I was the perfect candidate for this position. I had two interviews with the company, both of which went well. I didn't flub anything. I was relaxed. I think I had good rapport with the staff who interviewed me. This was one of the toughest series of interviews I've had to do in my years of job hunting. The HR department made me fill out an application when I arrived (pretty standard procedure). Then they threw a curve that I've never experienced before: a 20-minute standardized aptitude and intelliegence test. That was no problem. I enjoy taking tests like this.
Then I had an hour-long interview with two guys from the tech department, one of whom was the manager and the other was the staff information architect. They brought up several questions that I had been thrown in the phone interview and a bunch of other technical questions.
Again, no problems. No flubs. Good vibes.
Then they told me that they were giving me a take home test. I was a bit annoyed with this, but I accepted the challenge. My homework challenge was to take a Photoshopped design of a web page, some graphics, and create a CSS-based facsimile of the design without using tables. I spent several hours on a weekend doing this homework and my design came out fine. I went in for part two of the interview where we looked at my version of the design and talked about my code. They were impressed and said that my code was well-organized and clean. They asked me a few more technical questions which I handled with ease.
The position with this company was what I'd consider to be a mid-level web developer. If anything, I was a bit overqualified given my nearly 13 years experience with HTML and web technologies. This was not a programming job, which I've been considered for in some jobs, although I don't have many programming skills. This company actually has several Java programmers and database administrators on staff.
I was a perfect fit, but didn't get this "sure thing." So I'm forced to conclude that the staff at this company Googled my name and found some pages that indicated that I have some radical political views.
Some of you know how long I've been looking for professional work, so I haven't exactly been a slouch when it comes to interviewing for jobs. In the last year I've interviewed with some rather prominent companies in Kansas City for rather well-paying web developer jobs. In some cases, I think that I'm not being hired because I don't have oodles of recent experience on my resume with new technologies like AJAX or the Microsoft universe of web development applications. But I'm getting interviews, so I must have a rather competitive resume.
Perhaps I'm the Susan Lucci of web developers, but this can't be explained away by bad luck or all of these employers liking other candidates. Friends and family often ask me if my political past is a problem. There isn't any way of telling for sure, because potential employers rarely say why they've rejected you. I've had problems with one local employer, whose HR department "loses" my resume and which mysteriously declined to hire me for one position. As the hiring person said to me: "Some strange things came up." I do know that the director of that organization knows that I have radical politics--he has even posted to my blog.
In the last year, I've had a variety of headhunters and IT placement companies trying to place me with local companies. Part of the problem is that many companies don't hire old-fashioned web developers as much as they used to, so my rather generalist skill set and resume may not fit many of the IT (and librarian) jobs out there. You would think that any company would be interested in hiring a person with librarian and IT experience. I have managed to get more feedback from potential employers through these placment companies, because employers have to tell them why they don't like a candidate. Several employers have said that my technical skills weren't current, which was the case with several jobs, but I suspect that a few of these employers may have Googled me.
Well, I'll just keep plugging away with the job search. I don't know what else to do at this point.
Hey K., you were right about freelancing. It sucks.
Chuck -------------------------- Bread and Roses Web Design serving small businesses, non-profits, artists and activists http://www.breadandrosesweb.com/