring semester, senior year, a senior-level engineering course being taught by a retired VP of Fisher-Price. One day, he diverted from the normal material to talk about jobs in the real world. His advice was to make sure we were good at "people skills" because, as wonderful as all this engineering stuff was, it would only ever make up about 15% of any engineering job we'd have. The other 85% would be communication and dealing with people so, for gosh sakes, we needed to make sure we learned basic writing and social skills. The sound of engineer jaws hitting the floor was deafening!

-Dave

 

[Maldur]

Maldur: We're looking for DB2 admins, intranet developers (Python/Plone experience a bonus), reports developers and somebody to manage our data warehouse.

Ill get back to you at the end of the year
First I need to work off the courses I am letting my current boss pay for

 

[Andre]

WHY ARE YOU PRINTING THESE THINGS OUT?????

Umm, because it's portable, can easily be shared with others while discussing applicants, because it's quick and easy to write comments/questions in the margins, because some people prefer to work with paper since they're used to it?

Lighten up - everyone organizes their work differently. If something works for you, great. Don't assume it's the best way for everyone else.

I'm looking for ANY excuse to pitch this application out and go on to the next one.

This reminds me of a few places I've interviewed with. As soon as I realize the interviewer (usually someone in HR trying to thin out the pack) is doing this, I wrap up the interview and make a note to NEVER apply to that company again. What too many people fail to realize is that the hiring process is a two-way street - I'm interviewing the company while they're interviewing me. I've rejected a few offers based solely on how I was treated during the process. If a company wastes my time, treats me as a supplicant, not an applicant, why would I want to work for them?

Most companies and hiring managers develop some pretty bad habits when the job market is bad. Those same folks are always in a world of hurt when things turn around. It wasn't that long ago that companies couldn't expand operations because there simply weren't people available - not just superstars, even warm bodies weren't applying. But the great companies didn't have that problem (certainly not to the same degree).

The smart companies don't just focus on avoiding bad hires (which is important) - they actively work to make good hires and then retain those folks. They see the current job market as an opportunity, not a hassle. Smart applicants can tell the difference and (usually) go to the best.

 

[barsoomcore]

Andre: I'm not saying there's no reason to print things out from time to time, but passing an application on from secretary to resume reviewer isn't a valid one. It's a wasteful process, and companies that support it aren't behaving responsibly.

And keep in mind I'm not talking about interviewing people. Obviously, once you bring somebody in for an interview, you've already decided they've got something to offer, and now there has to be a, as you put it, two-way street to determine if the match of person with role or opportunity is a good one. Once I'm interviewing somebody, I'm not really even concerned with the written job description anymore -- I'm just looking for great people who will bring useful skills to my company.

The "pitch-out" process is for resume filtering, which is the stage I'm ranting about. If you're trying to filter people out in the interview stage, you don't know what you're doing.

 

[tarchon]

And its arrogant. I used to bring in people like this from time to time just to tear them a new one during the interview process.

I've worked with a number of people who could learn PHP in two days. Honestly, I'd be reluctant to hire an experienced programmer who couldn't. Anybody who's been around can pick up a new language largely by reading source code, just because most language constructs are so similar. And frankly, in my line of work, it's expected that you can do stuff like that as a matter of course. In general, it's a bad policy to reject highly talented people because you personally don't believe anyone could do what they can do.

"What's with this Torvalds guy anyway? He says he could completely rewrite Unix - Ha! The arrogance of these people!"

 

[barsoomcore]

I've worked with a number of people who could learn PHP in two days.

Heck, I learned PHP in two days. But to say "I don't know language X but since I learned PHP in two days I won't have any trouble," is still stupid.

 

[Demonix]

2 days to learn and 10 years to know how to debug and fix the code.