nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I was able to reach the interview stage quite a few times.  I've never got past
> it, though.  That's why I got a job at the government:  if you pass the
> technical exam, you're in.  No silly dilly-dallying about your life or your
> clumsyness.

  Job interviews are a curious phenomenon. As far as I know, a significant
portion of job interviews being performed out there could be considered,
more or less, total failures at achieving what they are supposed to achieve.

  Often interviewers are just outright incompetent at it. And this even if
the interviewer *is* an expert in the field (which is not a given). That's
because many such people are very poor at judging others' competence. Thus
it happens often that people who could be perfect for the job are dismissed
because of irrelevant things (eg. if the person being interviewed is nervous
about the interview) or because the interviewer is incapable of seeing that
the person might not be the best in the field *at that moment*, but he could
be a person who is a good learner and could get acquinted with the job quite
fast (for example, the interviewee might have never programmed for a certain
platform, but he could learn to do so rather efficiently in just a few weeks
and then be better than most people already in the company).

  And that's assuming the interview questions themselves are competent.
Often the questions are very poor, test the wrong things or don't test
anything useful or relevant at all.

  This causes for many competent people, people who could actually boost
the productivity of the company quite significantly, to be dismissed, and
also for incompetent people to get hired, for the sole reason that they
happened to convince the interviewer.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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