Because they sent us their resumes



  • I was asked to interview a slew of college kids for a bunch of programmer positions that just opened up. Forget the fact that we don't have desks for them to sit at. Forget the fact that our systems are fairly heavy duty, if wtf-filled. Forget the fact that very high performance and complex parallel processing/synchronization are involved, and these students are unlikely to have any practical experience in these areas.

    I asked the HR person why we were interviewing kids with basically zero experience for these types of positions.

    Well, the school had a program whereby for career-day, they brought in headhunters, each of whom took a stack of resumes from the computer science department, and submitted them to us.

    I'm all for giving a kid a chance to gain some practical experience as an intern or hiring them for junior level positions, but you don't hand a medical student the scalpel during brain surgury. (Ok that's extreme, but the point applies).

    So now I have (get?) to spend two days next week interviewing kids with no experience for positions for which they are likely unqualified.

    Ah well, the office is air conditioned, I don't have to do any work those days and I'm still billing...



  • @snoofle said:

    I asked the HR person why we were interviewing kids with basically zero experience for these types of positions.
     

    I know you've talked about WTF coding and WTF design and WTF release management and ....

    ... but your last few posts have been "WTF, HR?"

    Is that entire organisation steeped deep in WTF? Is that the pervading culture, or are there departments within that have yet to be assimilated infected?



  • Actually snoofle works for any company out there.  I have found this same level of WTFery in every company, snoofle just writes about it so well I let him do it.

    And no we don't work at the same company, doubt we are even in the same state.



  • @KattMan said:

    Actually snoofle works for any company out there. 
     

    I felt like posting a pedantic rebuttal citing an edge case about a golden needle located somewhere midst a giant haystack...

    .. but deep down, sadly, tragically... I know you to be correct.



  • @snoofle said:

    So now I have (get?) to spend two days next week interviewing kids with no experience for positions for which they are likely unqualified.

    Ah well, the office is air conditioned, I don't have to do any work those days and I'm still billing...

    I can't imagine a clearer mandate for playing elaborate sadistic psychological games with the hapless students.

     



  • You can always give them a tedious job to do as part of the "assessment". Anything on your stack you really hate?



  • @TGV said:

    Anything on your stack you really hate?
    I'm just a consultant; I don't assign work. I do get to pick and choose MY work, which has its perks... 

    @Cassidy said:

    WTF, HR?

    The team managers used to do the phone screening and interviewing and the senior managers would approve anyone they asked for.

    Now things have gotten busier (what with fixing all the WTF that went into the first generation of the software), they decided to hire an HR person whose responsibility would be to phone screen candidates whose resumes look appropriate.

    This person is non-technical and so we had to give them a whole bunch of phone-screen Q&A. Unfortunately, I've been getting feedback from candidates that the person is misreading the questions and that they (candidates) have been correcting the HR person.

    It's kind of laughable.

    @Cassidy said:

    Is that entire organisation steeped deep in WTF?

    The place started out as someone's idea for how to build a better service in a niche industry where there was clearly a need. They hired a few folks and without any planning, guidance or know-how, hodge-podged together a system. It was lots of little bits, each mostly unaware of the other, trying to talk to each other. When there were 200 users it sort of worked OK with some tweaking. Now there are 30 million users and it's falling apart at the seams.

    That's one of the reasons they hired me. They realized they were in over their heads and needed to pay someone with actual experience working with heavy duty systems to come in and make it better.

    Then, just to make it interesting, they got bought out by a large conglomerate that saw profit potential. Then the conglomerate started imposing multiple layers of procedures, which led to growing pains, etc.

    I do what I can, laugh at what I can't, and post it all for your enjoyment, because let's face it, we all deserve a good laugh!



  • @Cassidy said:

    I know you've talked about WTF coding and WTF design and WTF release management and ....

    ... but your last few posts have been "WTF, HR?"

     

    Do not underestimate HR. WTF HR is the source of all the WTF.

     



  •  30 million users.Hmm.. so somewhere between pinterest and LinkedIn?



  • @snoofle said:

    <snip /> The place started out as someone's idea for how to build a better service in a niche industry where there was clearly a need. <snip /> Now there are 30 million users <snip />


    That's some niche.



  • @pjt33 said:

    @snoofle said:

    <snip /> The place started out as someone's idea for how to build a better service in a niche industry where there was clearly a need. <snip /> Now there are 30 million users <snip />

    That's some niche.
    Mail ordering S&M paraphernalia is more popular than you think.

     



  • @da Doctah said:

    @snoofle said:

    So now I have (get?) to spend two days next week interviewing kids with no experience for positions for which they are likely unqualified.

    Ah well, the office is air conditioned, I don't have to do any work those days and I'm still billing...

    I can't imagine a clearer mandate for playing elaborate sadistic psychological games with the hapless students.

     

    Reminds me of high school on the days that middle school kids were coming for a visit and see what high school is like - my friends and I were always taking that opportunity to ask a few of them if they wanted to buy drugs. We even had bags full of sugar to show them and give them something to discuss with their parents. Good times.

    Actually things became a bit weird after a few years when one of my friends added a spin to the trick by telling the kids that if they did not have money they could pay with sex. Strangely the boys were the ones who were really freaking out. Bunch of homophobic noobs.



  • @snoofle said:

    Unfortunately, I've been getting feedback from candidates that the person is misreading the questions and that they (candidates) have been correcting the HR person.
     

    There's your first screen there - anyone who exhibits more (or identical) knowledge as the HR droid has made it to the second stage.

    Akcheevement Unloc'd!

    @snoofle said:

    They realized they were in over their heads and needed to pay someone with actual experience working with heavy duty systems to come in and make it better.

    Then, just to make it interesting, they got bought out by a large conglomerate that saw profit potential. Then the conglomerate started imposing multiple layers of procedures, which led to growing pains, etc.

     

    This bit kinda saddens me - at some point the organisation understood the need to improve, accepted there was a problem and initiated action to address it.. but that will never come to fruition due to the efforts of Older Uncle steamrollering in with his thundering "I'll tell you how it should be done!".

    Still, keeps us in WTFs for a bit.

    If/when you leave... are you going to make them aware that their fuckwittery has been a valuable source of material for this site for so long?



  • @snoofle said:

    So now I have (get?) to spend two days next week interviewing kids with no experience for positions for which they are likely unqualified.

    Ah well, the office is air conditioned, I don't have to do any work those days and I'm still billing...

     

     

    Make it a challenge to see how few words you can establish their lack of qualification for the position with.

    snoofle: "Can a computer think?"

    Under-qualified college kid: "..."

    S: "Next! P != NP. Discuss."

    UQCK: "Erm"

    S: "Next!"

    etc.

     

    (Yes I know that those aren't exactly the criteria you want for practical coding involving complex parallel processing/synchronization yadda yadda, it'll purely be fun for snoofle and a healthy dose of crushing disappointment for the college kids)

     



  • @orange_robot said:

    it'll purely be fun for snoofle and a healthy dose of crushing disappointment for the college kids
     

    Plus a demonstration that the time and effort wasted by HR and extra cost of snoofle screening a pile of novices completely unsuited to the task in hand is quite simply an idiot tax that epitomises "if you do not understand the problem, you will never arrive at a solution". (Deming)

    Judging from snoof's prior posts though... it seems this lessons is still not being learned by his current client.



  • Just cut the interviews short after two signs of gross unsuitability.



  • @snoofle said:

    Now things have gotten busier (what with fixing all the WTF that went into the first generation of the software), they decided to hire an HR person whose responsibility would be to phone screen candidates whose resumes look appropriate.

    This person is non-technical and so we had to give them a whole bunch of phone-screen Q&A. Unfortunately, I've been getting feedback from candidates that the person is misreading the questions and that they (candidates) have been correcting the HR person.

    Only once in my life have I spoken with an HR person who was a technical person (and to make it slightly rarer a woman as well - but that is irrelevant). The interviews I had were clear and concise and I didn't have to explain to her what items on my resume actually meant. In addition her sister was a VP in the same firm I was trying to get into, so that this HR person also had a good grasp of the business (or so I thought). And other people I know who joined the company at the same time also had the same impression of her

    Once in the company it didn't take long to figure out that the HR person either didn't know how bad conditions were in the company or that she was lying through her teeth about how great the work conditions were. (for example 20% staff turnover in 2011 in a company of 100, dictatorial president who thought even his VP's should be >80% billable, abusive project managers and a work environment of fear and uncertainty). It was all so bad that I only lasted 6 months. But I'm still willing to give the HR person the benefit of the doubt about her knowledge of the working conditions.



  • @OzPeter said:

    I didn't have to explain to her what items on my resume actually meant.

    I don't see why you should have to.

    I suppose this comes back to being interviewed by several people - someone with business knowledge, someone of HR background, someone of specialist knowledge all to see if your values, ethos and skills meet the job requirements. But if it's the job of HR to try and map skill requirements to interviewee capability then it should be their responsibility to research and learn - it shouldn't be the interviewee's job to explain things. Expand, maybe...

    @OzPeter said:

    the HR person... was lying through her teeth about how great the work conditions were
     

    Duh. She works in HR.



  • @da Doctah said:

    @snoofle said:
    So now I have (get?) to spend two days next week interviewing kids with no experience for positions for which they are likely unqualified.

    Ah well, the office is air conditioned, I don't have to do any work those days and I'm still billing...

    I can't imagine a clearer mandate for playing elaborate sadistic psychological games with the hapless students.
    My recommendation is to break out the Job Interviewing 2.0 (those damn annoying riddle questions), and the leadership questions.  The leadership questions are especially mean since they rely on the interviewe's prior work experience (which they don't have) to determine future behavior.

    Daily WTF on Job Interview 2.0: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Riddle-Me-An-Interview.aspx

    Examples of Leadership Interview Questions: http://humanresources.about.com/od/leadership/a/leader_question.htm

    @Example Leadership Question said:

    Tell me about a time when you created agreement and shared purpose from a situation in which all parties originally differed in opinion, approach, and objectives.



  • @Cassidy said:

    But if it's the job of HR to try and map skill requirements to interviewee capability then it should be their responsibility to research and learn - it shouldn't be the interviewee's job to explain things.
    She was more external recruiter than HR so I am probably conflating the two positions a bit. These days it seems that most/all recruiters I deal with have no clue about the subject matter. People are just commodities that recruiters pick and choose by key word matching and then throw in front of employers in the off chance they'll get a match and then they'll get paid. Such recruiters are basically low end sales people and retain a lot of the stereotypes of salespeople in general.

    My qualifications are different/specialised enough that key word matching does work for almost all positions I get offered - let alone the insane ideas that recruiters seem to have that I want to drop everything and relocate to some far off location in the middle of nowhere (to be fair the last relocation offer to the middle of nowhere included full relocation expenses plus buying your house for $50,000 over current market value)



  • @Example Leadership Question said:

    Tell me about a time when you created agreement and shared purpose from a situation in which all parties originally differed in opinion, approach, and objectives.

    "We're hungry. Chinese is closed today. Too late for a pizza. Nobody wants to cook. So, that leaves... KEBAB! Few more pints and it'll be palatable. All those in favour?"

    @OzPeter said:

    These days it seems that most/all recruiters I deal with have no clue about the subject matter. People are just commodities that recruiters pick and choose by key word matching and then throw in front of employers in the off chance they'll get a match and then they'll get paid.
     

    And the flipside is that many pimps will embellish your CV with specific terms known to engage and red-flag a requirement, so you've got someone bullshitting about your capabilities convincing another person who isn't knowledgeable enough to have a decent enough bullshit filter. Joyous.



  • Didn't someone recently write a book about how companies have backed themselves into a corner when it comes to hiring? They construct keyword searches that weed out anybody that hasn't written down the exact thing they're looking for (worded the same way) on their resume. Then they refuse to hire anyone who doesn't already have all the skills required already. So they get 2,000 resumes in, and none of them are qualified. In fact, the only people qualified are the ones who just left the company for another job! Then they complain that there's a shortage of good applicants. Yeah, sounds like typical HR.



  • @dcardani said:

    Didn't someone recently write a book about how...
     

    Dunno about a book, but there's regular blogs/articles about the failures of HR. Of those you describe:

    • failure to understand required skillset/capability - advertising the wrong job, inviting the wrong people to an interview
    • inefficient interview process - not getting the right people as interviewers, getting dates/location wrong
    • little or no real post-interview process - lack of follow-up, ignoring a prospective candidate, poor communication
    • crap induction process - new starters kept awaiting for things to be arranged upon their behalf, no employee alignment programme
    • shit ongoing people management - not informing IT of promotions/leavers so accounts not locked down, no clear records of employee responsibility to be able to advertise that same position once that individual leaves

    And yup.. I've been on the receiving end of these several times. But if there's a book on this, I'd like to read it.



  • @Cassidy said:

    • failure to understand required skillset/capability - advertising the wrong job, inviting the wrong people to an interview
    • inefficient interview process - not getting the right people as interviewers, getting dates/location wrong
    • little or no real post-interview process - lack of follow-up, ignoring a prospective candidate, poor communication
    • crap induction process - new starters kept awaiting for things to be arranged upon their behalf, no employee alignment programme
    • shit ongoing people management - not informing IT of promotions/leavers so accounts not locked down, no clear records of employee responsibility to be able to advertise that same position once that individual leaves

    Yeah, I can cite recent first-hand examples for each of those. Well, first hand being I was there to observe them, I was the interviewer not the interviewee.

    Let's see... during our last round of hires, the HR lady repeatedly gave the wrong name of our manager; the bus they used to get the kids around drove to the wrong building; this was on top of already being delayed an hour or so. In fact, if I recall correctly, the bussing was so messed up that some kids had to find their own way home, I think in part due to everything being pushed back an hour -- except for the bus schedule! Though a few of the kids were worthwhile, the majority of them couldn't have been hired anyway due to greencard issues, so there was no point for us to be interviewing them! The one kid we picked out ended up declining, and I don't blame him. When we offered the position to our second choice, he informed us that HR already told him that someone else was already picked for the position, so he had interviewed and found a job for another company. Three times was the lucky charm, although he definitely wasn't that good. I've refrained from posting wtfs from him since he's still a newbie.

    I remember one of the interviewees remarking that he suspected the whole setup was a stress test to flush out the weaker candidates. Sorry, nope, our HR just sucks.



  • @Xyro said:

    he suspected the whole setup was a stress test to flush out the weaker candidates
    That was my thought when getting a background screening from HireWrong last year...  I actually ended up turning down the position before the screening was done, simply because the process was taking so long, consuming so much of my personal time, and was just so very, very bad overall.  After that experience I swore to myself that I would never again go for a role which would have me going through those fuckwits.



  • @Xyro said:

    The one kid we picked out ended up declining, and I don't blame him. When we offered the position to our second choice, he informed us that HR already told him that someone else was already picked for the position, so he had interviewed and found a job for another company.
     

    Ditto experience: my (then) team leader wanted a firm decision upon my choice of assistant because HR wanted to process the paperwork; I picked the one suitable but made it clear that individual needed informing ASAP because his contract was up for renewal and he wanted to know whether to accept or decline his current workplace.

    The following week said individual rang me to find out the results of the interview - seems nobody had got back to him. I was happy to break the news to him (and he was chuffed to find he'd been successful) but I was annoyed nobody had actioned my choice before the weekend. When I confronted my fuckwitted team leader about it, he made some enquiries and later explained that HR had rejected him because he'd never got back to them. What?

    Who the bucketcunt shitcock was doing WHAT?



  • We recently opened up a position here for a second DB/C# person.


    They pulled those of us on the DB team (ok, quick backstory, we have one dedicated DB/C# person and a 'team' that consists of 3 more programmers who help out but know jack-shit about SQL) into a conference room and handed us a stack of resumes to browse through and pick the best ones out of. Management heavily hinted that we should OK all of them.


    So we started looking through them, couple of them were OK, but some were really out there... then we ran across the resume for our current DB person. In fact, she found it.


    Yep. Instead of getting new resumes, they just dug all the ones they'd gotten a year and a half ago out of storage and had us going through them again. Needless to say, even though we OKed some of them, not a single one interviewed.


    AFAIK the position is still open, and with what they want to pay, will likely remain so for some time until we get a desperate college graduate.


    From my experience, HR is just a giant cluster of fail pretty much everywhere.



  • @C-Octothorpe said:

    @Xyro said:
    he suspected the whole setup was a stress test to flush out the weaker candidates
    That was my thought when getting a background screening from HireWrong last year...  I actually ended up turning down the position before the screening was done, simply because the process was taking so long, consuming so much of my personal time, and was just so very, very bad overall.  After that experience I swore to myself that I would never again go for a role which would have me going through those fuckwits.
    I guess my company is the antiWTF when it comes to HR and interviewing.  My dealings with my company's HR team:

    My university had a job fair 1 week before spring break.  Corporation scheduled interviews during spring break when the students would most likely have free time.  They had air travel and hotel accommodations available for those not in the area (I took them up on the hotel, but I drove since it was only a 3 hour drive away).  Out of the 24 interviewees scheduled for that Friday they broke us into two groups of 12, one group in the morning and one group in the afternoon, hiring managers, security, and HR representatives were all there and knew exactly what they were doing.  There was no confusion over which managers were interviewing who and the process was well communicated to us the interviewees.  Within a week of that I had a job offer.  At the same time I got the job offer was when the other companies from the job fair were beginning to call me.  The job offer would have expired by the time I even had an interview with the other companies so I took the job offer, and I can safely say I am very glad that I did.  The time line also worked out nicely so that I would have my public trust right as I finished my last semester at my university.  By the first day of work I had all the paperwork dealt with for the public trust, had a computer and desk.  HR also had a solid orientation process and a list of corporate related action items (like training) that you had to do or things you needed to check with in the first two weeks.  The HR team also gave out some fun corporate swag.

    The second experience with HR was with interviewing and I was one of the interviewers.  Our HR person made the arrangements, all the interviewees arrived like clockwork (none of them expressed any confusion about the directions, location, or time) and interviewing rooms were well arranged.  The quality of the interviewees our HR person rounded up was solid, 22 out of the 24 were competent in their technical skills.  Unfortunately none of them showed any skills, personality, or experience that would cause them to stick out from the pack, so none of them were made a job offer.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Anketam said:

    The time line also worked out nicely so that I would have my public trust right as I finished my last semester at my university.  By the first day of work I had all the paperwork dealt with for the public trust, had a computer and desk.

    What is your "public trust?"



  • @boomzilla said:

    What is your "public trust?"

    It's kind of like a "sms board".



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Anketam said:
    The time line also worked out nicely so that I would have my public trust right as I finished my last semester at my university.  By the first day of work I had all the paperwork dealt with for the public trust, had a computer and desk.
    What is your "public trust?"
    Public trust is the level of clearance for non classified US government work.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Anketam said:

    @boomzilla said:

    @Anketam said:
    The time line also worked out nicely so that I would have my public trust right as I finished my last semester at my university.  By the first day of work I had all the paperwork dealt with for the public trust, had a computer and desk.
    What is your "public trust?"
    Public trust is the level of clearance for non classified US government work.

    Thanks. I don't think I've ever heard it put like that. I've always heard it referred to as Confidential. Confidential information is classified, BTW.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Anketam said:

    @boomzilla said:

    @Anketam said:
    The time line also worked out nicely so that I would have my public trust right as I finished my last semester at my university.  By the first day of work I had all the paperwork dealt with for the public trust, had a computer and desk.
    What is your "public trust?"
    Public trust is the level of clearance for non classified US government work.

    Thanks. I don't think I've ever heard it put like that. I've always heard it referred to as Confidential. Confidential information is classified, BTW.
    Yep I know confidential is for classified information, a public trust is for non classified information that the government still thinks needs some level of protection.  Mostly it is to protect PII (Personally Identifiable Information), sensitive PII, and medical information.  Like for example information about government employees is considered PII (and in some cases sensitive depending on their role) but non classified.


  • @Anketam said:

    Yep I know confidential is for classified information, a public trust is for non classified information that the government still thinks needs some level of protection.  Mostly it is to protect PII (Personally Identifiable Information), sensitive PII, and medical information.  Like for example information about government employees is considered PII (and in some cases sensitive depending on their role) but non classified.

    You miss the point.

    "Classified" means the information has been classified, that's it. It could be classified as public, confidential, secret, etc. So when people say "classified information" it really means nothing at all.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @CodeNinja said:

    that consists of 3 more programmers who help out but know jack-shit about SQL
    They've never worked with databases?!? Not 'they don't know about 3NF (of 4NF or...)' but 'they've never worked with databases?' Seriously??



  • @CodeNinja said:

    then we ran across the resume for our current DB person. In fact, she found it.
     

    Should have put it forwards and - with a completely straight face - advise that this was the only person with the necessary skills and they should call him up for an interview immediately.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So when people say "classified information" it really means nothing at all.

    But everyone knows what they mean, so while it is technically inaccurate it still works to communicate the idea.  This is you using the same style of argument as when people say a GUI is technically correct in what it says (in an error message or whatever) and thus is correct even when it would make no sense to the average user.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    "Classified" means the information has been classified, that's it. It could be classified as public, confidential, secret, etc. So when people say "classified information" it really means nothing at all.
     

    We have the same term misappropriation in the UK. "classified" is a lazy way of stating "classified as restricted in some way" rather than simply "categorised". "unclassified" is taken to mean "not important enough to give it a security classification and we're too lazy to call it classified public"

    I always got confused when someone stated "that's classified information" then refused to tell me the classification. Oddly, all the "classified" stuff I encountered was always stamped "restricted"[1] rather than "classified".

    [1] or various other terms. 



  • @PJH said:

    @CodeNinja said:
    that consists of 3 more programmers who help out but know jack-shit about SQL
    They've never worked with databases?!? Not 'they don't know about 3NF (of 4NF or...)' but 'they've never worked with databases?' Seriously??

    Well, I'd never worked on a database before they put me on the team. Two others had seen database code but never written it.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    "Classified" means the information has been classified, that's it. It could be classified as public, confidential, secret, etc. So when people say "classified information" it really means nothing at all.

    I think it depends on the department/agency involved. The Department of Defense only legally, officially, uses Confidential, Secret and Top Secret (though in reality there are other gradations and caveats). Other departments and agencies have their own systems (e.g., CIA, Department of Energy). PII, HIPAA, For Official Use Only, Sensitive But Unclassified, and probably others are also used, but none of those are considered classified.

    Many agencies will require some form of background check, and generally accept security clearances from other agencies for the simple sort of thing as described by Anketam. Basically, you give up a bunch of information on yourself, they run criminal background and credit checks, and you're good to go once you sign a nondisclosure agreement.



  • @PJH said:

    Not 'they don't know about 3NF (of 4NF or...)' but 'they've never worked with databases?' Seriously??
    By the way am I the only one that doesn't remember the theory? I mean I can design a database the way it should be designed, but I can't for the life of me explain 3NF or 4NF without looking it up.



  • @DOA said:

    By the way am I the only one that doesn't remember the theory? I mean I can design a database the way it should be designed, but I can't for the life of me explain 3NF or 4NF without looking it up.
     

    If, in an interview, you could describe to me reasons behind normalisation and give examples of where you have normalised a database design, that would be sufficient for me.

    Most people that know 3NF do it instinctively. I'd probably be suspicious of anyone that could reel off definitions but not actually know what they entail.



  • @Cassidy said:

    Most people that know 3NF do it instinctively. I'd probably be suspicious of anyone that could reel off definitions but not actually know what they entail.
    Up through 3NF I know the standard phrasings of the definitions.  Beyond that point you're just playing CS anyway.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    "Classified" means the information has been classified, that's it. It could be classified as public, confidential, secret, etc. So when people say "classified information" it really means nothing at all.

    I think it depends on the department/agency involved. The Department of Defense only legally, officially, uses Confidential, Secret and Top Secret (though in reality there are other gradations and caveats). Other departments and agencies have their own systems (e.g., CIA, Department of Energy). PII, HIPAA, For Official Use Only, Sensitive But Unclassified, and probably others are also used, but none of those are considered classified.

    Many agencies will require some form of background check, and generally accept security clearances from other agencies for the simple sort of thing as described by Anketam. Basically, you give up a bunch of information on yourself, they run criminal background and credit checks, and you're good to go once you sign a nondisclosure agreement.

    Maybe I agree with your interpretation of classified, but that's classified.

    Also Top Secret is a bitch because it takes forever to get, and then it's only valid for 5 years so you get almost perpetually someone investigating you. <shitfy eyes>Or so I heard.</shitfy eyes>



  • @Cassidy said:

    @CodeNinja said:

    then we ran across the resume for our current DB person. In fact, she found it.
     

    Should have put it forwards and - with a completely straight face - advise that this was the only person with the necessary skills and they should call Sutherlands up for an interview immediately.

    FTFY



  • @Kittemon said:

    @Cassidy said:

    @CodeNinja said:

      she.
     

    he

    FTFY

     

    Arse. For some reason I read that as "she (the HR person)" not "she (the DBA that's already been hired)".

     



  • @Cassidy said:

    @CodeNinja said:

    then we ran across the resume for our current DB person. In fact, she found it.
     

    Should have put it forwards and - with a completely straight face - advise that this was the only person with the necessary skills and they should call [b]her[/b] up for an interview immediately.





    If our department head hadn't been sitting with us in the meeting room while we went over the resumes, we probably would have.



  • @C-Octothorpe said:

    @Xyro said:

    he suspected the whole setup was a stress test to flush out the weaker candidates
    That was my thought when getting a background screening from HireWrong last year...  I actually ended up turning down the position before the screening was done, simply because the process was taking so long, consuming so much of my personal time, and was just so very, very bad overall.  After that experience I swore to myself that I would never again go for a role which would have me going through those fuckwits.

    I actually went through a similar experience with Microsoft, or at least with a Microsoft HR contractor. I'm sure working for them would be great, but I don't have months and months of dead time to fly back and forth to Redmond, chat on the phone, etc. on the off chance that I'm the lucky guy who happens to be able to guess the interviewer's favorite data structure. It felt weird to turn down Microsoft, but I need money now, not next year. It's sad that tech recruiting has become so ridiculously grueling. I guess it must result in a lot of people with Aspberger's Syndrome / rich parents getting the good jobs (and maybe that explains how messed up most commercial software is).



  • @CodeNinja said:

    We recently opened up a position here for a second DB/C# person.


    They pulled those of us on the DB team (ok, quick backstory, we have one dedicated DB/C# person and a 'team' that consists of 3 more programmers who help out but know jack-shit about SQL) into a conference room and handed us a stack of resumes to browse through and pick the best ones out of. Management heavily hinted that we should OK all of them.


    So we started looking through them, couple of them were OK, but some were really out there... then we ran across the resume for our current DB person. In fact, she found it.


    Yep. Instead of getting new resumes, they just dug all the ones they'd gotten a year and a half ago out of storage and had us going through them again. Needless to say, even though we OKed some of them, not a single one interviewed.


    AFAIK the position is still open, and with what they want to pay, will likely remain so for some time until we get a desperate college graduate.


    From my experience, HR is just a giant cluster of fail pretty much everywhere.





    Ok, wow, just got notified that we have been getting new resumes. They make it through the first layer, and we fire off a simple test to them. Most of the work is done, we send them a simple SQL DB that actually works, an XML data dump, and tell them we need a C# program to import the XML into the DB, then a way to generate a report off it that opens in the C# form.

    We've sent the test to 10 people, 2 have come back, neither completed. Several people said that it was either too hard, or that they didn't have the time to do it but they'd still love to fly down (on the company dime) to talk with us about their salary requirements. My personal favorite was the guy who said he had 15 years of experience, so the test was beneath him.

    I'm sorry, this test is pretty indicative of what we'd need them to do. If they aren't willing to do it, I can't imagine why we'd want to discuss salary requirements. Not to mention I know this isn't a hard test, we passed it out to 3 different people in the company and they were all able to do it in a few hours, and none of them had much SQL experience to begin with. All the answers can be found in an 'SQL for dummies' book!



  • @CodeNinja said:

    Several people said that it was either too hard, or that they didn't have the time to do it but they'd still love to fly down (on the company dime) to talk with us about their salary requirements.
     

    "sure, we'd love to meet you to discuss salary requirements... but we don't really have the time to do that right now because we're too busy interviewing people that had no difficulty with the test and have demonstrated the appropriate time management skills.

    If none of those accept the position on the offered salary then we'll proceed with interviewing the barrel-scrapings, and will be in a better position to calculate the reduced starting salary for candidates that don't come up to scratch. Expect a call from us then!"


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