pig ignorant

boo-boo

Did an interview for a medium sized software house recently,
then ...zilch, no nothing, pfo letter , zero.

Since then I emailed & left voicemail looking for some update.

SFA..

what is it with these people, you do a technical & normal interview
& then ... how long does it take to write a pfo email ?

Hey, now I'm started on this, why do IT people have to do technical interviews at all, are the degrees, diplomas certs etc. THAT useless. Thats aside from contacting the nominated referees. You don't have accountants, administrators, anyone having to do the equivalent type of interview outside of IT. I'd be damn sure if accountants had to do a 1-2 hour oral exam for each position that went for you'd hear the squeels from here to ... well somewhere very far away.





:mad:

KdjaCL

Because of the variance of IT ,some companies will test in areas specific to their hardware/software/network.

Like if you got a job where i work you would need to be proficent in Windows 3.1 (i **** you not) so if we got in some young IT genius who knew XP and longhorn inside out he be fairly fekkin useless to us.

kdjac

eth0_

Congratulations, you had a job interview.
You'd be lucky if you got a letter/phone call from a third of places you apply to. Yes, it's rude, but what can you do? Employers might argue that they don't have the resources to contact everyone who had an interview, or applied.

As for the tech test, there are a *lot* of very clueless people out there with IT degrees!

Emboss

most things on paper are fairly useless, just gets you the interview in some cases,

boo-boo

matching the job spec to the cv should weed out people who
don't have what the company needs, but what I find fault with is where you're examined on skills that you've specified you have on your CV, I don't mean on acadamic stuff but commercial experience.
This doesn't happen in any other field, I know IT is a "young" profession but from anecdotal evidence the only level you don't get quizzed at technically is if you'd 15+ years experience or a phD.

Yes, it's rude, but what can you do? Employers might argue that they don't have the resources to contact everyone who had an interview, or applied.

bugger all , or post to here I guess. They can argue all they like-its still pig ignorant. Realistically it only takes a couple of minutes
to email the applicants & failure to do so shows - to my mind -
that they'd be at best chaotic to work for.

As for the tech test, there are a *lot* of very clueless people out there with IT degrees!

how true, I knew someone doing a masters ( they got it too) who had to have the concept of Dimming (it was vb) & using a variable explained.

Blitzkrieger

Originally posted by boo-boo
how true, I knew someone doing a masters ( they got it too) who had to have the concept of Dimming (it was vb) & using a variable explained.

Aye - I know a girl who's going on to do a doctorate who never did a programming assignment during her degree. She's thick as two planks - I reckon she cheated on the exams too.

Originally posted by KdjaC

Like if you got a job where i work you would need to be proficent in Windows 3.1 (i **** you not)

rofl - ph34r meh l33t Win3.11 (windows for workgroups ) skills

WhiteWashMan

Originally posted by boo-boo
matching the job spec to the cv should weed out people who
don't have what the company needs, but what I find fault with is where you're examined on skills that you've specified you have on your CV, I don't mean on acadamic stuff but commercial experience.

because, to be britaully honest, you could be telling porkie pies.

and everyone knows why the NT4 MCSE was called a paper MCSE, because all you did was do the questions and you could pass with no experience, and that made you pretty useless.
Besides, you may have experience in desktop support, but iut doesnt mean you know about networks, or even laptops or PDA's, it could be just a way of finding out about what sort of thing you know about.

or it could be they just a have a standard set of questions which you get asked about.

but i think its silly to expect them to look at your CV, compare it to their list of criteria, and say 'hey, this is the bloke we need, send him a contract to sign' without them actually meeting oyu and talking to. and naturally, they are going to ask you about whats on your CV.
i mean, thats what a CV is for, isnt it?

boo-boo

Obviously I didn't make myself clear on this, I'm very
happy answering questions on my CV, including technical
ones, drilling down to whatever level the interviewer wants,
and in fact I think that's the best way of ascertaining
the quality of a candidate, but what I don't like is the situation
where someone pops out a list of questions and reels off from this list.
And these may or may not be related to either the job spec or the cv. Eg
where neither the job spec or CV mentions c#, yet the interviewer
begins a series of questions on C# & .NET, followed by a series on VB,
Java, SQL or whatever. None of these questions directly address the CV,
and may or may not address the spec, but rather investigate the
candidates ability to perform an oral exam on these topics.

Sometimes these can be excessively long, I recently did over 4 hours of interviews
for a job, 3 of which were fielding technical questions from a panel of people.
(This for a 3-12 month programming contract). These questions ranged from the typical syntax
type ones to more slippery ones like "could you define middleware ?".

I used to be on the other side of the fence as I changed career to IT from
"the real world", and on occasion used to be an interviewer, and this just doesn't happen there.
In other fields the questions are addressed to the CV & job spec. There are spoofers in all walks of
life, but they can be copped by both checking the referees and carefully going over the CV with the candidate.
That's why there's a probationary period also. This 20 questions lark is, to my mind, a lazy way to ensure
that someones ass is covered if theres a problem later on, its not to try to get the best candidate.
I think its the HR equivalent to "it works on my machine".

I've been interviewed by people who hadn't even seen my CV, asked me for a copy to look at,
and then reeled out their pre-cooked questions.

I appreciate that IT is a young "profession",
that there seems to a problem with the output from
colleges as to what commercial enterprises need,
and allowing that one of the main attributes you need in this field is a
willingness / ability to learn new technologies and this skill is very difficult to measure,
but theres gotta be a better way than this.

WhiteWashMan

i dont agree.

if i have a position which has A, B and C in it, i will ask you on A, B and C, regardless of your CV.

A CV is used to get yourself an interview, its pre-sales. Your CV looks good to people, they see what you have done, they see the type of person you are, they see what responsibilities you have had. They then decide, I like what this person has done, lets see if we can fit this person to the role.

when was the last time anyone went for a job that fit your CV like a jigsaw?

So i think they are well within their right to ask you about anything they see fit.

as for being asked about stuff when going for a short term contract, well, youre the expert, thats why contractors get the money they get, because they have to know their stuff. if you put yourself forward for a job, and the employer wants you to do x, y and z, then hes going to make sure you bloody well know x, y, and z, because otherwise you are worthless to him.

is it that you just dont like being asked about anything that isnt on your CV?
#

by the way, you have completely changed your arguement from talking about being questioned on whats on your CV to having a problem with being questioned about what isnt on your CV.

Originally posted by boo-boo
but what I find fault with is where you're examined on skills that you've specified you have on your CV, I don't mean on acadamic stuff but commercial experience.

None of these questions directly address the CV,
and may or may not address the spec, but rather investigate the
candidates ability to perform an oral exam on these topics,

which is it now?

Hobbes

Originally posted by boo-boo
And these may or may not be related to either the job spec or the cv. Eg
where neither the job spec or CV mentions c#, yet the interviewer
begins a series of questions on C# & .NET, followed by a series on VB,
Java, SQL or whatever. None of these questions directly address the CV,
and may or may not address the spec, but rather investigate the
candidates ability to perform an oral exam on these topics.

There are a number of reasons they could be doing this.

1. Testing your aptitude for those areas. I had to do up an exam for person doing my job. A couple of the questions were on a language which was hardware related (ie. No one would of seen it without experience). The questions weren't there to see if the person knew the subject, they were there to see if the person could make the connection of how to understand the information.

Some people have a better gift at this then others.

2. They could of been seeing if you were good enough for another area. Sometimes just because your sitting one job interview they could be sizing you up for another.

3. Maybe they don't want you for the job? If that is the case try to get someone else you know with similar CV to sit the same interview. By law any questions they ask you in the interview they have to ask others as well. Normally this would apply to personal stuff, but it can also apply to technical questions.

You may think it's a lark but it is a good way to weed out the paper only techies.

Also paper techies aren't always the best. For example I have about 7 years Notes development experience. It is only in the last year or so I did the exams up to CLP level (Told I would have to for a raise), although my applications are easily at PLP level (just haven't bothered sitting it).

However at one point when they wanted to get someone to work on a project I had done and they picked a lower level guy based on the fact that I had no qualifications at the time I did the project (but would require a little explaining to a PLP to develop on).

It was like I was talking another language when I told them the person would need a lot more training to understand how to update it.

It is this sort of mentality that exists in some areas of IT that is what had IT fuked up in the 90's.

pingin

Originally posted by boo-boo

[what is it with these people, you do a technical & normal interview
& then ... how long does it take to write a pfo email ?

You don't have accountants, administrators, anyone having to do the equivalent type of interview outside of IT. [/B]

Yes, it is pig ignorant - try not to let it get to you though as, as some else said, there's unfortunately not a lot you can do about it. Look on the positive side: they're probably not a good company to work for.

Regarding asking questions, I think that's more understandable. They're buying your skills so it's perfectly acceptable for them to kick the tyres a bit.

In technical roles, you're asked technical questions because those questions are relevant to the job you're going to be doing. In other areas, you'll be asked questions which are relevant to the skills required for that area. For example, if you go for a job in pre-sales engineering or marketing, you'll almost certainly be asked at some point to demonstrate your presentation skills.

However, asking highly specific technical questions for the purpose of seeing how well a person knows a particular subject is a bad interviewing technique - most interviewees will feel like they're being interogated, and may take offense or go blank. A good interviewer will usually ask you to tell him/her what you think about such a such topic (unkind interviewers refer to this as giving you rope to see if you'll hang yourself with it).

pingin

Cabaal

Originally posted by boo-boo
why do IT people have to do technical interviews at all, are the degrees, diplomas certs etc. THAT useless.

Because you can be a 4th year grad and still have never opened a PC, infact I know a guy he's a 4th year grad and he knows alot apparently.
but he's had little practical experience, basically he bought himself a lovely AGP grahics card for a mobo with no AGP slot.

It sounds simple but I've heard of worse things then that.

Also you can know every frickin thing in the world but to be honest its worth jack **** if you don't have customer service skills, if you can't get the info across to dumb people and the such.

Cork

I personally have found recruitment agencies pretty wanting. They never delivered for me. I have found them arogant and lacking in any sort of professioalisim.

Webmonkey

As far as i'm concerned Experience is worth more than something on paper - I think most employers don't give a damn about what you got a degree in just as long as you can do the work - thats why i think they put u thru these tests.



Amn't I right in saying I see people working in Mc Donnels dat have degrees but can't get jobs for what they are qualified? :rolleyes:

boo-boo

Thanks for the feedback -
Interesting stuff folks, the consensus certainly
seems to be - " stop whinin' & get with the program"
which is probably the best bet. Points taken re
technical interviews - maybe they're not perfect
but they're better than the alternative.

Although - re my earlier point about pig ig
employers, get a load of this - this guy takes the biscuit.
After interviewing in mid June, with a promise of feedback within the week - nada.
Guessing that either
a) I was out & they couldn't be bothered replying or
b) their first choice was dithering over a contract ot otherwise stalling
& they were keeping their options open
I left a voicemail about 3 weeks ago asking for an update.
No response.
By this time I guessed it was option a. But I am somewhat persistent so about 2 weeks ago I emailed, politely asking for a resolution.
No response.

Last week I emailed the HR type person who organised the interview, again just
politely asking for a official yea or nay. And guess what ? -
No response.

My heart says I should fire a stinging email to the MD - slashing & burning
everything in my wake, with the (pretty forlorn)
hope that one of these fu&*$rs will get a rollocking -
My head says forget it, I can take a hint.
I think I'll go with my head on this one.

WhiteWashMan

i would just put it down to a **** company an move on to be honest.
would you like to work in a company that cant sort the easy things out?

rymus

Originally posted by eth0_
As for the tech test, there are a *lot* of very clueless people out there with IT degrees!

And vice versa... I've been to many interviews & applied for many jobs that I could more than likely do with my eyes closed but because I dont have letters after my name I dont get a look in.