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How not to interview someone who already has a job (2011)

60 pointsby jkwabout 10 years ago

12 comments

ilitiritabout 10 years ago
Sometimes the people who ask you to interview are not the same people who do actually end up interviewing you, or they don&#x27;t communicate with each other.<p>At one of my last interviews I was told I don&#x27;t look like I want the job enough because I was dressed casually. I was very confused. I reminded them that they requested an interview with me several times, even after I told them I was not on the market, and that I had actually taken time of work for the interview. I only showed up because they practically begged me. I was so annoyed at some of the questions. &quot;What value can you add to this company?&quot; No sir, how can YOU make it worth MY while to join you, considering that I have to leave a position that I&#x27;m perfectly comfortable with? After finally understanding that I was happy with my current job, one of the interviewers asked me &quot;So why are you here wasting our time?&quot; I was infuriated.<p>The whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth. I don&#x27;t think I would ever consider interviewing at that company again.
Decadeabout 10 years ago
I think this also applies to someone who is unemployed. All I want is to do meaningful work and get paid. I&#x27;m tired of the hamster wheel of job applications.<p>For coders, a major offender is the variety of TrueAbility&#x2F;Codility&#x2F;HackerRank&#x2F;custom code challenges. FizzBuzz is fine. You want to filter out people who just can&#x27;t code. Beyond that, timed challenges don&#x27;t tell the recruiter anything about how a person interacts with others, or maintains code, or researches solutions for new problems.<p>And then, after I successfully complete the code challenge, investing time that I really can&#x27;t afford, they just look at my resume and delete my application, anyway.
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andreyfabout 10 years ago
For engineers without open source contributions, why not give a coding project? It seems to me like there&#x27;s no need to eat into the person&#x27;s working time, spending a few hours solving an interesting problem shouldn&#x27;t deter people you want hire to code all day, and the signals you&#x27;ll get are orthogonal to what you&#x27;ll be able to assess in person.
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kephraabout 10 years ago
&gt; You will go through 6-8 interviews!” I thought: “YOU will hire a bunch of unemployed people”.<p>Can someone explain why HR managers have such a severe prejudice against hiring unemployed people? Imho, its their job, to select those people from the unemployemnt pool that fits the company, and have the skills. A HR who only poaches employed people, is doing a bad job, and hiding his laziness under an evil prejudice.
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throw_awayabout 10 years ago
I don&#x27;t understand why they dont lede with here&#x27;s the $$ and here&#x27;s the problem. I don&#x27;t want to work on bullshit no matter how many massages and drycleaning you give me. I don&#x27;t want to work for $40k plus lottery tickets on earth shattering problems. Why do we have to play this time-consuming game before you tell me the info I need to hear? This doesn&#x27;t scale. I&#x27;ll stick to the devil I know.
pjmorrisabout 10 years ago
The &#x27;one phone interview, one on-site interview, make a decision&#x27; format is how every good company I&#x27;ve worked for has hired, ranging over multiple industries and multiple decades.<p>You can tell a lot about a company from your very first interactions with them. I&#x27;d steer clear of anything more elaborate than what she described, they are probably guessing about how to hire, and that mean&#x27;s they&#x27;re probably guessing about how to run a business. That kind of risk can be entertaining and instructive, but might not be great for your career.
bhaydenabout 10 years ago
I once had an interview for a job while I was already employed. They asked why I wanted to leave my current job, I told them I didn&#x27;t and that I liked my job, but I also look for better opportunities. My interviewer seemed incredulous at this concept, and thought I was wasting her time. Does she only want to hire unemployed or unhappily employed people? So dumb.
JoeAltmaierabout 10 years ago
I&#x27;ve had folks get irate when I wouldn&#x27;t spend the day at their interview. I was in alpha release, fighting fires and working on a deadline! I&#x27;m kind of glad I never worked for that idiot.
marcosdumayabout 10 years ago
Or, an even shorter TLDR: Decide!<p>How much does it cost to have 7 people interview a candidate anyway? Even without considering that the best candidates will run away, how can companies justify that?
eli_gottliebabout 10 years ago
I&#x27;ll save this for the inevitable barrage of LinkedIn messages that will appear after I start a new job soon.
singingfishabout 10 years ago
Hah, my latest gig, one interview, around 10 minutes in it was like &quot;so how do we make it worth your while coming to work here?&quot; (answer, ok money, excellent working conditions). Working well. Nice to have special skillz
vitalinosabout 10 years ago
It&#x27;s easy to say when you do have a job