I do, absolutely hate it! The old saying, "one who gets hired is because he/she knows how to get hire, not necessary mean he/she knows how to do the job" is so true sometimes. You can't just say you have an awesome c.v., an intelligent mind, are a genuinely good person and a diligent worker, and give me the job please. Instead you have to go through interviews after interviews, answering technical questions not only, but also vague, cheesy, meaningless questions like:

- what is your biggest weakness? (very tricky question, ya don't wanna tell them your real weakness, but instead you have made up some sh*t that sounds like a weakness but actually a strong point. I'd say "I have a weak wrist, carpal tunnel from too much mousing around." LOL )

- what do you see yourself in five years? (until we invent the time machine, you can't really tell them what the f**k will happened to ya in 5 years, LOL. Instead you have made up some s**t to tell them, that sounds impressive but completely fake.)

- can you define 'teamwork'? (they just got nothing else to ask, do they?)

Not to mention, if they ever wanna see ya face to face, you have to put up that 'clown' suit. LOL , hey doesn't matter how much I dress up, I am just an ordinary looking guy, okay?

The worst comes when you went through like 5 interviews, applications, background checks, drug test, etc, just to hear lies like 'unfortunately, we decided to hire another candidate.' Sigh... f**k you!

And I am completely disgust when I learned one time from those who's on the other side of the hiring table, that the only reason for not hiring a candidate is because the manager is reluctant to hire someone knows more than he does under his management.

Job hunting is the most unpredictable and most uncomfortable experience. Unfortunately is something that we have to face time and time again in life. You just to have to do your best, and knows how to say 'f**k that', so be it, next one please.

Share your experience, opinions and thoughts here, or rants, regarding job hunting.

Dr. P,
Looks like someone has to work on their "people skills"
But bugger that, if you had people skills you'd be working at the GAP or in Human Resources!
I think I've mentioned elsewhere on these boards that I've not had a corporate job in the US since about 2003, for some of the same reasons that you mentioned.

HR: What are your qualifications?
A: I've been working with computers and networks since the late 1970s. I soldered my first computer together after etching the PCB myself in 1976. I spent 10 years in the military working on some of the most secured systems in the world. I spent 10 years working as a subcontractor to NASA on manned and unmanned systems including STS and NAVSTAR GPS. I wrote my first web-page in 1993 to run on a Linux server using notepad. I've since worked with multinational, multibillion dollar corporations on their computing systems, networks and security.

HR: What certifications and degrees do you have?
A: None. I'm self taught and trained. I maintain a home lab with over $100K worth of switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers and servers that I work with every day.

HR: Oh, no degree? Thank you for your time.
A: Byte me, and have a good day....

Gerritt

Trust me, even you have a degree, or two, like me, it doesn't make a f**king different sometimes. Either HR is too dumb to realize what's a good candidate for a job (since they don't know sh*t on the technical side), or the hiring technical manager him/herself is too narrow minded, e.g. only wants a very specialized person on certain technical aspect with 10,000 years of experience. Not to mention, most of the time they write the hiring ad because there's already an internal candidate ready to be hired, just the legal technicality to have an ad in public. It's tough.

I just can not relax in interviews, and therefore can nto be myself. I get too tense and must sound like a f**king robot. I just got my A+ and have my Network+ next, then its job hunting for me, and I am dreading it, not the job, just the interviews!!

"Why would you make a good employee here?"

"It's you're f**king job to figure that out"

Yes, for god's sakes, yes.

Dr. Peaceful said:

I miss my higher level qualifications off my CV for just this reason; even deny them completely if asked directly. So many interviewing managers have this inferiority complex that I’ve learned this is the best way to deal with it. None of the qualifications I’m talking about are IT-based, so it’s never usually relevant anyway. Sometimes, I feel a bit aggrieved that I have to do this, but at the end of the day, needs must…

Also, I find I’m in the same situation as Gerritt; experience over industry-related qualifications, so I have to look specifically for an organisation that’s more interested in that side of things, which can just add to the frustration of finding a job, but can often mean I get a better job (a job that’s better for me) at the end of it.

Kieran Blenkarne said:

For some reason, this never affects me; I’m just blinding in interviews and often get comments from people who’ve hired me about the fact that I was so relaxed at interview. I look at it this way; the pressure’s not really on me at all, it’s the interviewer who’s desperate to avoid a screw up that might reflect badly on them for the next few years.

The worst thing for me is the initial contact; actually getting a response, and getting to interview. I don’t know what it’s like in other countries, but here in the UK, you’re generally tied to working through a recruitment agency for the best chance of even being aware that a job exists out there, and the problem you then face is one typical of service industries (certainly in this country) whereby they’re trying to do more work with fewer staff. Typical example of which; I often follow up sending my CV to a consultant with a telephone call within a day or so. The number of times I’m told something along the lines of, “Sorry, I’ve had <<some number, usually in excess of 250>> responses to that; haven’t had time to go through them all yet” really makes me think. There’s no way they look at them all; they check the first few, until they find three or four reasonably close to what they guess the client is looking for, send them off for interview, and dump the rest - simple as that, so unless you’ve got your application in there within the first fifteen minutes of the posting, you’re stuffed.. There aren’t enough hours in the day to go through 300 CVs for each of the dozen vacancies you might have on the go at any one time. And these guys typically charge around 10% of the salary the candidate is hired at for their ‘service’.

And whilst I’m on the subject of the level of ‘service’ you can expect from these people, I once saw a job advert which contained the word ‘experience’ four times, twice spelled ‘experience’ and twice ‘experiance’. The final line of the advert read, “Must have investment baking experience” (insert local variant of punchline about cooking the books here ).

i was nrly 2 yrs unemployed in UK after moving around from london to west midlands, went from 30k a yr in london working for record label, company got bought out by Canadian company n got rid of the uk based staff.

Finally admiting defeat came back to westmids n settled for a quality I.T engineers job in a little shop in a town. I got the job cus i knew the boss and spent a week with him, rather than readin sum crap on paper he wanted to see the practical skills as he felt it more important.

I think in some cases Practical experience can over come the old reading C.V crap. Bigger corporate companies have methods for recruiting new staff, set standards (that are usually unrealistic lol).

Not like ur gonna need 6 A levels to work in MacDonalds, but on th' application form they do state u need atleast 4 GCSE's lol...Maths n English to make a burger n fry chips???

i've known University students with 4 yrs of degrees and still not gettin a job cus of no 'Real situation practical experience'

Alot depends on Employers and there standards.

Shawn Langley said:
I think IBM used to do that. Not sure if they do anymore.

yes i do - but why do firms treat you well at first then start p**sing off ppl they train - to a point where they cannot stand to even go to work - buisness practice is s**t - sorry for bad language , but i feel strongly on this issue

That's not unlike the military in some cases. Train, train, train..

Dr. Peaceful....

I was your last interviewer. And was about to call you with a job offer, until i read this
post...

LOL, Tam. Please, please, please hire me please, I give you 1 million Viet Dongs.

Rhort mentioned 300+ resumes for HR... one time I was in a job fair, I saw one company have a 1 feet (~305 mm) stack of paper resumes, LOL . Assume each resume is about 0.5mm thick, that's over 600 resumes! Heck no they're going to read them all, of course. They probably send 1/2 of that to the shredder, anyway. They will be so busy shredding, LOL.

Next time I will laminate my resume in strong plastic (reinforced with embedded metal wires), will sure f**k up their shredder for good. They will probably call me up, because my resume is too hard to shred.

Oh, one time, one company's HR person called me up, saying they have problem scanning my resume into their DB. I bet it's some kind of parsing software, that will parse your resume for key words and stuffs into fields of a database for evaluating qualification of candidates. I guess that's how big companies go through large amount of resumes. Anyway, I provided the guy, 5 different file formats, MS Word, WordPerfect (still use at the time), PDF, HTML and in plain text. Also forward them a hard copy in paper as well. Still the guy's not able to feed it to their system. If not because of politeness, I will tell the guy "to go eat sh*t", not that they're going to hire me anyway.

University here in U.S., we do need to take require courses and some optional courses. Of course for optional courses, you can pick any easy course you want to get your GPA (Grade Point Average) up. I hate those students who got A's because they have the instructor's old exams in possession. They not there to learn the course, but there to get As. I on the other hand, spend my time to actually learn the course materials, but often time only get average grades (B's). Sometimes, they just can't evaluate a person based on grades alone.

Dr. Peaceful wrote:


Which reminds me of the story of the Business Ethics Professor that was taken to court AND LOST when he caught 60% of his class cheating on a Ethics Exam and flunked them. They said his actions were detrimental to their future employability and thus flunking them was unusual in its scope.....the buggers WON! He had to rescend the failure and allow them to retake the exam...the same one, as a new one would involve too much pressure.

Gerritt

Awarding cheating students, sigh... you got to lover lawyers in U.S.A.

Ok Dr Peaceful. I'd like to offer you the position of Tea Boy. The same conditions still apply.
Including the gimp suit and ball and chain. You will be the head entertainer at
our establishment: The Blue Oyster Club.

See you on Friday night 9PM sharp!

Tam,
You are a sick, sick, puppy.
You'd have to offer at least 20% more for anyone to take that job.

Gerritt

Yeah job hunting blows like nothing else. I spent my late teens and early 20s with crappy jobs because I wasn't qualified enough for anything better. Then after getting my bachelors degree I was constantly refused jobs because I was overqualified. What the f**k is overqualified? "You know everything necessary to do this job and have exceptional skills and experience, too much experience. We need a douchebag that thinks ATI is a phone company." Of course I finally have a masters degree (graduating Saturday) and praying to god I find a job that pays better than what I have now.

Hans Moleman said:

Someone that thinks ATI is a phone company....good one. I recall one time that I recieved a call from ITT and I said that I'd worked on some of their gear when I was in the military. I was refering to International Telephone and Telegraph...they were calling from ITT Technical Institute trying to sell me on getting a online degree that would "qualify" me for an "entry level position" in the IT industry......sigh.
Insofar as a masters degree, I was just ranting off the handle to the clerk at my local package store about the damage the MBA programs have done to business worldwide over the past couple of decades, and he informed me that he had his MBA....

Gerrit are you making an offer of you services for the Club?

Dear Mr. TamTheBam,

I would like to thank you for your time and consideration for the 'Tea Boy' position. After considering your offer carefully, I have decided to decline your offer politely for the following reason: the position is too British for me.

I do like to thank you for your thoughtful offer. I wish you luck in your search for an excellent candidate.


Sincerely,
Dr. Peaceful