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Inner Light posted:Boys boys let's get back to the interviews that aren't happening and the resumes that aren't being reviewed.
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Mar 22, 2020 19:36
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I'm interviewing interns for the first time and during my first one today I realised I have no idea what the poo poo I should ask. In person, it is much easier to have a conversation flow, but over skype things are more formal. My next interview is tomorrow, and I want to have a list of interview questions ready. What are some good questions for interns, who obviously don't have any real experience yet and that I'm only hiring for a summer? Today HR stepped in and asked the boring typical questions like what are your greatest strengths/weaknesses, why did you pick us to apply, etc. I'd like to have something a bit more interesting to ask, and get more meaningful answers that weren't able to be rehearsed ahead of time. If it was for a real position, I'd focus on competence for the role (weather forecasting) but the intern program is a bunch of intro stuff that really anyone could do. Oh also lol there is not gonna be any intern program, no way are we gonna be normal working again by May. So this is mostly just an exercise in letting them practice how to interview.
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Mar 23, 2020 09:40
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Thanks for the video interview advice. There's lots of great points there I wouldn't have thought of. Cheers!
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Mar 23, 2020 10:44
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I know the answer is 'just email them' but what's a good time to email after a phone screen if you haven't heard? A week? Two? should I just ask people if their hiring is frozen? Business fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Mar 23, 2020 13:12
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Switchback posted:Oh also lol there is not gonna be any intern program, no way are we gonna be normal working again by May. So this is mostly just an exercise in letting them practice how to interview. In that case, just ask them all the boring boilerplate poo poo. As with any other skill, you have to master the routine before you can properly develop your finesse.
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Mar 23, 2020 14:21
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Business posted:I know the answer is 'just email them' but what's a good time to email after a phone screen if you haven't heard? A week? Two? it probably helps if you are like "hey i know things might be kind of screwed up and you guys may have other priorities right now, but i still want to do Role X for you for Y reasons. Let me know what the next steps are, or if you are putting the process on hold due to the overall economic/health situation" - workshop that but that's the message you want to share: 1) i know this is probably not a top priority for you, and i understand that 2) i still want job and would be great! here's why! 3) if you can, please give me clarity on what is going on w/r/t your process 4) even if you can't give me clarity, just letting me know you can't is helpful!
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Mar 23, 2020 17:23
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Switchback posted:I'm interviewing interns for the first time and during my first one today I realised I have no idea what the poo poo I should ask. In person, it is much easier to have a conversation flow, but over skype things are more formal. My next interview is tomorrow, and I want to have a list of interview questions ready. Have you had a chance too look at our website? (Do you even know what we loving do?) Please tell me more about (basic qualification that was listed on the job posting.) If they can answer those two without annoying you, congrats, you have your intern for the summer.
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Mar 23, 2020 17:30
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Switchback posted:I'm interviewing interns for the first time and during my first one today I realised I have no idea what the poo poo I should ask. In person, it is much easier to have a conversation flow, but over skype things are more formal. My next interview is tomorrow, and I want to have a list of interview questions ready. Ask about classes/projects they've worked on and have them go in depth. Ask some good questions on that. Have them talk about what they want to do after graduation. You'll get an idea on their drive or if they are going to be kinda listless as interns. Come up with some hypothetical situations and ask how they'd resolve it.
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Mar 23, 2020 18:33
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keep the latter really simple and centered around office/working norms stuff. "what would you do if your manager X and a director Y gave you conflicting tasks?" "what do you do when you get stuck with something you can't figure out?" we have found that one of the biggest things is that our interns don't know how to do anything in an office unless they've had previous office experience. knowing that they know some basics or can at least reasonably intuit what are the right things to do is a big predictor of success.
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Mar 23, 2020 18:37
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:we have found that one of the biggest things is that our interns don't know how to do anything in an office unless they've had previous office experience. knowing that they know some basics or can at least reasonably intuit what are the right things to do is a big predictor of success.
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Mar 23, 2020 20:57
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:keep the latter really simple and centered around office/working norms stuff. "what would you do if your manager X and a director Y gave you conflicting tasks?" "what do you do when you get stuck with something you can't figure out?" Lockback posted:Ask about projects they've worked on and have them go in depth. Dik Hz posted:Have you had a chance too look at our website? (Do you even know what we loving do?) Agree with these. Particularly the projects. Especially for engineers. If someone’s built a project to solve a problem they had it’s a huge mark in their favor.
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Mar 24, 2020 01:13
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Business posted:I know the answer is 'just email them' but what's a good time to email after a phone screen if you haven't heard? A week? Two? Ordinarily the answer would be "don't" but considering the circumstances I don't think it'd be viewed poorly to check in with "hi, I wanted to see if you had any feedback for me after my phone screen on DATE. I hadn't heard back from you yet and I wanted to reaffirm my interest. Please get in touch when you're able to, thanks and be well" or something similar. Timeframe doesn't really matter after a few days, they'll get to it when they get to it, if they ever will.
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Mar 24, 2020 03:28
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Two more intern interviews down and I was much better prepared than yesterday. The more normal standard questions went a lot better. I tried to ask one of “an example of when he had to read instructions”, could be success or failure, any topic.. it apparently was not a very good question because it was difficult for the candidate to answer well. I did like the answers I got for asking “how do you cope with stress, and what’s an example of a stressful situation?” Also really liked the answers to “do you think it’s better to be perfect but late, or just good but on time?” And as much as I hate the question, I think I have to ask “what are your strengths and weaknesses” since I’m sure they’ve all prepared answers for that one already and they should get the chance to practice. I want to set them up for feeling like they had a successful interview. I’m so glad I probably won’t have to actually choose one because I love all of them. But for the future, what are acceptable things to judge people on? Here are my feelings that don’t relate to technical competence, please tell what is unfair personal bias, and what is legitimate grounds for selection: 1. Personal hobbies: I like one candidate because he is in rock climbing club, and I am also a climber 2. Environmental philosophy: I prefer the candidates who mention climate change, and I am a passionate environmentalist (we work for oil & gas, and I think we need environmentally-minded people in the industry) 3. Ethnicity: Chinese privilege is a real thing in Singapore, and I’m feeling preference for one candidate because he’s a minority. 4. Volunteer work: I really light up when candidates discuss projects that make the world a better place. 5. Personality: I like people who are friendly and communicative more than people who are closed off and only give one word answers.
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Mar 24, 2020 05:17
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Switchback posted:Two more intern interviews down and I was much better prepared than yesterday. The more normal standard questions went a lot better. I tried to ask one of “an example of when he had to read instructions”, could be success or failure, any topic.. it apparently was not a very good question because it was difficult for the candidate to answer well. I did like the answers I got for asking “how do you cope with stress, and what’s an example of a stressful situation?” Also really liked the answers to “do you think it’s better to be perfect but late, or just good but on time?”
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Mar 24, 2020 05:19
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Hoodwinker posted:#1 and #3 should be totally irrelevant. The other three are sensible, given the context you've provided. #3 is a touchy subject. Inclusion is everything right now in my company. There are often job postings in Singapore specifying only open to Chinese. Landlords discriminate openly. It shouldn’t be a deciding criteria, we want everything to be merit based, but when the merit is equal is it wrong to choose someone because they’re more likely to be disadvantaged?
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Mar 24, 2020 07:38
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Wouldn't reason #3 be akin to deliberately hiring a woman in a male dominated field? No one is 100% fair on an interview and the opposite (hiring a less qualified man or someone from a 'favored' ethnicity) occurs far more often. I benefited from that in banking since I was a guy in a woman dominated field and ironically the managers who discriminated in my favor were women themselves. I declined to pursue a career path to the bank's corporate office like every other guy who started in the branches because I didn't like dicking over my more qualified co-workers. Also, it turns out, I'm lazy. Krispy Wafer fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 12:38
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i think it's fine to favor a minority candidate, in particular for an internship edit: it's a lot less important for an internship but you always have to strike a balance between hiring people who are similar to you and you like, versus those with complimentary strengths and different perspectives. doing the former is really easy.
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Mar 24, 2020 16:39
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:edit: it's a lot less important for an internship but you always have to strike a balance between hiring people who are similar to you and you like, versus those with complimentary strengths and different perspectives. doing the former is really easy. It's also the path to a horror show of a dysfunctional team
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Mar 24, 2020 16:58
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Eric the Mauve posted:It's also the path to a horror show of a dysfunctional team indeed
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Mar 24, 2020 17:20
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Switchback posted:Two more intern interviews down and I was much better prepared than yesterday. The more normal standard questions went a lot better. I tried to ask one of “an example of when he had to read instructions”, could be success or failure, any topic.. it apparently was not a very good question because it was difficult for the candidate to answer well. I did like the answers I got for asking “how do you cope with stress, and what’s an example of a stressful situation?” Also really liked the answers to “do you think it’s better to be perfect but late, or just good but on time?” #1 is fine to me, because hobbies tell you something about the candidate. Preference for people with similar hobbies should probably be avoided, though.
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Mar 24, 2020 21:56
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Betazoid posted:Hey resume thread, anyone have thoughts on writing a private sector resume vs a public sector resume? I'm a contractor and would love to join the government. My USAJobs account is a graveyard of "not referred.". My husband is a fed, and I made him look at my private sector resume, which I've always had excellent results from. He hated it and said it wouldn't work for the government. Anyone? I'm putting in an application I'm super interested in tomorrow most likely and don't want to make any really dumb, avoidable mistakes.
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Mar 24, 2020 22:52
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Dik Hz posted:I'd say they're all on the table, but I'd dive deeper on #5. Interns are nervous in interviews. Make sure the candidates are at ease. If they're still short, than yes it's an issue, imho. The more dissimilar a candidate is from you, the more nervous they will likely be. in my opinion, with hobbies, it's more about do they have them, and how do they talk about them to people they have never met. like if you are really in to uh knitting, which i know nothing about, you should be able to communicate about some knitting you did and why its cool to a layperson.
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Mar 24, 2020 23:21
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:in my opinion, with hobbies, it's more about do they have them, and how do they talk about them to people they have never met. like if you are really in to uh knitting, which i know nothing about, you should be able to communicate about some knitting you did and why its cool to a layperson.
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Mar 24, 2020 23:25
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Betazoid posted:Anyone? I'm putting in an application I'm super interested in tomorrow most likely and don't want to make any really dumb, avoidable mistakes. Post up your resume (with personal info redacted, of course)! I'm not sure if anyone here can or can't comment about private versus personal sector resume styles but you'll most likely get helpful critique on it by someone. And good luck!
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Mar 25, 2020 00:18
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Betazoid posted:Anyone? I'm putting in an application I'm super interested in tomorrow most likely and don't want to make any really dumb, avoidable mistakes.
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Mar 25, 2020 01:43
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I had a phone interview for a computer help desk job. I thought it mostly went well. I was asked what I'd do if it was a slow day. I wait for a call and try not to bother anyone, maybe bring some flash cards for the certifications I'm studying for. Make sure people know if I'm taking a bathroom break. I didn't think of "Ask for work." poo poo.
Dr Christmas fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Apr 10, 2020 |
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Apr 10, 2020 02:29
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Dr Christmas posted:I had a phone interview for a computer help desk job. I thought it mostly went well. I was asked what I'd do if it was a slow day. I wait for a call and try not to bother anyone, maybe bring some flash cards for the certifications I'm studying for. Make sure people know if I'm taking a bathroom break. I didn't think of "Ask for work." poo poo. For next time, try "get ahead on special projects to benefit the company, like X or Y." I write up process documentation for when I'm out of the office and someone needs to cover for me. Obviously, I just shitpost.
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Apr 10, 2020 04:54
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Best answer is some combination of "look to automate some of the repetitive things we do"and "look at some fingerprints of common problems and try to get ahead of things to solve them proactively, before a client needs to call in", depending on the type of call center, of course.
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Apr 10, 2020 05:04
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Lockback posted:"look at some fingerprints of common problems" I've never heard this idiom before, what exactly do you mean here?
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Apr 10, 2020 05:13
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Can I just vent for a moment about hiring managers and things they sometimes choose to reject candidates for? I know this makes me sound super negative and you might think it comes across in interviews, but I'm positive in them. I was presented a role as a staff accountant focusing on payroll and AP. The recruiter working with the company gave me the job description as is customary, but followed up with notes from a conversation with the HR person, saying try to really sell the following: “He needs to be flexible/adaptive, work at a very fast pace, able to juggle multiple priorities and shift gears quickly, open to stepping outside of his role, roll up your sleeves, can-do attitude, extremely collaborative, ownership approach, autonomous, proactive, independent problem solver – typical start up environment.” Alright, a little buzzwordy, but nothing I can't deal with. I know my answers to the typical questions by now, how my work history relates to the role, how I will adapt to responsibilities I haven't performed yet, etc. The actual interview, I felt, was actually the best one I've ever had. We established a rapport right off the bat, had a pleasant conversation about my background, the role, how the pandemic is affecting everything. There were no awkward pauses, no answers I wish I could take back/reword, or signs it was going badly. When the call ended, I was, for once, sure I nailed an interview. Most of the time, my thought is "it went fine, but it would be nice to be able to nail an interview for once" Not a half hour later, I have a talk with the recruiter, and the company is passing. Why? One reason I completely understand is that I did not have a satisfactory answer to the question "What do you like most about accounts payable?" Now for the life of me, I can't even remember what I said, just something vaguely positive, so I get it. The other one, I take issue with. I was thought of as "not mission-driven," because after she had just finished talking about how standardized and separated accounting tends to be from the rest of the company, though not in a negative way, I mentioned it was like that in a previous job in education- we, as a department, were accounting for projects but not versed on what the projects themselves were, as far as things that were going on in the field. Again, I do get it. I understand what happened there. I made me sound like I wasn't engaged and enthusiastic about the company or else I would know all about the projects. I should not have said it. But she just was musing about how much of an island we're on as accountants. I've been rejected plenty of times, and mostly with reasons I accept. Good experience but lacking specific knowledge, seeming to lack confidence in an interview, bad interview answers, etc. But whenever it comes to lack of enthusiasm, something about it rubs me the wrong way. I get that enthusiasm is important, but jesus christ I just want to work. I'm tired of having to sound like I'm on a mission to save the world just to get a job.
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Apr 10, 2020 06:31
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I know that feeling Moneyball, I think a lot of us do. The only consolation I can offer you is to confidently say that (a) you should take seriously the possibility that they can't/won't tell you the real reason they passed on you, so they fed you some bullshit (and if I read your post correctly the recruiter said they rejected you 30 minutes after your interview, that strongly suggests to me that they'd decided not to hire you before the interview), and (b) if the reasons they gave you were real then the people hiring at that company are lost so far up their own asses that they are doing you a longterm favor by not hiring you. Feeling rejected loving sucks and takes some time to get over, but you can always take positives from it, either in an "OK, I learned from this" way or a "gently caress those fuckers" way.
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Apr 10, 2020 08:11
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That's some unarguable bullshit, and almost sounds like you were baited into it while under the impression it was some light banter between colleagues in the same field. Truthfully it sounds like there was someone else in mind already, because nothing about even the two points of reference you elaborated on that they stated as justifications really send up a red flag, relatively speaking. It's also a bullshit treadmill, piled with more bullshit, and an incredibly self-destructive system for hiring to ask candidates to compete with a bunch of other faceless unknowns like that by posing crap open ended questions about the ephemerality of "work." Pitting people against each other at the lower or lowest levels when none of them truly give a gently caress about the "passion for accounting" and just want a job that they can do well enough to keep the gears turning is one of the dumbest conceits of the myth of "business efficiency." Sure there are probably more openings than candidates, but there's probably a lot more cost cutting you could do in the fat middle-management level (but really the C-suite  )for most companies that actually want operate like that if they were concerned with staying "lean and efficient" or whatever terms are most in vogue for a given decade. Rather than essentially requiring people to pretend to be totally enthusiastic about everything about working in office building #3562 that there is to be known, anyway.
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Apr 10, 2020 13:56
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Eric the Mauve posted:(b) if the reasons they gave you were real then the people hiring at that company are lost so far up their own asses that they are doing you a longterm favor by not hiring you. I'm going to guess it was this one. Usually there is no feedback at all, or something I could have predicted like it didn't go well or didn't sound confident. They had requested a phone screen about an hour after the recruiter sent over my resume a few days ago, so it fits with the HR person's speed in decision making. That's efficiency! HiroProtagonist posted:That's some unarguable bullshit, and almost sounds like you were baited into it while under the impression it was some light banter between colleagues in the same field. I'm trying not to take this one experience too seriously. I get the rationale behind the reasons she provided, even if I think they're bullshit. I realize the need to sound like I want to save the world even though I'm just going to be entering numbers in to an accounting system. I really wish I could just write a resume that would say: -Will show up every day unless in the hospital -Will do any work you ask for -Quick learner, motivated -These following people will attest to that:
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Apr 10, 2020 14:55
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Unsinkabear posted:I've never heard this idiom before, what exactly do you mean here? Fingerprints=characteristics of a problem. So, for example, if you have problems with a local AD controller going down you might see 403s in a certain IP range. Basically a fingerprint is "If these 2-4 things are happening it's almost certainly this problem". At a previous job we built a database of a bunch of them and then automated some actions so things could get fixed much faster. When they match fingerprints they look for specific matching points on the print, this is the same idea.
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Apr 10, 2020 16:47
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When I first started hiring I tried giving truthful, non-judgemental, one sentence answers to why we passed if someone asked. Then >50% of people would reply to my answer with some stupid bullshit. Now I send them a form rejection and I hear either nothing from them or a "thanks for letting me know." If a company tells you a reason 90% of the time you can straight up not listen. Its almost always bullshit. Listening is likely harmful as you'll optimize the wrong things.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:03
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Oh, and wonderful news. After phone screening for one role, waiting a week, video interviewing, waiting another week, their decision was to just hire no one and raise the requirements for the position. But hey, I was the top candidate  I need an income immediately. I'm going to have to start taking out money from my investment accounts at a 30% loss if I can't get some cash flow
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Apr 10, 2020 17:55
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Moneyball posted:I'm going to guess it was this one. Usually there is no feedback at all, or something I could have predicted like it didn't go well or didn't sound confident. They had requested a phone screen about an hour after the recruiter sent over my resume a few days ago, so it fits with the HR person's speed in decision making. That's efficiency! It sounds very much like they knew who they were hiring before the position was even posted, but they needed to conduct X number of interviews to satisfy HR policy before making it official, and were just getting that done ASAP so they can go ahead with the hire. Unless you have inside information to the contrary?
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Apr 10, 2020 20:48
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I'm interviewing right now and things are looking really positive. At what point in the process do I tell them my wife is having a baby in 6 weeks?
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Apr 11, 2020 06:59
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When they're making you an offer? Any time before that seems premature IMO.
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Apr 11, 2020 10:50
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Don't tell them and say you're as surprised as they are when it happens.
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Apr 11, 2020 14:00
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