Idiot Interviewers
I really hate people sometimes.
I just got off the phone with the “Lead” on a project over at Slide (very much like RockYou), who was supposed to gauge my technical abilities. He asked about my experience - fine. He then asked me a database question that I answered, but prefaced with “I’m not a db admin, and this isn’t what I want to do/was told the position entails”.
Next question was a “data sorting” one… I gave him a correct answer, but he wanted a faster one. I gave him one. But he wanted faster. Said I couldn’t think of any more, but this is the sort of thing I’d do some quick research and documentation digging on. The guy told me what he wanted… I immediately recognized it, and it was the type of thing that only academia and Google care about/use.
You need to teach your people about “interviewing”
The best part? He ended it there, and said I was “too junior” for what they were looking for. After asking me a n/a question, and then giving him an answer that was correct… just not “enough”.
And then he called the hiring manager and told her the same thing.
How the hell do you judge someone’s programming talents based on that? You can’t. Even if you’re going to talk by phone, it’s difficult. This sort of crap is what pisses me off about snooty nosed academia idiots… you don’t know everything unless you’ve used everything, and apparently that’s not a good answer.
Even if you’re awesome (like me), how can they know if they don’t bother to go any further than two questions - one of which you answered right, but docked on?
Yes. Yes it was.
God damn bullshit. Good thing I don’t like companies like them anyways.
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What I'm wondering though is why you agreed to interview with them in the first place? I think you made a lot of good points about why you wouldn't want to work for RockYou...and in my opinion Slide is pretty much going down the same path.
If you're working with a recruiter (or a handful of them) you should probably try to be very specific with them about the type of company/job you are willing to interview for...I've personally found that is the best way to save yourself a lot of aggrevation. Besides it makes them earn a little of the fat check they get every time they connect a dice.com post to dice.com resume ;-D
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It's not that I'm "not really good at it", it's more that it wasn't an interview at all. We had a conversation and then two questions. One of which wasn't relevant, the other of which I had decent answers to.
As for 'why'? Slide is a little less evil/stupid in my opinion, and the hiring manager actually came at me, pitching why I should work for them (after finding my resume, blog, etc.)... I thought it would be a better interviewing experience than it was, and it would have had some nice reasons to work there. But it was just a "feeler".
Recruiters: I'm trying. I thought I found one of those places who would want to place me somewhere, but they've been ignoring me for the last week.
Argh
--Kyle
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"Would you consider yourself a LAMP developer?" / "Yes, but just so we're clear, I'm not a server admin." / "So, that would mean no?"
---Kyle
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Six months later...
"Can you come in for an interview?" / "Um, I interviewed with you 6 months ago and it didn't go well" / "We've completely changed and are on the right path now...the developer we hired then turned out not to know anything and so we have learned our lesson and want to talk to you again. I promise we'll make it worth your time." / "OK I guess...what do you have for me?" / "Are you still doing LAMP? We really need a sys. admin...could you do both?" / "Well yes but I don't really..." / "OK great, can you also clean the toilets, cook, and integrate some features we used to have on punch cards? Oh and we're willing to pay as much as $5.50/hour...when can you start?!" / CLICK...BZZZZZZ....
:thumbsup:
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--Kyle
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I know that. But in this case it wasn't a recruiter... it was an internal employee in the hiring department.
At the same time, I have dealt with some really ignorant and misleading recruiters. You're one of the few who seems to "get it" and is pretty straightforward.
Which is nice. ;-)
--Kyle
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