Kadjngir Ra

Other spelling: Ka Dingir Ra ie "the Gate of the Gods" or Babylon

http://www.geocities.com/garyweb65/oldbaby.html

http://www.kadjngirra.com/

Job Interviews

I went for an interview sometime ago, which I did not get the job. I came out of the interview after three hours a bit angry and upset at the state of UK HR. After talking with friend, it was suggested that I write them a letter analysing the interview.

The interview as in 4 stages:

a) An interview with a manager and a hr person (60 mins)

b) An interview with the manager and two techinal staff (45 mins)

c) A design problem, showing your thoughts and working on a white board (15 mins)

d) An exam on C++, Threads and Socket (45 mins)

Dear Manager Name

Thank you for the opportunity to apply for the post of Job Name. I am sending this letter because after consideration, post the interview, I feel that there are several point about the interview that needed expressing.

I traveled to the interview after reading all the documentation on your website and that had been provided by Agency Name and I had a very positive impression of Company Name and was interested in working for the company. After the interview I came out with a conclusion that I would not accept the job without a significant reason to do so. I think you should be interested in why I came to this point of view as it should influence your HR and interviews in the future.

The first part of the interview with Manager Name and a lady from HR. This was an interesting interview but with some inane and meaningless questions. "Name 5 things your current Boss will say about you?" As if, the sort of person you want to hire will give any answer you did not want to hear. These sort of questions are intended to test the personality of the interviewee, I suggest that if this is one of your standard methods of assessing your future staff all you will get is people that can answer these questions well. That will not provide you with a useful or balanced set of employees only more of the same sort of staff.

In the second part of the interview with the two technical staff and Manager Name. The technical interview was in itself not that harsh but your staff gave no impression of actually enjoying their jobs. Every job I have accepted in the past has been sold to me by the interviewers, your staff here actually made me ask the question. "If it is that good here why are they advertising for so many employees at once?". The only rational answers here are you are expanding your department or you have had lots of people leave. As your staff did not infuse me about their jobs I can only conclude the later must be the case.

The White Board Test – this in itself was not a bad test. I think in a way it was handled it was unfair because rarely do you have to design anything under such pressure and time scale. I more reasonable test would have been to give 10 minutes to design something and then 5 minutes to present it and explain your design.

The Exam – the questions themselves are not that hard and should be passed by anyone with a computer science degree, if they can't I would wonder how they got an interview.

An interview is not only your chance to judge the prospective employee but also their opportunity to assess your company. After three hours of being grilled by Company Name's staff I left with no sense of what Company Name was like to work for. The lite probing questions I did at the end of the interview where given evasive answers. I was not shown the office environment that employees work in, I was not given any real idea of what sort of computing resources where available to computer staff.

As a Senior Computer Professional I was treated like this was a graduate interview fair where you where selecting from thousands of people. As you had already preselected those of a high technical level it seams more resnoble to interview prospective employee in your deptment and to sell them the job. This you did not do. I feel sorry for the people that you do employee, your current employees and suggest that your churn rate will be very high.

Yours

xxxx

After thinging about it for while I conculded that the people I had spoke too would not take it as constructive and file my comments in the bin.

BTW I think it is only fair that you see what they said about me:

Interview from Manager Name – to recap for you he said:

Good technical ability, his problem solving skills were poor in comparison with the other 2 candidates who were excellent in this task.

He was a no for team fit

They were never sure what "exactly" he did as when he spoke about his experience he used the word "we" every time and they thought that perhaps he had played 2nd fiddle to the manager because he said this.

They also thought that he would be difficult to manage.

Well of course I would disagree with some of it. But the bigest thing I learn from there comment is that I say "We" too much, personally I thought that was an asset in a team but I can see how it would appear like I was played 2nd fiddle.