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 : Thank you for the opportunity to apply for the post of : I traveled to the interview after reading all the documentation on your website and that had been provided by : The first part of the interview with : In the second part of the interview with the two technical staff and : 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 : 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 : 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. |