On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 22:48:06 +0200, clipka wrote:

> Step #2: In the interview, be open, don't wear a mask; let them feel
> that you're not hiding anything and that your word can be trusted. Be
> active, don't just sit there answering their questions - proactively
> shove your relevant skills into their face (figuratively speaking :-)).
> Don't hesitate to talk about stuff you did for fun, and how it relates
> to the job you're applying for. Let them feel that you'd be eager to get
> /this/ particular job.

This ^^^^^

The interview process is a BS-detector process.  If you lie on your CV 
about being able to code in a particular language, this will become 
apparent during a well-conducted interview.

In the end, if one lies on their CV about a skill and the company ends up 
not detecting the BS and hires the candidate, the candidate will end up 
not staying in the job for very long.  This is one of the reasons why 
hiring managers get nervous about 'job hoppers'.  It can mean that 
they're unqualified for the positions they've taken.  It can mean that 
they're flaky and opportunistic.  Neither of these traits is a good trait 
for a new employee to have.

Jim

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On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 18:03:49 +0200, clipka wrote:

> For instance, they might ask you to write a small function to compute
> factorials. Someone might program this as a recursion because he
> happened to come across it as an example in the "programming for
> dummies" section on recursion.

Yep.

I had an interview years ago with a software engineering team, and during 
the interview, I was given a problem to solve that was along the lines of 
having a container to fill with liquid, with an "input" (where the liquid 
came in) and an "output" (where the liquid went out).  The goal of the 
program was, given two functions that had two inputs each (I forget what 
now, it's been over a decade ago), keep the water between a high and low 
watermark in the container.

They asked me to solve it without a particular language - just in 
pseudocode or methodology.

I was unprepared to do that, and as a result, the day's worth of 
interviews ended up not resulting in my getting the job.

And now, over a decade later, I'm working with some of the same engineers 
I would have if I'd taken that job, but they respect me and my ability to 
learn technology quickly - and I'm writing documentation on a contract 
basis for them.

But if I'd gotten the engineering job itself - I would be somewhere else 
and wouldn't have their respect.  For this contract, though, they were 
actively excited that I was coming back to work with them again (I'd 
worked with them before at the start of the year for about 6 weeks; this 
time it's for 6 months).

Jim

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On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 22:58:34 +0200, clipka wrote:

> Congratulations, you just discovered another soft skill of yours:
> Honesty and trustworthiness.

+1 - and there are employers who consider that highly valuable.

Jim

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On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 21:43:11 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> And than there's Network Rail. A friend of mine works there and
>>> insists it's the best job in the world... But they have ZERO computer
>>> jobs listed.
>>
>> Ask your friend to dig around what they've got cooking wrt IT.
> 
> She says "keep looking". Uh, yeah. That's not much help.

Here's something I've learned in my search for permanent employment:  
Don't ask people to do the work for you.  Especially HR people.  Don't 
ever say "if you see something that looks like a fit, please let me know" 
- they won't.  You've got to put the effort in.

Jim

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On 4-8-2012 22:35, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 04/08/2012 09:09 PM, waggy wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> You know someone, and they recommend a position for you. If you were
>>> willing
>>> to move to where someone on p.o-t lives, there would probably be people
>>> offering you jobs based on what they know of you here.
>>>
>> This.  Looking back on it, most of the positions I've held, including
>> those
>> while I was active duty in the military, I got through word-of-mouth
>> referral,
>> despite the fact that I suck at networking.
>
> ...right... so given that I don't know anybody, I should just give up
> now? Is that what you're saying?

Hmm, why are you talking to people you don't know?

Even if we can't offer you a job (or at least not close enough to your 
mothers house, so you will turn it down anyway), we might still know 
somebody in our network. And we an testify that you
- are a good technical writer
- are very motivated to learn new things
- have in some areas of CS a good knowledge, in particular in the more 
mathematical fields
- do not have a problem posting about internal issues in your company


-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

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Am 04.08.2012 23:23, schrieb Jim Henderson:

> Recruiters generally won't be angry about having their time wasted by
> unqualified candidates.  They get paid to properly identify the qualified
> and unqualified candidates.  So being a bad fit isn't your problem to
> solve.  It's their job to make that determination.

While Jim mentions it: A recruiter might also come to the conclusion 
that while you won't fit the job you applied for, you might make a good 
fit for some other opportunity he has open. Not sure if that happens 
often, but it's a non-zero probability.

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Am 04.08.2012 23:33, schrieb Jim Henderson:
> On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 22:58:34 +0200, clipka wrote:
>
>> Congratulations, you just discovered another soft skill of yours:
>> Honesty and trustworthiness.
>
> +1 - and there are employers who consider that highly valuable.

... unless they have a job at sales to offer :-)

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On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 23:26:15 +0200, clipka wrote:

> Nonsense. The #1 reason for failing at an interview is not wanting to be
> hired in the first place. The #2 reason (and often related) is having
> thrown out applications indiscriminately like spam: Most won't reach a
> suitable target. Be more selective, and you can cut down on the number
> by orders of magnitude without any disadvantage.

Yes and no on #2 - volume can help, but you're right that just spamming 
for every position isn't good.

Finding the right balance between selectivity and volume is tricky.  I've 
been highly selective in who I'll apply to - but I've also been generally 
in a position where I could afford to be picky.

I was laid off about 14 months ago.  In that time, I've interviewed with 
maybe 5 or 6 companies, gone to one in-person interview, and in the end 
I'm still doing contract work.

I could be pushing for volume and applying for every possible fit, but my 
wife and I have a plan to move out of Utah, so I'm looking for jobs that 
are in Portland, OR (where we want to move to - though we wouldn't say no 
to the right opportunity in the UK, either, but that's now our second 
choice rather than our first) or that will let me work remotely.  I have 
a skill set that can appear to be overbroad - which makes selling my 
abilities to a prospective employer very difficult.  

I'm very good at learning new technologies, and also at applying 
technology to solve business problems.  For example, the company I'm 
currently on contract to, I'd done some work for at the start of the year 
on a 6-week contract.  I was brought in to fill in for a doc writer who 
was going on medical leave.  At week 5, the lead engineer said that they 
felt that any contractor they brought in wouldn't be productive until 
week 5, but I was productive on about day 3, because I learned the highly 
complex technology in a couple of days.

And that wasn't a fluke, either - the prior contract was with a company 
doing kernel-level Linux stuff for managing CPU, memory, network, I/O 
channel, etc resources.  Very highly technical stuff; the engineer 
working on the network bandwidth stuff explained the technology to me in 
about 15 minutes, and I understood it.  He said that he'd spent hours 
explaining it to others, and they still didn't understand it.  But I 
picked it up so quickly that I was able to (a) explain it back to him in 
my own words, and (b) to ask intelligent questions about why they chose 
specific implementation details rather than others that I specified - ie 
"why did you do 'x' instead of 'y'?" type questions, and 'y' was 
something that actually would have made sense.

In about 25 years of work experience, I've been a programmer, writer, 
program manager, project manager, salesperson, and IT professional.  I've 
managed training programs and testing (exams) programs, have studied and 
applied what I've learned about adult education and learning.  I've 
worked with about 30 different programming languages, including assembly 
and machine code - debugged kernel-level code, and learned highly complex 
technologies.

And the result is that if I put all my skills on my CV, very few people 
believe that I could have possibly done all of that and achieved any 
level of expertise in it.

But I tend to take what I learn and learn as much as I possibly can about 
it.  The end result is that I can talk to Linux kernel developers about 
cgroups and managing block device I/O bandwidth, and I can also talk to 
people who have spent a lifetime in adult education and technical 
training about how education is truly changing for the first time since 
the 12th century because of technologies that connect people together 
outside the classroom.

Jim

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On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 21:35:04 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> ...right... so given that I don't know anybody, I should just give up
> now?
> Is that what you're saying?

You know people here. You know coworkers that you work with - coworkers 
who are all in the same boat as you are.

That actually gives you a leg up in finding jobs in other companies 
together.  When I was laid off from Novell (and my former coworkers at 
Albertsons are learning this now as well as they've all just been made 
redundant), those of us who were laid off looked out for each other.

Take some time and talk with some of your soon-to-be former coworkers.  
Ask them what they are looking for, tell them what you're looking for.  
If you see something that looks like it might be a good fit for them, 
tell them - they'll do the same for you.

They are in a position to empathize with your situation because you share 
it.  That's something that you all can benefit from.

Jim

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>>> Congratulations, you just discovered another soft skill of yours:
>>> Honesty and trustworthiness.

Heh, yeah - like nobody else claims to have those. :-P

>> +1 - and there are employers who consider that highly valuable.

There are employers who DON'T highly v-

> ... unless they have a job at sales to offer :-)

...oh.

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