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I Got Catfished by a Candidate

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Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#231
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a contractor . That's the difference between him and an employee: He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it. If he's not allowed to do this, chances are you have an employee.

> He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it. all of this is entirely within the scope of the contract. "subcontracting" is unlikely to be permissible in a variety of scenarios, especially if the material being worked on is even vaguely sensitive. when it does happen, it's typically in a larger organizational context and then there will usually be some vetting or approval process.

You can put whatever you want in your contract. Good luck holding it up in court.

Personally, I wouldn’t talk too loudly about how I want contractors to behave like employees.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#232
post #86

sigh > Rule #2: Take a long hard look at a candidate’s social profiles. Is not having a LinkedIn account going to come back to bite me, even when applying for dev roles? I've had even senior devs at popular local dev shops say LinkedIn is a "necessary evil" because it: 1. is easy to grep 2. you can find whether a candidate has similar connections to you 3. recommendations I get New Zealand is small and the social gra…

Maybe it was because I was a junior developer at the time, on my first real job, but I found LinkedIn to be practically useless in New Zealand, specifically Wellington.

The Wellington tech scene is small enough and tight knit enough that I had no need for LinkedIn, things tended to get around by word of mouth as much as anything.

Since moving to Australia, I've actually started using LinkedIn and it was very useful for finding leads for work, and I still get recruiters periodically contacting me for positions.

I still see no utility in LinkedIn beyond using it as a job hunting tool though. I've never posted anything to LinkedIn, and never read anything on there either.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#233
post #209

I'm a recruiter. Three anecdotes come to mind for this topic: #1 I once sent out a coding test email to a candidate. Not long after I got an email back from this candidate saying "Hey bro could you do this test for me please." or words to that effect. Obviously mistakenly forwarded it back to me instead of to his bro who he wanted to do his coding test. #2 I definitely got catfished but it was by another recruiter wh…

I've been wondering how often #1 happens. Our coding test isn't particularly difficult but it is timeboxed, and somehow candidates pass it who take 15+ minutes to string together a for-loop when they come on-site.

Home based unsupervised coding tests are fine I think, as long as you ask the candidate to talk through their solution when they come in to meet in person.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#234
post #86

sigh > Rule #2: Take a long hard look at a candidate’s social profiles. Is not having a LinkedIn account going to come back to bite me, even when applying for dev roles? I've had even senior devs at popular local dev shops say LinkedIn is a "necessary evil" because it: 1. is easy to grep 2. you can find whether a candidate has similar connections to you 3. recommendations I get New Zealand is small and the social gra…

I find it handy because most of the time I know some shared connections and I can chat to them about the person (like you said, New Zealand is a small place). I know what you mean, I avoided creating a profile for the longest time, especially because they were doing a lot of shady stuff around sending emails to all your contacts. However I find it to be a genuinely useful tool now. In saying all of that, I'm not goin…

How long should a CV be for New Zealand companies?

A friend in Wellington (Andrew Amesbury) recommended that I rewrite mine with more details, even though it's now 7 pages instead of 2.

I worked at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare in Auckland while on a Working Holiday visa in 2011-2012. I still have some friends there, but they now outsourced their recruiting so internal references don't help as much. My previous boss (Mark Titchener) is retiring.

I'm looking to move to NZ later this year. The Skilled Migrant Category visa is the fastest route to PR anywhere in the world. I've been in Taiwan to get the required 3 years of continuous relevant work experience.

If LinkedIn is important, then please tell me what to change:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-burkimsher-b855bb8/

What are some popular web forums in NZ? I've found a couple of jobs through online communities, and was invited to visit Google in Taipei based on a post here on Hacker News. But staying in Taiwan won't solve my nationality issues, whereas moving to New Zealand would provide a safe, stable place to call home.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#235
post #144

Backdoor references are very unethical in my opinion. Beyond the fact that you are telling a third party about someone’s job search without the searcher’s consent, you can also get a very biased opinion. My wife was fired from a job at a well known University in the area. She had 2 bosses in a year, one of them twice after coming back from prolonged mental health leave. Within a month of coming back my wife’s boss ha…

Backdoor references are very unethical in my opinion. Beyond the fact that you are telling a third party about someone’s job search without the searcher’s consent, you can also get a very biased opinion. But frontdoor references are guaranteed to be biased no one (well, almost no one) is going to use someone that didn't like them as a reference, they are going to dig up someone that will say something good about them…

However isn’t the point that references are people who have worked with you and (hopefully) managed you. By calling a backdoor reference, you may not be calling a strong relationship and getting hearsay. For all the recruiter knows, they could be calling a coworker that asked the candidate out on a date and was rejected.

The whole point of references is that given the opportunity to put your best foot forward, can you find people to vouch for you. It may fall short, but so will calling a tenuous relationship.

I did quite well at my previous job (my boss has been a reference twice, in addition to my employee who took over my position when I left), but had a another specific manager been asked, I would have received an awful review, unrelated to my job, but because he hated my boss and therefore hated me and my team. We rarely worked together, and he has little idea of my accomplishments, but it wouldn’t be crazy to ask a director at my previous company for that backdoor reference.

Basically my issue is that I don’t believe that backdoor references are in any way more effective than regular references, but are tremendously unethical, and could lead to false negatives.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#236
post #41

The thing about checking social profiles for number of connections etc is strange to me, although maybe it makes sense in the sales world. I have a LinkedIn but rarely log into it, most LinkedIn emails get filed into spam. Missing good opportunities? Maybe. I dunno, it's just never been my thing. I hope recruiters, at least for developer roles don't use LinkedIn profiles and connection count as some sort of metric in…

I deleted my LinkedIn over a year ago and haven't looked back. It might be handy for sales folks but as a developer it's a cesspool of spammy content and dark patterns.

I’ve been thinking of doing this as well. While I do occasionally get hit up by internal recruiters, which I don’t mind, that happens infrequently. For the most part it is just 3rd party recruiters seizing on a keyword hit pertaining to something I did 10 years ago (“I have a great .Net role I think you’d be perfect for”).

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you are really saying is that you will fire people for lies bigger than a specific "threshold", which I understand and agree with. What I'm saying is that in the social work environment everyone lies to some level and it is actually widely accepted so. I googled exactly for 5 seconds and found this article to give you a couple examples: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11652018/10-que...

That’s not really what I’m saying at all. Every lie you tell jeopardises the trust you have amongst others. You might not get caught, and if you do, you may not damage the trust irreparably depending on the magnitude of the lie. I’m also saying that a workplace cannot be functional without trust, and that a workplace that tolerates dishonesty will invariably erode it. So unless you want to exist in such a workplace,…

Some people seem to think that people will lie about small things, but not big things. I kind of think that if you are willing to compromise your integrity for something small, you are definitely going to lie on the big things when the stakes are higher.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#238
post #203
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it. all of this is entirely within the scope of the contract. "subcontracting" is unlikely to be permissible in a variety of scenarios, especially if the material being worked on is even vaguely sensitive. when it does happen, it's typically in a larger organizational context and then there will usually be some vetting or approval process.

If you are controlling how work is done then you have an employee. If subcontracting is unacceptable and you are still hiring contractors then you are just trying to run around employment law, at least in the US

Just my $0.02... I have worked some jobs as an employee, some as a contractor, and in my experience there is really no difference between the two, other than how taxes (and social security, etc) are handled. My contracting jobs did not give me any more flexibility (and probably all had this "don't use a subcontractor" clause). How much leeway I had in choosing "the time, place, and manner of my work" depended entirely on the company, not on my status as an employee vs a contractor.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#239

You'll never be able to trust a candidate who lies. Blatantly lying to a potential employer will never work out well in the long run. Just don't do it. Programmers are lucky in that they can take code they've written, and say "see, here's my proof that I can do the job".Other types of jobs (like sales), however, are reputation based, and you damn well better make sure the opinion of the person who is vouching for you…

> Programmers are lucky in that they can take code they've written, and say "see, here's my proof that I can do the job"

Most of the code I write ss closed source and owned by my employer. I never get to show off the cool things I've done. As for doing side projects to show potential employers, I have very little 'personal' time on any given day between work and family life. I no longer code for fun. Now I do chores, read, and maybe sleep a little.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a reductio ad absurdum. But if you think your boss is dishonest with you, then go find a new boss. Dishonesty instantly destroys trust, and unless it’s about something entirely trivial, it’s almost impossible to restore it. A trustless workplace cannot be functional. You can point to examples of workplaces that are dysfunctional if you like, but it’s something I refuse to contribute to, or even tolerat…

I think what you are really saying is that you will fire people for lies bigger than a specific "threshold", which I understand and agree with. What I'm saying is that in the social work environment everyone lies to some level and it is actually widely accepted so. I googled exactly for 5 seconds and found this article to give you a couple examples: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11652018/10-que...

I find that people who work really hard to convince people that "everyone lies" are usually the biggest liars. So my advice: Stop lying, and stop trying to normalize lying.

To address the examples in the link given:

1. "Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?". There are honest ways of answering this question, or at least not-dishonest answers, that don't entail volunteering information that won't help you.

2. "Are you hungover?". Don't get shitfaced on a work night. If they're even asking you the question, you've already lost. Jesus Christ.

3. "What do you think of Bob?". Constructive criticism is how people improve, and many companies have formal peer review processes. If you can't answer that question without coming across as an asshole, it's not because you're being honest, it's because you don't know how to be honest without being an asshole.

4. "How are you?". This is just a synonym for "hello", except instead of saying "hello" back, you say "fine". That's not lying; that's just normal social etiquette. If you really want to be literal about it, you can still be tactful about it.

5. "Why are you leaving your current job?". Usually there are lots of very good reasons to leave your current job that 95% of employers will have no problem with. The fact that there are also other reasons that you choose not to volunteer isn't lying.

6. "Was this a bad idea?". Mind point #3: providing constructive criticism without being an asshole is an important skill. If they're not even willing to accept constructive criticism, then just don't offer your opinion (and find a new place to work). I can almost guarantee you, however, that most of the time, the people who run into this problem aren't the ones who are actually being asked their opinion--they're the ones volunteering it when it's unsolicited and unwanted.

7. "What do you think of me as a boss?". That's just "constructive criticism without being an asshole" again, with an extra dose of, "I suspect no one actually asked you that, and you just volunteered that information and got in trouble for being a tactless buffoon".

8. "What is your greatest weakness?". This is a shitty interview question, and you should respond with a joke about your favorite flavor of ice cream, and if they don't laugh, you shouldn't work there. I think this (and if you actually work places that ask you trap questions that you're not allowed to answer honestly, even if you're not an asshole) is a red flag of a toxic work environment. And yeah, if you're in a work environment where you have to tell lies to get by, then you should leave because that work environment is turning you into a cynical liar who writes cynical listicles trying to drag everyone else into the mud.

9. "Were you at a job interview earlier today?". I don't really have concrete advice for this, because I'm a software engineer and I would have to take a full day off for a job interview. But try changing your clothes or something.

10. "Is Bob cheating on his expenses?". If the truth is that you don't know, then saying "I don't know" isn't lying. If you do know, or at least if you know something, then share what you know. If your office politics have reached the "snitches get stitches" stage where genuine misconduct happens all the time and people can't even report it without it damage their careers--well, then you should find a new job, and you'll have a really good answer for why you're leaving your current job. Figuring out a tactful way of phrasing that is left as an exercise to the reader.

The listicle as a whole tells a very sad story: a story of someone who is trapped in a toxic and politicized work environment where outright misconduct goes on completely unchecked, a work environment that has driven them to drink and left them cynical, burned out, and assuming that every job they interview for will be more of the same. You can play "why don't you/yes but" all day and try to convince me your work environment is exactly that toxic, but there are two possibilities: either it's not actually that toxic and you're just being cynical and paranoid, or else you actually have a really bad job and need to leave before you turn into a paranoid cynic.

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