On 25/08/2012 10:25 AM, Stephen wrote:
> When I was working at Motorola my boss told me that he wasn't going to
> hire someone because he had a copy of the daily mail in his pocket. Work
> that one out. o_O

Personally, the story I like is this one:

   The hiring manager goes over to the pile of CVs, grabs half of it, 
and chucks it in the bin. "Well, the LAST thing this company needs is 
unlucky people!"

Debate among yourselves which half was the "lucky" half. :-P

Post a reply to this message

>
> Likewise, when an IT manager wants to hire a C# programmer, the first
> thing they do is throw away all the CVs that don't say C# on them
> somewhere.
>

No.  Having had to do some serious recruiting before, I can tell you 
that this is not the case.  The IT manager will know that someone who 
has a lot of C, C++ or Java experience will be able to pick up on C# 
rather quickly.  The HR person who receives all the CVs and doesn't know 
the difference between C#, CICS/IMS, and TCP/IP apart from the fact that 
"they're both buzzwords the IT folks use" is the one who will only send 
the ones that have "C#" in them to the IT manager.

My girlfriend in the late 90s was that HR person.  She had to review 
hundreds of CVs every week for the various Y2K projects her employer was 
driving, and she would come home at night with dozens CVs that she would 
put in different piles after going through them for 3-4 seconds each. 
"Blah blah blah DB/2 blah blah Oracle ... ok this one goes in the DBA 
pile", "Blah blah pc support blah blah linux blah blah Solaris blah ... 
This one's for the Unix pile", etc...

I once joked to her that I would pirnt my CV under an assumed named and 
would love to see in which pile i ended up.


-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 09:35:00 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> Obviously, I would hire the first guy, because he has the skills that
> matter. But the IT manager? He's a ****ing moron, so he would hire the
> second guy. Just because the second guy has some superficial attribute
> which is nearly completely unimportant.

It's not really unimportant when hiring for a programming position, 
though - if there's existing code that needs to be maintained, you would 
want someone who knows the language it was written in.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

To continue the story a bit, even the "Thanks, but no thanks" -letter 
isn't always the end of the story.

I received such letter ~10 years ago myself. Couple of weeks after that 
I received a phone call - a lady called me asking me "Even though we 
already sent you this letter, would you still be intrested to come to 
interview?". That lady appeared to be my future boss, since that 
interview got me the job as IT-assistant, starting 16.10.2002. ~3 years 
after that my title was changed to IT-specialist and at 2007 I got 
asked, if I'd like a transfer to the headquarters of the firm.

In october we'll have a party, since then I've worked 10 years for the firm.

Don't count on it, but stay aware that anything can happen. Be 
open-minded for the situations that come up, it helps a lot.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

>> Obviously, I would hire the first guy, because he has the skills that
>> matter. But the IT manager? He's a ****ing moron, so he would hire the
>> second guy. Just because the second guy has some superficial attribute
>> which is nearly completely unimportant.
>
> It's not really unimportant when hiring for a programming position,
> though - if there's existing code that needs to be maintained, you would
> want someone who knows the language it was written in.

If you need something done in a real hurry, then having somebody who can 
hit the ground running can be very important. But most of the time, what 
you want is somebody who can be trained to do a job well. An aptitude 
for learning and a willingness to do so ought to be a higher priority 
than merely having some of the relevant knowledge already.

Post a reply to this message

On 8/24/2012 9:29, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> At this point, I'm stunned. I seriously can't imagine what more I could have
> done...

Remember, it's entirely possible *their* situation changed. They might not 
need your skills or have the money at this point.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

On 8/24/2012 14:41, Jim Henderson wrote:
> So in my case (and as yours) - it's their loss.

An astute observation.

Or maybe the boss' nephew just lost his job and asked to cut to the front of 
the line.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:11:17 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 8/24/2012 14:41, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> So in my case (and as yours) - it's their loss.
> 
> An astute observation.
> 
> Or maybe the boss' nephew just lost his job and asked to cut to the
> front of the line.

I know that didn't happen in my case - they called a former coworker 
(who'd already been eliminated in an earlier round), talked to him for an 
extra 30 minutes, told him again that he was not up for consideration, 
and then closed the position without filling it.

But that certainly could be the case in Andy's situation.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:09:55 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 8/24/2012 9:29, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> At this point, I'm stunned. I seriously can't imagine what more I could
>> have done...
> 
> Remember, it's entirely possible *their* situation changed. They might
> not need your skills or have the money at this point.

That's also certainly true.

For that matter, that *could* well have been the case for me.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 22:35:31 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> Obviously, I would hire the first guy, because he has the skills that
>>> matter. But the IT manager? He's a ****ing moron, so he would hire the
>>> second guy. Just because the second guy has some superficial attribute
>>> which is nearly completely unimportant.
>>
>> It's not really unimportant when hiring for a programming position,
>> though - if there's existing code that needs to be maintained, you
>> would want someone who knows the language it was written in.
> 
> If you need something done in a real hurry, then having somebody who can
> hit the ground running can be very important. 

That's actually the case not just when you need something done in a real 
hurry.

Training employees is expensive.  If you hire someone who has exactly 
what you're looking for, it saves you money.

That's one of the things about my current contract that's useful - the 
engineering manager knows I'm good with the products, and he wanted to 
get me on board a month after my first contract with them (this is my 
second with the same team).  He sees the value in hiring someone who 
knows the software and can ramp up quickly (I know this because he 
specifically told me this).

Now I'm working with two products (and actually two different engineering 
teams), but one of the products is used in the testing environment for 
the other, and I'm having to learn both of them in a fair amount of depth.

They lost a number of their testing team for one of the products, so I'm 
guessing that they want me to learn the product they use in their test 
lab so I can work with the remaining testing team.  I know they want to 
bring me in full-time, and that helps for when they finally do get a 
position opened (right now, the company is only hiring new people if the 
CEO approves it, and they're being VERY tight on engineering jobs and 
ramping up sales instead).

> But most of the time, what
> you want is somebody who can be trained to do a job well. An aptitude
> for learning and a willingness to do so ought to be a higher priority
> than merely having some of the relevant knowledge already.

Sometimes, but not as often as it might seem.

Jim

Post a reply to this message