job-seeker contacts/advice

[Underachiever]

I do contract project manager work. Contracts are typically 6 months to a year. Because of the nature of my work, I am interviewing regularly for my next gig. I rarely turn down an opportunity to talk to someone, unless it's a three-month contract. When I am contacted by recruiters who have short contracts, I avoid those, because my experience shows that the company is either trying to be cheap, or has no idea how big their project actually is. Add in the inevitable delay at onboarding, and it is a stressful situation.

 

Anyway, as a PM, I am brought on early because I often have to turn around and hire others (software analysts, trainers, etc.). It is remarkable how poorly some people interview, and I don't think they are aware of it. Then there is the dynamic of the third-party recruiter. I have come to really dislike these people, because they often don't know what they are talking about, yet they have become the gatekeepers of the job. They hide details of the job ("It's an Eastern US Company") that may help you prepare for your interview, and they have a dollar amount or percentage they are trying to hit, so they may not be representing the hiring company's best offer (That's probably more of an issue in the contract world than the FTE world). Add in their "check all the boxes" approach of finding candidates, and it's a mess. I say all that because I think there are strategies for getting past the gatekeeper to even be submitted for the job. Then, there is a switch to planning for the interview with the company.

 

I make it a habit to read every line of every resume submitted to me. I'm not saying I would never hire anyone with bad grammar or typos on a resume, but I am not NOT saying it either. If someone here wants to pick my brain, I would be willing to help.

[jerichoholicninja]

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/10/job-seeking-advice-hiring-trend-tight-economy.html

 

In today’s topsy-turvy job market, a strange new thing is happening. Employers are increasingly grumbling about job seekers “ghosting” them. These job candidates just don’t show up for their scheduled interviews. And in some cases, new hires accept a job only to disappear.

 

Reading this article brought a real smile to my heart. As someone who graduated college in 2008 and spent essentially the next 4 years trying to find a job I can totally related to being on the other side and being treated the same way. Well, well, well. How the turntables...

[nate82]

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/10/job-seeking-advice-hiring-trend-tight-economy.html

 

In today’s topsy-turvy job market, a strange new thing is happening. Employers are increasingly grumbling about job seekers “ghosting” them. These job candidates just don’t show up for their scheduled interviews. And in some cases, new hires accept a job only to disappear.

 

Reading this article brought a real smile to my heart. As someone who graduated college in 2008 and spent essentially the next 4 years trying to find a job I can totally related to being on the other side and being treated the same way. Well, well, well. How the turntables...

 

I really hate slate but there is that rare one in a billion chance that I agree with the premise that they have but the drivel that comes after it is just uggg.

 

Companies have been doing this for a long time now and still do. The generic rejection letters where they don't even have your name correct on them to an HR rep who completely disappears. I have been offered jobs in the past where I have sent an email or called the HR rep I would be accepting then weeks or even months later I finally get the generic response of sorry that position is no longer open.

 

I have even had one call me a year later and asked if I was still interested in the job.

 

The worst HR is definitely AMEX whenever an HR rep contacts me about a position there they never send an active link to the position. I have to actually dig for the actual link to the job or I have to reply to the email about four or five times until I get a link I can actually use.

 

Not sure I would even accept a job at AMEX their HR department seems very poor.

[nodakfan17]

Class of 2008 says hi

 

My first job was awful, but I did it for a year. My second job paid $16/hour, but I was grateful for steady work in the right industry. Now college grads are waltzing into opportunities that took me 3.5 years to earn.

 

I’ve been with the same company for the last 10 years, but now am starting to wonder if I’ll have to switch jobs just to keep pace with inflation. I posted last week in a different thread about how our company raised its minimum wage, but cut our 401(k) match to fund the increase. We’ve been promised better merit increases and bonuses to make up for last year, but I won’t know those results until February. Fingers crossed.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I’ve been with the same company for 10 years and only interviewed outside the company once during that time. The homework assignment caught me by surprise. I actually declined the second interview.

 

I don't do homework for free. My wife had an interview like this, got hired, and the hiring manager used her fake project for a real assignment. He was using the interviews to mine his own work. I assume this happens a lot. She no longer works there.

 

I'm late to the party here but I second all the frustrations with interviews. It's so bad that I don't even bother anymore and just opt to stay put. I'm not doing a phone screen with HR, a phone screen with a manager and then 2 on-sites. You're not that special guys. You don't get 6 un-billed hours of my time. As soon as they mention multiple stages I just decline the whole thing and get off the phone. I realize if you're unemployed you don't have that luxury though.

[CheezWizHed]

I’ve been with the same company for 10 years and only interviewed outside the company once during that time. The homework assignment caught me by surprise. I actually declined the second interview.

 

I don't do homework for free. My wife had an interview like this, got hired, and the hiring manager used her fake project for a real assignment. He was using the interviews to mine his own work. I assume this happens a lot. She no longer works there.

 

I'm late to the party here but I second all the frustrations with interviews. It's so bad that I don't even bother anymore and just opt to stay put. I'm not doing a phone screen with HR, a phone screen with a manager and then 2 on-sites. You're not that special guys. You don't get 6 un-billed hours of my time. As soon as they mention multiple stages I just decline the whole thing and get off the phone. I realize if you're unemployed you don't have that luxury though.

 

I guess it depends on how important the job is. There are so many candidates that don't really have the right qualifications that you need time vetting them out. We do a recruiter screen (30 min), first interview with me (hiring manager - 60 min), second interviews with engineers on the same team (120 min) and that is it. If you can't handle 3.5 hours "unpaid" in an effort to get a job, I probably don't want you on the team anyway.

 

Also realize that at least 25% of that time is spent answer the candidates questions and/or "selling" our company and the job to him/her. If you aren't interviewing me for the position, I'm concerned about why you want the job.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

It's not a big deal anymore now that some do remote interviews. But all those steps aren't just 3.5 hours. It can be commuting 50 minutes to Milwaukee to do 3-4 different sit-downs...on your current employer's time. Which in many cases means multiple portions of days using PTO to interview for a job you have no assurance of getting. At my first god-awful job out of college, I was an hourly employee and I burned through nearly all of my PTO just scheduling interviews to get out of that job. It was absolutely awful.

 

Unless you're miserable or unemployed, it just not worth that kind of stress for a mid-career person.

 

All this is to say that candidate ghosting makes me smile from ear to ear. I'm glad employers are having their time wasted by folks for a change.

[MrTPlush]

Out of college I had an interview scheduled for a company that was a solid 6ish hours away, but they were going to pay for mileage so I was willing to drive. About a week before the interview they emailed me seeing if I wanted to just do it via video. I kind of figured they had already found someone and they wanted to get out of paying me to drive there so I declined the video interview option. Thought it was a little dumb they wouldn't just cancel it all together, but if they were going to waste my time I at least wanted to use them as a practice interview out of college. Of course after the interview they admitted they preferred someone experienced and it looked like they were going to have a few of those people to pick from.

 

The best part was about a month or two later (after I accepted a job offer elsewhere) when they kept calling me and emailing me seeing if I was interested in the position still.

 

Too often do I feel companies are focused on finding experience and not really taking into consideration how long that person may be hanging around. My current employer loves hiring people that everything about them says "I won't be around long".

[OldSchoolSnapper]

You sort of hit one of the biggest flaws I find with employers hiring processes.

 

What is the biggest thing 95% of them seek? Experience. What do they want? Someone who has already done the job for which they are hiring. The flaw with this should be obvious, but somehow, employers haven't caught on:

 

Why is someone interviewing for a job they already have? Because they hate it. Yes, there can be relationship conflicts or geographical considerations, but in my experience, most of the reasons people leave a job really do boil down to a person not liking the work, but inventing a list of other reasons.

 

So employers hire someone to do a job they clearly already hate, and what happens? After the honeymoon, surprise, surprise! A new list of contrived grievances arises.

 

And they still can't figure it out. You got a crappy employee because you hired them to do the job they were escaping from.

[owbc]

You sort of hit one of the biggest flaws I find with employers hiring processes.

 

What is the biggest thing 95% of them seek? Experience. What do they want? Someone who has already done the job for which they are hiring. The flaw with this should be obvious, but somehow, employers haven't caught on:

 

Why is someone interviewing for a job they already have? Because they hate it. Yes, there can be relationship conflicts or geographical considerations, but in my experience, most of the reasons people leave a job really do boil down to a person not liking the work, but inventing a list of other reasons.

 

So employers hire someone to do a job they clearly already hate, and what happens? After the honeymoon, surprise, surprise! A new list of contrived grievances arises.

 

And they still can't figure it out. You got a crappy employee because you hired them to do the job they were escaping from.

 

Yes. But generally if someone is hiring they need someone who can solve a problem NOW. Much easier to find someone with direct experience than to do the harder thing and make committed investments to employees, or think beyond a quarter or two from now. My partner recently had this exact thing happen with her team -- the two final candidates were a "rockstar" but without direct experience and a second person who had a less-impressive resume but direct experience. Who did the team want? The second candidate, of course, because that person could make their jobs easier on day 1. My partner did successfully convince them to take the first candidate, but it took some persuasion.

 

By the way, personal update, after several instances of bad luck in the interview process I am finally in the process of negotiating a job offer! Interestingly, this job is 100% remote, the nearest office is several states away. It's a team of 20 and there are people in about 10 different states in every time zone. I think that's the new reality and I'm pretty happy about it, although I think at some point we're going to need a bigger house with dedicated offices--currently my office doubles as a guest bedroom.

[CheezWizHed]

I'll say that there is a different "view" on hiring than you guys realize on college vs. experience. OWBC hit it on the head with teams that need help NOW (generally reactive hires) vs. a more balanced hiring approach (proactive hiring). My company thankfully does our reactive hiring via contractors (mostly) and maintains a decent influx of college grads as part of the development pipeline. I just hired a college grad solely based on her desire to learn and grow. She has a decent background college gave her, but she is missing many skills my team will develop in her. So far, she hasn't disappointed. Next year, I'm hiring two more college grads and will do similar effort.

 

But I'm also hiring experienced engineers to replace ones that left. They have expectations on leadership at that level, so they do have to have a minimum background skill level that is close to what my team needs as I can't afford to train an experienced person in the basics of this job. Not everyone that changes jobs is disgruntled as OSS.

 

Identifying someone that is disgruntled in their job is actually pretty easy. Everyone has some level if dissatisfaction, but is normally pretty easy to discern if someone is just looking to leave their current situation or if they are actually interested in your job. Write a bland resume that isn't tailored to my job opening, don't bother reading about my company and/or products, don't have a good reason for leaving your current job (and/or complain openly about your current boss), and you won't get a sniff from my hiring. I red-flagged someone (as an interviewer, not hiring manager) that took 30 minutes in her interview to complain about her previous boss. The hiring manager ignored it and hired her anyway. Terrible decision.

[igor67]

So I can't say that I've observed a whole lot of evidence that proactive hiring is all that common. I'm thrilled someone still bothers to do it because it is very old school, but my son couldn't sniff an interview in the Twin Cities as an entry level programmer a couple of years ago. At best companies seem to run way too much through temp services, and this was true even after he gave up on programming and switched to other entry level work. I got more sympathetic to his plight when I tried my own hand at a mid-career switch. A lot of the same type of run around frankly. Corporate trainer positions with oddly specific needs being one example where a posting is so specific I don't look qualified (given the age range and diversity of subjects I've taught it's crazy). I looked at other entry level type office jobs, acknowledging my skill gap and managed 2 phone interviews in about 20 applications. The kicker though for me having no sympathy and just believing that most companies hiring practices are ridiculous was my sons recent experience. He transitioned to manufacturing, has a couple of years experience, and applying to jobs in central WI he only heard back from 1 in 5. At least the once company actually acted like they were desperate for workers and called him back less than 24 hours after applying. Maybe if you'd call people back you wouldn't need to offer signing bonuses. So yep ghost away!

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Yeah...I'm with igor here, I don't really see this pro-active hiring you speak of. Even at the huge company I work for, the vast majority of recent grads are on-boarded via a huge internship program and dismissed at the end of summer if they aren't hired. They don't get fired, just don't get offers and that basically means you aren't good. But they are crappily paid hourly employees for a summer so the company can avoid some risk.

 

One thing I'm happy to see is the unpaid intern slavery trend that was huge when I graduated from college appears to gone. It should be illegal.

 

If you couldn't tell, I find many aspects of the corporate hiring process pretty gross, but no, I'm not really disgruntled. I'm fine and feel treated fairly; I work at home...it is a pretty good gig, but in the end, personally speaking, all corporate jobs are just jobs to me. I never cared for the work, I just found more interesting pursuits far less lucrative and was always a pragmatist.

 

My goal very early on was to take as much money as I could from Corporate America and quit in my 40s. That's still my plan. I still believe you owe your employer some basic decency and a certain standard of quality, but the relationship has always been strictly business to me. I'd shrug my shoulders and hold no grudges if I were fired tomorrow...but as I said, nope, I won't do trial projects for free to "impress" you. I know I do probably sound disgruntled, but I just don't have any delusions about the working world. I'm a cog that would be sent off to increase EPS by a 1/100 of a cent, and that's something people should always remember.

[CheezWizHed]

I'm not big on the "trial project" idea, though examples of personal projects are very helpful. I'm a software engineering manager and I find it very helpful to see a candidate's personal github or LinkedIn profile with examples of various projects they have done.

 

I don't disagree OSS that we are cogs in the corporate world and I don't pretend that employees (myself included) aren't replaceable. Layoffs happen, wrong people get promoted, good ideas are ignored.

 

But both in hiring and in working, you are going to get out what you get in. People that differentiate themselves are promoted and managers work to keep them (or hire them). People that stay "in the pack" are more replaceable and will get more median raises and probably will never actually enjoy their job (yes that is possible).

[KeithStone53151]

Coming from someone currently trying and struggling to hire someone for our team, I don't even mind that I'm struggling for the fact that regular folks seem to have the power right now. I'm not as big on ghosting interviews or accepting jobs and not showing up. I find it rude and childish, you're wasting time of another person/persons trying to hire you...it's not some defiant act of screwing Corporate America. That said, right now people our company is trying to hire are asking for 30+% pay increases from their previous position along with benefit boosts. We've multiple times been outbid by another company vying for a persons services. We missed out on one candidate because that person preferred full remote versus the partial remote that our company offers. Job seekers have the power and I love it.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

you're wasting time of another person/persons trying to hire you...it's not some defiant act of screwing Corporate America.

 

They got a better offer and don't want to bother with pleasantries. You know, sort of exactly what employers have done for 40 years. Who cares about screwing corporate America. They can do what they want. My whole point is that employers created this dynamic. They are to blame, so I laugh at them crying about it now.

 

They can dock your pay if you show up late once, fire you this afternoon and tell you to get bent, schedule an interview and then just not pick up the phone, but expect 2 weeks notice if you quit and cry foul if you ghost an interview.

 

Childish? Please. The amount of leeway you guys are giving these places is frankly surprising. I have to wonder how extensive some of your interviewing experience is if none of these things have ever happened to you. And these aren't one-off things either. I've literally had Google Calendar invites that HR people simply don't show up to and I never hear from them again.

[CheezWizHed]

They can dock your pay if you show up late once, fire you this afternoon and tell you to get bent

 

I've been a people manager for 13 years. And I'll tell you that this is not possible in salaried positions (i.e. engineering). I've documented people's negative behavior, done a 3 month performance improvement plan, then still HR hesitant to remove the person (two times). I've actually never been able to fire someone -despite some pretty outrageous behavior. People do tend to pick up on it and leave themselves, however.

 

FYI, in 26 years of post-college career, I've had three jobs and probably a couple dozen interviews. Far more applications that you never hear back on. But I can't say that I've ever ghosted someone or had someone ghost me (either in as an interviewer or interviewee). I've had people cancel, but I've always heard back from them.

 

The thing about "big corporate America" is that there is always a human at the other end just trying to do his/her own job. We aren't the corporate "fat cats" you despise. Sometimes it is simply about being a nice person and treating others they way you want to be treated.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

You guys are taking this in a way I never intended it to be. This has nothing to do with evil corporate America or "fat cats that I despise." It is simply the reality of the situation and a set of conditions that employers fostered for decades.

 

You're assigning all kinds of bitterness to me that I don't harbor toward anyone. I just find the whole experience "cold," so I don't think companies have a leg to stand on when whining about this sort of thing.

 

And I dunno why you're telling me it isn't possible. I've witnessed hundreds of people get fired from my company without notice on the same afternoon, more than once. Sure it's a "layoff," I don't think the people losing their job care much about the semantics.

 

The point is the same. They wash their hands of you the second it is convenient to do so. To clutch pearls over some no-show interviews, lol, please.

 

As far as this goes: "Sometimes it is simply about being a nice person and treating others they way you want to be treated."

 

Precisely. The vast majority of companies haven't treated candidates this way, so they can sleep in the bed they made. Of course, they get to do under the guise of "doing their jobs" so that makes it OK.

 

This isn't about some ax I have to grind. I've never been fired, I've been at the same company for a decade. These are all just things I've watched happen from the sidelines, witnessed friends and family do this silly interview game. There are few things more sad to me than an unemployed person desperately seeking work, and getting their hopes up by a recruiter who Houdinis half-way through the process.

 

And while I can't question your personal experience...I REALLY doubt that candidates ghost more than recruiters...but I digress.

[jerichoholicninja]

This reminds me that I applied for a job back in March or April. Exchanged some emails with the owner of the agency as sort of a mini interview. He said he would take the information to his team and see if there is a fit. I'm guessing there wasn't as I still haven't heard back from him. Now I definitely got the feeling as things went on that they weren't that interested in me and, honestly, I wasn't super interested in them either. But how hard is it to send an email telling me they've moved on?

[igor67]

I have unfortunately also encountered the HR attitude that CheezWhiz describes. I have helped do enough hiring that I do appreciate the amount of time it takes, but the way that evolves in certain HR circles toward being terrified of meritless employment lawsuits. I suspect the practical differences in how companies act are also heavily influenced by the average education level of their employees.

[LouisEly]

Plenty of employers ghosting on applications and interviews. A couple of weeks ago I got an email rejection about a position I applied for last year. Sometimes, though, if you're in the second cut they hold you until someone is on board in case the person they want doesn't accept the offer. I know that hiring managers are busy and they try to screen for no more than the top 3, maybe 4, applicants. If you're #4 or #5, they might wait a while before informing you.

 

Case studies are pretty much standard in my occupation at my level. They want to see how you think, how you solve problems, can you work with ambiguity and data.

 

Most of the time when I've left a company it's because of the leadership and how I am treated than what I am doing (that, and them eliminating my position if not my entire department).

[superfly]

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/10/job-seeking-advice-hiring-trend-tight-economy.html

 

In today’s topsy-turvy job market, a strange new thing is happening. Employers are increasingly grumbling about job seekers “ghosting” them. These job candidates just don’t show up for their scheduled interviews. And in some cases, new hires accept a job only to disappear.

 

Reading this article brought a real smile to my heart. As someone who graduated college in 2008 and spent essentially the next 4 years trying to find a job I can totally related to being on the other side and being treated the same way. Well, well, well. How the turntables...

 

 

LMAO. As a fellow graduate (‘10) I will concur. To this day I have never used my finance degree for a single day and have many years of paying off the loans spent to get said worthless degree. That article is eye candy to me!

[nate82]

 

 

LMAO. As a fellow graduate (‘10) I will concur. To this day I have never used my finance degree for a single day and have many years of paying off the loans spent to get said worthless degree. That article is eye candy to me!

 

Also a fellow graduate in Finance and I am finally using my degree to do Finance stuff. Well sort of I do all of the tech stuff now for a finance team but I do get to help with some of the finance stuff. This new position I lucked into only hired me because I have all this experience in Alteryx, R, SAS, Python and Tableau as the people who were helping them out left the company.

 

Also if you graduated within the last couple of years with a degree in finance and have some tech skills in Python or R you would get hired really quickly. The company I am working for is basically sending people with no experience in finance at all to fintech classes all the time and also project management especially for AGILE certifications mostly as SCRUM or SCRUM Masters. Those are the two things most banks are looking for right now. Basically SCRUM and SCRUM masters to lead the projects for the fintech's that the company is having a hard time filling.

[superfly]

 

 

LMAO. As a fellow graduate (‘10) I will concur. To this day I have never used my finance degree for a single day and have many years of paying off the loans spent to get said worthless degree. That article is eye candy to me!

 

Also a fellow graduate in Finance and I am finally using my degree to do Finance stuff. Well sort of I do all of the tech stuff now for a finance team but I do get to help with some of the finance stuff. This new position I lucked into only hired me because I have all this experience in Alteryx, R, SAS, Python and Tableau as the people who were helping them out left the company.

 

Also if you graduated within the last couple of years with a degree in finance and have some tech skills in Python or R you would get hired really quickly. The company I am working for is basically sending people with no experience in finance at all to fintech classes all the time and also project management especially for AGILE certifications mostly as SCRUM or SCRUM Masters. Those are the two things most banks are looking for right now. Basically SCRUM and SCRUM masters to lead the projects for the fintech's that the company is having a hard time filling.

 

 

Started my own business and unless I had no other choice, I can’t imagine myself ever going back to taking orders from somebody else. Truly a liberating experience I did not expect to be as strong as it is.

[nodakfan17]

Also a fellow graduate in Finance and I am finally using my degree to do Finance stuff. Well sort of I do all of the tech stuff now for a finance team but I do get to help with some of the finance stuff. This new position I lucked into only hired me because I have all this experience in Alteryx, R, SAS, Python and Tableau as the people who were helping them out left the company.

 

Also if you graduated within the last couple of years with a degree in finance and have some tech skills in Python or R you would get hired really quickly. The company I am working for is basically sending people with no experience in finance at all to fintech classes all the time and also project management especially for AGILE certifications mostly as SCRUM or SCRUM Masters. Those are the two things most banks are looking for right now. Basically SCRUM and SCRUM masters to lead the projects for the fintech's that the company is having a hard time filling.

I appreciate the insight here. My degree is in applied economics and I’ve spent a lot of time on Data Camp the past 2 years learning Python, R, and SQL (upon the recommendation of someone on BF). Those skills will hopefully keep me employable once I hit the back 9 of my career.