The stories of..... SWEG!!!

Unspeakably Stupid

Story #22:

Job Interviews From Hell, Part 1

Job interviews are rarely fun for the interviewee, but some are worse than others.

The best kind of interview is one where you have nothing to lose. Maybe you already have a job, maybe you're collecting unemployment, maybe you just found out that this place is too long a commute for you. If you don't want the job all that bad, it's easier to relax during the interview. Under these circumstances, you can take it easy and even turn the tables on them a little. If the interviewer is the person that would be your supervisor, you can try to decide whether the person is a prick or not, saving yourself the hassle of taking a job working for an asshole, whereupon you'd be relegated to more job hunting and going to interviews again.

With some interviews, you can tell you're wasting your time as soon as you walk in the door. Here's one tip: You're already screwed when the person who was supposed to interview you "isn't available" so they have some poorly prepared underling interview you instead. I've had this happen several times, and next time there will be no interview. I've been through enough of this to know that I'm already out of the running when they pull that shit.

I've held six different Internet Technology-related jobs over the past year. I quit two, got laid off of two, and was fired once. I've been to something like 50 interviews during that time. I've had interviews that I thought went great, but then I wound up not getting hired. I've had interviews that I thought went poorly, and was promptly offered the job. But a few stand out.

There was one with an Internet startup company called BuySellBid.com. I was walking through a presentation of my work to three managers there in a conference room. About halfway through this, the main interviewer, a frowning jerk named Porter (with a first name like that, no wonder he grew up to be a shithead), asked, "Didn't you send us a resume about a week ago?" I hadn't. But his question inferred that someone with the same skill set had sent him a resume last week, and obviously, he must have thrown the resume in the trash, because the job was still open. So there was no reason for me to even be there. Complete asshole.

Some companies are so large, and their hiring process so ponderous, that you wonder how they'll ever hire anyone. I applied for a position with ODS Blue Shield, a local HMO, after seeing an ad in the paper. It took them a whole month to call me. During the initial interview, which took an hour and a half, I found out that I was the first to be interviewed, and that it would be two weeks before I would even know if I had made the first cut or not! By the time I got their rejection notice, I was working another job. A couple of weeks later, they put the exact same ad in the paper again, apparently having turned away every applicant from the first ad. No wonder healthcare costs are spiraling out of control.

Now, I am currently working as a "contract" (read: temporary) employee. Three of the six jobs I've held in the last year were as a contract worker. There are good points and bad points about temping. Bad points: You can be dumped at any time with little or no notice, you don't get any benefits, and sometimes you are treated differently than the "permanent" employees. Good points: Your boss doesn't have an "ownership" complex (some bosses feel that they "own" you and therefore have the right to visit as much misery on you as they can), your fellow temps don't have "seniority" issues so competition and backstabbing are at a minimum, and the pay tends to be better.

Really, the worst thing about job hunting is the fucking recruiters. When you put your resume on a board like Monster or Dice, you are giving the recruiters something to do: waste your time. Recruiters only look at the skills you have listed, and not very carefully at that. They never seem to read the other details. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and have always put "NO RELOCATION" near the top of my online resume. Then I proceed to get flooded with e-mails and voicemail from recruiters offering me jobs in New Jersey, Tennessee, and Seattle, which is nearly 200 miles away.