I swear, I really have enough material from my Kafkaesque job hunt to provide some interesting stories for several books. Friends who know me point out that I'm lucky that I have so many projects going on, because anybody else in my shoes would have long succumbed to depression and drug abuse.
I'm actually very optimistic about finding a job soon--I'm even delaying
making airline reservations for upcoming trips until I know if I'll be starting a new job or not. I've also been landing interviews right and left over the past year, for some sexy tech positions, but still, no offers. One of the frustrating things for me is that I can apply for two types of professional jobs--librarian and web developer--but that doesn't help me. From what I've gleaned after talking to local librarians, about the only way to land a job at a local public library is to already work at the library. Public libraries seem to be suffering from an abundance of the Peter Principle.
After several years of avoiding them, I started working with headhunters and job agencies in 2006-2007. Some of them are good about talking companies and organizations into interviewing them, but the bad ones have staff that don't have a clue about IT work. I've wasted some time with agencies who talked me up to some company that was looking for .NET developers and not web developers. You also get bothered a lot by out-of-state headhunters.
One of my more amusing experiences last year involved being contacted by nearly a dozen headhunters over a GUI designer job at the Sprint HQ here in Overland Park. Evidently the shittier IT headhunters focus on corporate jobs. Maybe they think that they can get a better cut if they place a candidate with a multinational like Sprint.
The flurry of emails and phone calls about Sprint was annoying because I had been interviewed by Sprint for the exact same GUI designer position six months earlier. It's kind of funny how the job search process gives one insight about the state of these companies. I wonder if people who work in competitive intelligence use fake job searches to research corporate targets. Last year I was talking to a headhunter about a database job at Hallmark and learned that somebody had botched a database migration project and left the company hanging. In the case of Sprint, the GUI designer job was part of a significant project: smoothing over the merger between Sprint and Motorola. The fact that they were interviewing people for the same job six months later was telling about the state of Sprint's IT situation. This was also my first indicator that the rumors about Sprint turning over employees quite often were true.
Then I got this call from a headhunter about a position doing GUI design. I told her that if the job involved Sprint, that I wasn't interested. She was taken aback. She said that she wasn't calling about the Sprint job, in fact, her company had a policy of not dealing with Sprint because the job turnover is so high there.
At this point, if you have Sprint stock and have been ignoring the recent news about their layoffs and merger indigestion, then you've been warned.
Believe it or not, I have one more spin on the Sprint story and it ties in with our infoshop here. Small world, isn't it?
One day I was puttering around the infoshop and this person walks in. This person tells me that they are an activist who has moved to town in order to take a position at Sprint. I made a comment about the turnover situation at Sprint and I could just see the worry darken this person's face. I haven't seen this person since that day, so I don't know how long they lasted at Sprint. I figure that this person could at least benefit from my warning.
When you've been looking for work for several years, you discover that there are two periods during the year where job interviewing totally stops: late July, early August and the month around Christmas. So things have been picking up for me in the past two weeks. I've done three interviews for four jobs.
One of the IT placement agencies arranged two of the job interviews. The other one was one I landed with a local university. One of the interviews was with a company which provides services to the extremely rich. Since the placement agency was fronting for me, these types of interviews are fairly short. The interview with the company selling luxury services lasted less than 20 minutes. It was one of those interviews where the interviewer talks about the company and the position. They usually don't ask you questions, so this type of interview is difficult in that you don't get much of chance to talk and present yourself. You also don't realize that you are in this kind of interview until it's almost over. All of the talking about the organization comes off as a typical overview that leads into questioning.
The placement agency then arranges an interview with a local software company, a fairly large software development company for the Kansas City area. I happen to know a few things about this company for reasons I won't go into here, but it's still an attractive position.
I happen to know through my sources that this particular company is one of those that is doing cutting edge work, but relies on lots of underpaid contract positions. If they can find a programmer for $40,000/year, they'd go after her.
Yes, I hear the programmers on this list snickering at that pay rate.
I find out that I'm interviewing for a position that doesn't have a formal title or job description. The agency tells me that it appears like the company is looking for a basic web developer. It sounds like something I can do easily, so I agree to go talk to them.
I meet up with the guy at the company who is doing the interview. He's 50-ish with gray/blonde hair and is wearing a pastel casual shirt with the company logo. One of the things that annoy me about job interviews is the handshake. It's like a vestigal remnant from the bad old days of male v. male conflicts. My handshake isn't that strong, so I have to be conscious about these idiotic rituals. This guy turns out to be one of the worst practitioners of the handshake ritual. I give him a firm handshake and he returns with a bone-crushing shake that is twice as bad as the variety I'm used to.
With this kind of guy, I can usually guess what I'm going to find in his office.
Bingo! Two of them. Framed motivational posters which even have glass (or plastic) coverings.
You know the variety. One of them bears the slogan "Perseverance" and has a gloomy picture of a stormy ocean battering a resolute lighthouse.
Wonderful. At least the guy doesn't have some stupid golf figurine on some surface in the office, but I'm not exactly looking hard. Trying to stay alert because I know that this kind of guy is going to ask me one of those cliche questions. Gotta be ready for the old "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" question.
Don't get that question, but after the interviewer asks me a few standard questions about my background, he throws me another of those curveball questions.
"What do you do for fun?"
Oh brother! A minefield of a question. I got asked this question by some farmer in a small town during my first interview our of grad school. I've learned from experience that the correct answer should be something boring, something that leads to casual banter about sports or hobbies.
I serve up "Reading books."
Bad answer.
"Gardening?"
Bingo. The interviewer starts talking about perennials and the problem he's having with moles.
Then we get to the part of the interview that is becoming more common in my experience. You can spend years of your life getting advanced degrees and gaining experience at multiple jobs, but these companies will still find a way to insult your intelligence...
...by giving you an intelligence test.
I happen to be pretty good at taking intelligence tests, even though I know that they are complete horse shit. You don't have to read Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" (which I recently read), to know that intelligence tests measure your ability to take intelligence tests. I also happen to be one of those odd people whose pleasure center gets triggered when I take surveys and IQ tests. Yes, I'll take consumer surveys just for the mental buzz.
Several months ago I interviewed with another corporation here and took a similar aptitude test, which involved filling in little squares with a pencil. That particular job made me do the IQ test, a take home design test, and two interviews before rejecting me.
My interviewer at "Perseverance Software" leads me to a little room for the computerized aptitude test. Did I mention that this company has nameplates on the outside of each conference room with a catchy name based on the theme suggested by the company's name? It's kind of like attending a conference at some hotel which has named rooms based on a silly theme.
The computer explains how the test works. I have 15 minutes to answer 50 questions. A clock on the computer counts down my time. The questions involve world problems, number sequences, pattern recognition, word similarities, and so on. I skip a few of the word problems--forgot to get coffee before this interview, which I've found is essential for being mentally sharp during interviews.
I finish the test and then get escorted to some fancy classroom. Then I meet a woman programmer who has a handshake exactly opposite of Mr. Perseverance.
I go home figuring that I'll probably score a follow-up interview. The headhunter agency contacts me later in the day. They break the good news. They really liked me and would create a job for me if they could. I also did well on the test. Wait. I read between the lines and find out that the company isn't really interested and they aren't even doing a second interview with me. The person from the agency writes that the company is looking for somebody with more networking experience. Actually, the woman interviewer gave me the vibe that they were looking for somebody who's worked with Microsoft server products.
So at this point the same questions go through my head:
Are these companies really this clueless about what they want? Why do they bother interviewing you if they've read your resume?
Do even the savviest of these headhunters have to guess what these companies want?
It is something totally unrelated to the company or my experience?
Next day I get a phone call from a different placement agency. They want to ask me questions for 20 minutes and they'll translate that interview into something they'll take to some company. At this point, I have a devil-may-care attitude, so when this interviewer asks me the curveball question, I answer with the most honest answer ever.
What was the biggest mistake you've ever made on the job?
Chuck