A rant about job interviews...
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I have the unhappy duty of performing many of the phone screenings at my company. I believe in the interview process we have in place, but I don’t relish the prospect of putting a candidate through hell. Whether the process is just or not, there is no joy in seeing a candidate crumble or get upset. After all, the hope is we are going to find a successful candidate and I will be working with this individual possibly for years. I am rooting for the canidate because a hire means less technical screenings I have to give. I would like to run through my screening process to this audience as, like you, I’ve been subjected to horrible interviews. I’d be interested in knowing if the following sounds fair while gathering the necessary information to judge a candidate. Personally, I too feel that I never shine in interviews but typically prove myself to be a MVP in my team or department within 6 months of starting a new job. Nobody likes being asked them, but I believe in the technical questions I ask. I’ve helped shape the technical screening process which is customized for each candidate. It is 30 minute screening which breaks down as follows: • Establish adequate place to talk; put candidate at ease (2 min) • Quick run through CV establishing levels of experience. Ask a few questions about interesting technical accomplishments. Don’t let the candidate talk about a project or company, but press candidate in to divulging details of personal contributions. If candidate persists in talking big picture, skip this step. (6 min) • Ask a half dozen probing questions from a list of 50 which assess the candidate’s soft skills. This set of questions is customized per role and experience. General questions gauge interest in various aspects of technology, pitch general scenario what if’s, and allow candidate to deep-dive on specific technical accomplishments where I encourage details. This is where seniors shine and where juniors don’t but the importance of this section is weighted based on this candidates skills and salary expectations. (12 min) • A series of quick-fire .NET / DB questions ranked by difficulty and sorted by category. Junior candidates do best at these as they sometimes cram them. But this is where they need to shine as they probably won’t have much to offer in the probing questions above. If any particular skills, say threading or Linq, are mentioned above in the CV I make sure to ask questions on that area here. I endeavour to put the candidate at ease by saying no one gets everything righ
newkie wrote:
Personally, I too feel that I never shine in interviews but typically prove myself to be a MVP in my team or department within 6 months of starting a new job.
I've never had any complaints about my work. Gotten a few complaints that I am too detail oriented a few times over the years :).
newkie wrote:
Ask a half dozen probing questions from a list of 50 which
This is where interviews fall apart. You are asking a "stock question" and expecting a "stock answer".
newkie wrote:
A series of quick-fire .NET / DB questions
I wouldn't be able to answer some of those cuz I'm not a web guy.
newkie wrote:
However what niggles me is you mentioned if the difference in performance between two approaches was 59min vs. 60min who cares? I do. Unless you were consistently making clear your senior qualities of managing cost and time I would be concerned with that attitude.
Sorry, I gotta disagree here. This is a value-add / bang for the buck situation. If it takes me 4hrs of coding to shave off 1 minute (1.6%), I'd question the value of the change. Add in QA time, testing, etc. If it takes 10 minutes to make the change, sure, I'd do it... I think you'll find that you'd get in trouble with most managers for not having your priorities straight if you spent 4hrs shaving 1minute off a 60min process :).
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Haha :), yeah, I guess I am blaming it on "stupid" questions. I guess if people start to ask me stuff I don't know, I get all nervous and it comes out in my voice. I certainly don't have a 100% hit rate in my interviews like you do though. Its just not something everybody excels at. I'm great / expert at coding, but have crumbled a lot during interviews.
You probably did not know that once you get selected for an in-person interview, they already think you are qualified. I learned about the "shut up and let the interviewer talk" bit when I took my very first flight test back in the stone age. To become a pilot, even a private pilot requires three tests; The written test, the aural Test, and the practical test. My first flight instructor when preparing me for the aural and flight test said; "If the examiner is talking during the aural part, let him keep talking. That way, you won't give him any wrong answers." This worked for my Private license and also for my instrument rating and also for my Commercial test. All three examiners thought I was brilliant because I never gave them any wrong answers. I also never gave them ANY answers! I just let them talk and talk and convince themselves that I was qualified. Most of us, including me, know very little about a project before we start. We have a basic understanding of the use of certain tools, some understanding of broad technical issues, but we do not know anything about "name your project." When I helped design Analogic's first CAT Scanner, I had no clue how they worked. In fact, my lack of knowledge of the subject helped me create some new innovation leading to one of my patents. Do not be afraid of new technology. You will learn it as needed while getting paid in the process! One of my best mentors was Bernard Gordon (Bernie to his engineers). He was Analogic's founder. He emphasized what he called intellectual honesty. It was okay to tell him, "I don't know" as long as it was followed by. "I'll find out." engineering, including software engineering is a lifetime pursuit. You even get better with age in spite of the fact you might forget more than you learn. You start to understand that nobody knows how to write that code better than you, even though you do not (yet) have a clue how to create that algorithm. Lessee... What the 'ell is convolution?
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Yeah, I'll admit, I haven't invented anything entirely new and different and I don't have any patents. Like you said, all the data structures are pretty much written for you. That guy at Google who interviewed me and turned me down because I wasn't super familiar with the skip list? Great! I'd be willing to bet he googled C# skip list implementation or found one in another language and ported it. He certainly didn't invent the data structure.
In my humble opinion, you oughtta know about skip lists. You should have learned about them in Data Structures class. You need to know their average and worst-case performance, and generally how they're built. But you don't need to know how to code them; that's what the internet and standard libraries are for. I've ranted at length about coding tests here. If you've been working for 10 years, you may be a little rusty. But google warned you (didn't they? They sent me an email about it) to brush up on your data structures before the interview. Here is some advice on how to focus your attention when reviewing your data structures. It happens so often at google that good people fail an interview that they will interview you over and over. Wait three months and apply again.
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For most professionals, if you got selected for a person-to-person interview, it means that they thought you were qualified for the job they had in mind. Now they want to find out if you can "fit" into their environment. The candidate needs to understand that the interview process is hard for both the interviewer and the candidate. If you are asked a question and you do not know the answer, simply explain that you do not know the answer! It is really that simple! If you do know the answer, try to pretend that you are an expert in that particular subject and answer it directly with authority in your voice. When the interviewer is talking, let him/her talk, and talk, and talk. They will convince themselves that you are the ideal candidate. Never interrupt unless you are peeing your pants. It was Benjamin Franklin who once stated; It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, then to open ones mouth and remove all doubt!" For the most part, when an interview turns sour it is because the candidate didn't understand the interview process. The candidate blames the loss on "stupid" questions or other incidentals. I am 68 years of age and have been working as an engineer since I was twenty. I have been on both sides of the fence and I have never been on an interview in which I was not ultimately offered a job! Learn about the process and go easy on yourself and the interviewer. You should show up with a knowledge of the company. You should show them how you can help.
I disagree. People hiring software engineers are obsessively focused on detecting posers. There is no reason for five hours of coding tests, it shows an embarrassing lack of coordination on the part of the interview process. One test is usually enough to find out if you can code. These days, by the time you arrive at the in-house, you've probably already been subjected to one or more coding tests. Yeah, if you make the in-house, it means they didn't find a reason to reject you. But most interviews are still more focused on coding skills than on human skills. They are more focused on weeding out than on hiring. This seems very broken to me. It seems to me that the software world is becoming stratified into managers who want to keep all power and creativity, and coding monkeys, expected to keep their heads down doing just exactly what they're told. I don't want to believe this is down to the declining average I.Q. of managers. I want to think that something about the world has changed so that this is a successful management technique. But I can't think of any good reason that explains it.
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Am I the only one who is annoyed by techie interviews? If you are in sales / marketing, your job interview is basically one where they see if your personality will mesh with the manager / team / company. If you don't make quota they get rid of you. If you are a manager / project manager / program manager / scrum master / human resources, etc. those too are generally personality fit questions. If you are in IT (network admin, desktop support, tech support, etc), they might ask you a few technical questions, or put you on a "test call". So why is it that software engineer interviews are "brutal"? I've been on some where you have a gang of 5+ people just hurling questions at you non stop til you are forced into the fetal position sucking your thumb and crying. I've been a software engineer for 17 yrs and have worked at several jobs for 4 or 5 yrs, so obviously I know what I'm doing, but I just had a phone screen where I was ridiculously hammered with big O questions and low level data structure questions. Ridiculous. When was the last time I wrote my own data structure and didn't use one provided by .NET? Probably 6 to 10yrs ago!! When was the last time I cared about big O notation? Probably 20 yrs ago in school! Big O notation doesn't have much use in the real world. I can easily write O(n ^ 3) that runs in 1ms vs. O(1) that takes an hour. Me personally, I generally write code using my first approach and then test it with real data... if it runs too slow, I'll optimize it. The process of optimizing is almost NEVER calculating the big O and unwinding complexity... its usually moving expensive calls out of the loop or fixing a stored proc or something of that nature. How about asking questions that are actually relevant to the job??? I had one guy turn me down because I couldn't go on the white board and write a regex to validate an email address off the top of my head (and I don't mean just something simple like a@a.com, he wanted almost full RFC spec validation). Now I get it... maybe you want to make sure the guy has good designs, etc. Unless he's an architect or team lead, I've almost never seen a mid level or even a sr guy "design" anything important. Its always by the principal guys and the architects and the lower level guys are just coders. Ok, so you don't want crappy code written? Unless you don't outsource, that ain't gonna happen. I know a guy who is much better then me at coming up with off the top of his head algorithms, but you would never want to use his code in production becaus
I just want to say that it is just as hard if not harder for Finance or Accounting job interviews. I would assume other specific jobs will have brutal interviews as well, this is just one I am familiar with. I know for big corps finance or accounting job interviews you have to go through several mock sessions. Where they give you a problem then you have around 30 mins to get an answer. Most of these interviews don't even pull in main stream solutions, it requires you to use some obscure math formula to calculate some obscure number then use that as the base of your argument. I know for some of these similar type jobs they even have group interviews, meaning you are with a group of interviewees. You are all given a problem to solve as a team, and the sole thing they look for is if you try or actually take charge of your team. Even if you know how to solve the problem, if you didn't show leadership you don't make it to the next round. Of course all of these are after one and sometimes two phone interviews. Note when I mean "if not harder" sometimes there is a level of how well you play politics that gets measured in the interview. I think every job has its own special criteria. In my opinion, it is no different than passing an exam in college, or passing a standardized test. I wish it weren't this way but this is the way the world works. Become a manager and change it when you interview. EDIT: I also came across this article before and I just so happened to see it again today: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html[^] This probably goes to show why they have these sort of interview questions or problems.
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newkie wrote:
Personally, I too feel that I never shine in interviews but typically prove myself to be a MVP in my team or department within 6 months of starting a new job.
I've never had any complaints about my work. Gotten a few complaints that I am too detail oriented a few times over the years :).
newkie wrote:
Ask a half dozen probing questions from a list of 50 which
This is where interviews fall apart. You are asking a "stock question" and expecting a "stock answer".
newkie wrote:
A series of quick-fire .NET / DB questions
I wouldn't be able to answer some of those cuz I'm not a web guy.
newkie wrote:
However what niggles me is you mentioned if the difference in performance between two approaches was 59min vs. 60min who cares? I do. Unless you were consistently making clear your senior qualities of managing cost and time I would be concerned with that attitude.
Sorry, I gotta disagree here. This is a value-add / bang for the buck situation. If it takes me 4hrs of coding to shave off 1 minute (1.6%), I'd question the value of the change. Add in QA time, testing, etc. If it takes 10 minutes to make the change, sure, I'd do it... I think you'll find that you'd get in trouble with most managers for not having your priorities straight if you spent 4hrs shaving 1minute off a 60min process :).
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
This is where interviews fall apart. You are asking a "stock question" and expecting a "stock answer".
No, the probing section is opened ended questions with no set answer. I pick a selection most suitable for the role / candidate. It's completely up to the candidate to impress or hang themselves.
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
Sorry, I gotta disagree here. This is a value-add / bang for the buck situation. ... I think you'll find that you'd get in trouble with most managers for not having your priorities straight if you spent 4hrs shaving 1minute off a 60min process :) .
Ha, but remember I am the technical screener. I think it's a tell as I'm wary of people who cut corners. So your response might impress my boss but won't impress me.
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SledgeHammer01 wrote:
This is where interviews fall apart. You are asking a "stock question" and expecting a "stock answer".
No, the probing section is opened ended questions with no set answer. I pick a selection most suitable for the role / candidate. It's completely up to the candidate to impress or hang themselves.
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
Sorry, I gotta disagree here. This is a value-add / bang for the buck situation. ... I think you'll find that you'd get in trouble with most managers for not having your priorities straight if you spent 4hrs shaving 1minute off a 60min process :) .
Ha, but remember I am the technical screener. I think it's a tell as I'm wary of people who cut corners. So your response might impress my boss but won't impress me.
OK, are you a technical screener in the sense of working for a recruiting agency, or are you a software engineer working on the same team? There is a time and place for optimization. If you think saving a 60m to 59m optimization for later (or not doing it at all) is "cutting corners", I dunno what else to say :). Honestly, I would probably *NEVER* bother with a 60m -> 59m optimization. Just not worth the effort vs. the end result (especially for managers that want a recording of your time spent). If it was 60m to 50m, then I'd probably try to squeeze that in at some point. If it was 60m to 30m, then yeah, I'd definitely do that. I once optimized an 8hr process down to 1 minute. THAT is bang for the buck. 60m to 59m is just not for most people :). So you would disqualify me based on ignoring that optimization? LOL... thats exactly what this thread is about :).
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I disagree. People hiring software engineers are obsessively focused on detecting posers. There is no reason for five hours of coding tests, it shows an embarrassing lack of coordination on the part of the interview process. One test is usually enough to find out if you can code. These days, by the time you arrive at the in-house, you've probably already been subjected to one or more coding tests. Yeah, if you make the in-house, it means they didn't find a reason to reject you. But most interviews are still more focused on coding skills than on human skills. They are more focused on weeding out than on hiring. This seems very broken to me. It seems to me that the software world is becoming stratified into managers who want to keep all power and creativity, and coding monkeys, expected to keep their heads down doing just exactly what they're told. I don't want to believe this is down to the declining average I.Q. of managers. I want to think that something about the world has changed so that this is a successful management technique. But I can't think of any good reason that explains it.
When I started at my current place, I was very gung ho... contributed ideas, etc... when it became obvious that the mgr didn't really want to hear it, I gave up.
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Am I the only one who is annoyed by techie interviews? If you are in sales / marketing, your job interview is basically one where they see if your personality will mesh with the manager / team / company. If you don't make quota they get rid of you. If you are a manager / project manager / program manager / scrum master / human resources, etc. those too are generally personality fit questions. If you are in IT (network admin, desktop support, tech support, etc), they might ask you a few technical questions, or put you on a "test call". So why is it that software engineer interviews are "brutal"? I've been on some where you have a gang of 5+ people just hurling questions at you non stop til you are forced into the fetal position sucking your thumb and crying. I've been a software engineer for 17 yrs and have worked at several jobs for 4 or 5 yrs, so obviously I know what I'm doing, but I just had a phone screen where I was ridiculously hammered with big O questions and low level data structure questions. Ridiculous. When was the last time I wrote my own data structure and didn't use one provided by .NET? Probably 6 to 10yrs ago!! When was the last time I cared about big O notation? Probably 20 yrs ago in school! Big O notation doesn't have much use in the real world. I can easily write O(n ^ 3) that runs in 1ms vs. O(1) that takes an hour. Me personally, I generally write code using my first approach and then test it with real data... if it runs too slow, I'll optimize it. The process of optimizing is almost NEVER calculating the big O and unwinding complexity... its usually moving expensive calls out of the loop or fixing a stored proc or something of that nature. How about asking questions that are actually relevant to the job??? I had one guy turn me down because I couldn't go on the white board and write a regex to validate an email address off the top of my head (and I don't mean just something simple like a@a.com, he wanted almost full RFC spec validation). Now I get it... maybe you want to make sure the guy has good designs, etc. Unless he's an architect or team lead, I've almost never seen a mid level or even a sr guy "design" anything important. Its always by the principal guys and the architects and the lower level guys are just coders. Ok, so you don't want crappy code written? Unless you don't outsource, that ain't gonna happen. I know a guy who is much better then me at coming up with off the top of his head algorithms, but you would never want to use his code in production becaus
Am I the only one here who's ever gotten the "How would you manufacture M&M candies?" question? Honest to God. It was an interview for a .NET position. I've been a full-time coder for longer than one of the interviewers has even been alive, and the kid asked me this. And he was apparently serious. I guess this was where I was supposed to show how innovative and spontaneous I can be. My answer: "I don't know. Isn't this a programming position?" Not going to play these wasteful little games...
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Am I the only one here who's ever gotten the "How would you manufacture M&M candies?" question? Honest to God. It was an interview for a .NET position. I've been a full-time coder for longer than one of the interviewers has even been alive, and the kid asked me this. And he was apparently serious. I guess this was where I was supposed to show how innovative and spontaneous I can be. My answer: "I don't know. Isn't this a programming position?" Not going to play these wasteful little games...
Yeah, thats stupid. I went to interview at Western Dental once and the guy actually gave me a 1hr IQ test!!! The job only paid $65k/yr too... haha. I dunno, usually, I find that the algorithm / data structures stuff at "real" companies is rarely in C# anyways. Usually C++ on linux or Java.
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I just want to say that it is just as hard if not harder for Finance or Accounting job interviews. I would assume other specific jobs will have brutal interviews as well, this is just one I am familiar with. I know for big corps finance or accounting job interviews you have to go through several mock sessions. Where they give you a problem then you have around 30 mins to get an answer. Most of these interviews don't even pull in main stream solutions, it requires you to use some obscure math formula to calculate some obscure number then use that as the base of your argument. I know for some of these similar type jobs they even have group interviews, meaning you are with a group of interviewees. You are all given a problem to solve as a team, and the sole thing they look for is if you try or actually take charge of your team. Even if you know how to solve the problem, if you didn't show leadership you don't make it to the next round. Of course all of these are after one and sometimes two phone interviews. Note when I mean "if not harder" sometimes there is a level of how well you play politics that gets measured in the interview. I think every job has its own special criteria. In my opinion, it is no different than passing an exam in college, or passing a standardized test. I wish it weren't this way but this is the way the world works. Become a manager and change it when you interview. EDIT: I also came across this article before and I just so happened to see it again today: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html[^] This probably goes to show why they have these sort of interview questions or problems.
Hmm... my sister works in internal auditing, I'll have to ask her how her interviews work. I do have a buddy who was set up on an interview... he was emailed an agenda meet with this guy, then this guy, then this one, etc. He got there and was thrown into a room with 4 other guys and told to deliver a working networked application as a team by the end of the day while 4 employees observed. Obviously it was a programming + team work test, but that is equally lame. You are prepared for a standard interview based on the agenda and then thrown for a loop when you get there.
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Most technical individuals are introverts, so highly charged social situations like an interview typically don't bode well. I would just take it as a challenge to stretch myself, if I felt nervous in such a situation. You have the experience, so you shouldn't be doubting your expertise. So, then its just a matter of overcoming the jitters and having fun with it. Granted, if you're out of work, the 'jitters' may not fully encompass the gravity of the situation. Good luck though.
Could it be that the ones supporting the stress are the really good ones? How do you cope with code reviews, if you can't cope with a mild critique of some pseudo code in an interview? How do you respond to comments to your code if your communication skills are bad?
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Am I the only one who is annoyed by techie interviews? If you are in sales / marketing, your job interview is basically one where they see if your personality will mesh with the manager / team / company. If you don't make quota they get rid of you. If you are a manager / project manager / program manager / scrum master / human resources, etc. those too are generally personality fit questions. If you are in IT (network admin, desktop support, tech support, etc), they might ask you a few technical questions, or put you on a "test call". So why is it that software engineer interviews are "brutal"? I've been on some where you have a gang of 5+ people just hurling questions at you non stop til you are forced into the fetal position sucking your thumb and crying. I've been a software engineer for 17 yrs and have worked at several jobs for 4 or 5 yrs, so obviously I know what I'm doing, but I just had a phone screen where I was ridiculously hammered with big O questions and low level data structure questions. Ridiculous. When was the last time I wrote my own data structure and didn't use one provided by .NET? Probably 6 to 10yrs ago!! When was the last time I cared about big O notation? Probably 20 yrs ago in school! Big O notation doesn't have much use in the real world. I can easily write O(n ^ 3) that runs in 1ms vs. O(1) that takes an hour. Me personally, I generally write code using my first approach and then test it with real data... if it runs too slow, I'll optimize it. The process of optimizing is almost NEVER calculating the big O and unwinding complexity... its usually moving expensive calls out of the loop or fixing a stored proc or something of that nature. How about asking questions that are actually relevant to the job??? I had one guy turn me down because I couldn't go on the white board and write a regex to validate an email address off the top of my head (and I don't mean just something simple like a@a.com, he wanted almost full RFC spec validation). Now I get it... maybe you want to make sure the guy has good designs, etc. Unless he's an architect or team lead, I've almost never seen a mid level or even a sr guy "design" anything important. Its always by the principal guys and the architects and the lower level guys are just coders. Ok, so you don't want crappy code written? Unless you don't outsource, that ain't gonna happen. I know a guy who is much better then me at coming up with off the top of his head algorithms, but you would never want to use his code in production becaus
Interviews like this make about as much sense as “closed-book” exams. Since when is one in “real life” not going to use reference materials (e.g. Regex “recipes”). No one rewards resourcefulness these days. Oh … and those 20+ skills with 3-5 years of experience they want you to have, you must have used them all within the last 6 months … It’s called “mental bullying”; to make up for all their weenie years.
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Am I the only one here who's ever gotten the "How would you manufacture M&M candies?" question? Honest to God. It was an interview for a .NET position. I've been a full-time coder for longer than one of the interviewers has even been alive, and the kid asked me this. And he was apparently serious. I guess this was where I was supposed to show how innovative and spontaneous I can be. My answer: "I don't know. Isn't this a programming position?" Not going to play these wasteful little games...
Ryan Speakman wrote:
Not going to play these wasteful little games
Whatever. If you want to work for them, you have to play their games. You can blow off one company for being too funky, but you can't do that at every interview, so eventually you gotta play.
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Could it be that the ones supporting the stress are the really good ones? How do you cope with code reviews, if you can't cope with a mild critique of some pseudo code in an interview? How do you respond to comments to your code if your communication skills are bad?
Did you mean to reply to someone else because I'm not following your train of thought?
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Could it be that the ones supporting the stress are the really good ones? How do you cope with code reviews, if you can't cope with a mild critique of some pseudo code in an interview? How do you respond to comments to your code if your communication skills are bad?
I've never felt pressure on a code review. Its just explaining yourself. If the reviewer is being an a$$hole about it, then thats his deal. During an interview is different. A code review isn't all high pressure.
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Ryan Speakman wrote:
Not going to play these wasteful little games
Whatever. If you want to work for them, you have to play their games. You can blow off one company for being too funky, but you can't do that at every interview, so eventually you gotta play.
^ this exactly. If you want the job, you gotta play the game. Had a co-worker tell me yesterday as I was discussing this with him, that he went to an interview for an IT position at a tile company and they asked him why he wants to work there. He basically told them he doesn't give a crap about tiles and IT is IT. Didn't get the job :). I told him, he should have made up some crap about how he LOVES tiles and has been collecting them since he was 6. He's got slates from around the world, some asphalt, some cedar shakes, a bunch of clay tiles and the prize of his collection is a hand made 1887 spanish terracotta tile and he should have said that crap like he was 100% serious. The interviewer would have probably thought, wtf?!?! he collects roof tiles???, but I bet he would have gotten the job. I interviewed at a couple of places where they asked me that and I gave them my REAL reasons, location, the environment, current company is going down, etc. that almost never got me past the phone screen. So I tell them over the phone I love their product. As long as I can say it with a straight face during the interview without a condecensing / sarcastic tone, it works great. I mean, if you were the manager at a roof tile company and some dude comes in and tells you about his roof tile collection and then busts out his iphone and shows you pics of his various tiles, wouldn't you hire him on the spot??? :).
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Interviews like this make about as much sense as “closed-book” exams. Since when is one in “real life” not going to use reference materials (e.g. Regex “recipes”). No one rewards resourcefulness these days. Oh … and those 20+ skills with 3-5 years of experience they want you to have, you must have used them all within the last 6 months … It’s called “mental bullying”; to make up for all their weenie years.
Exactly. Most developers using google 1000 times a day.
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^ this exactly. If you want the job, you gotta play the game. Had a co-worker tell me yesterday as I was discussing this with him, that he went to an interview for an IT position at a tile company and they asked him why he wants to work there. He basically told them he doesn't give a crap about tiles and IT is IT. Didn't get the job :). I told him, he should have made up some crap about how he LOVES tiles and has been collecting them since he was 6. He's got slates from around the world, some asphalt, some cedar shakes, a bunch of clay tiles and the prize of his collection is a hand made 1887 spanish terracotta tile and he should have said that crap like he was 100% serious. The interviewer would have probably thought, wtf?!?! he collects roof tiles???, but I bet he would have gotten the job. I interviewed at a couple of places where they asked me that and I gave them my REAL reasons, location, the environment, current company is going down, etc. that almost never got me past the phone screen. So I tell them over the phone I love their product. As long as I can say it with a straight face during the interview without a condecensing / sarcastic tone, it works great. I mean, if you were the manager at a roof tile company and some dude comes in and tells you about his roof tile collection and then busts out his iphone and shows you pics of his various tiles, wouldn't you hire him on the spot??? :).
Could it possibly be that your sour attitude, rather than the specific answers to their questions is what is holding you back? Location is a perfectly good reason to want a specific job. Having relevant experience in IT that you want to leverage is a perfectly good reason for taking an IT job in an industry you don't care about one way or another, because after all, IT is IT. You are neither making nor selling tiles. You are maintaining an IT shop. Telling an interviewer you don't give a crap about their company is not likely to get you anything. It gives the prospective employer a way-too-clear look at your personality. It's possible that what you meant was, "I don't really understand your question. I'm an IT guy and you have an IT need to fill. That's why I want to work for your company." If so, then you badly bungled the response. If you really meant to say, "I don't give a crap about your company." you should never have applied. You wasted your time and theirs. In this case, get some therapy and try again when you feel better.
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Could it possibly be that your sour attitude, rather than the specific answers to their questions is what is holding you back? Location is a perfectly good reason to want a specific job. Having relevant experience in IT that you want to leverage is a perfectly good reason for taking an IT job in an industry you don't care about one way or another, because after all, IT is IT. You are neither making nor selling tiles. You are maintaining an IT shop. Telling an interviewer you don't give a crap about their company is not likely to get you anything. It gives the prospective employer a way-too-clear look at your personality. It's possible that what you meant was, "I don't really understand your question. I'm an IT guy and you have an IT need to fill. That's why I want to work for your company." If so, then you badly bungled the response. If you really meant to say, "I don't give a crap about your company." you should never have applied. You wasted your time and theirs. In this case, get some therapy and try again when you feel better.
Member 2941392 wrote:
Could it possibly be that your sour attitude, rather than the specific answers to their questions is what is holding you back?
I suggest you take an English reading comprehension course. Did you actually read and comprehend my post? I said my CO-WORKER said he said that during an interview. Since English is clearly not your first language, here, let me C&P it for you: "Had a co-worker tell me yesterday as I was discussing this with him, that he went to an interview..." See the 2nd and 3rd words there? "a co-worker"? that means a guy that works with me, not actually me. In the future, I highly suggest you brush up on your reading skills before you insult other posters.