[lbo-talk] a bitch needs to fan herself

[Michael J. Smith]

On Saturday 17 February 2007 07:10 am, Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> On 2/17/07, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> > Which is exactly why job interviews are such a pathetic method for
> > hiring people.  We have decades of evidence that interview performance
> > has no correlation with actual job performance in most fields, but we
> > carry out this cultural ritual of job interviews to "make sure" the
> > applicant is the "right person" for the job.  It's a bloody waste of time.
> 
> Respectfully, I'm not so sure this conclusion is correct, from the
> perspective of a corporation. 

I used to do a lot of technical interviewing -- not lately, thank God; I always 
found it more of an ordeal to be the interviewer than the interviewee. SInce 
I have had from early youth a settled disbelief in the rational and technocratic
pretensions of corporations and other bureaucracies, my unclouded mind was 
able to figure out that there were two questions and two only that I needed 
to answer: 

1) Does the person actually know C, or Java, or TCP/IP, or whatever, at 
some reasonable level? This is easy to determine.

2) Did I like him or her? Also easy to determine. 

I never had the experience of one of my thumbs-up recommendations 
turning out badly. Of course I probably turned away plenty of people 
who would have worked out fine, but I felt at the time -- rather selfishly, 
I know -- that that was a problem for them, not for me. What would have 
been a problem for me was an incompetent or disagreeable colleague.

By the way, people who acted like they were "already a member of the 
club," and tried to make me persuade them, got a five-minute interview and 
an emphatic thumbs-down. Not that I wanted anybody to grovel, but 
conceit and a sense of entitlement augur badly for your future working 
relationship.  

-- 
--Michael J. Smith
--mjs at smithbowen.net

http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org

"You have heretofore read public 
sentiment in your newspapers, that 
live by falsehood and excitement; 
and the quicker you seek for truth 
in other quarters, the better."
--W.T. Sherman