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The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

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Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

#71

Post by ogdrhr »

Gravityloss wrote: post #68
brandonmenc wrote: post #47

>"If someone doesn't send a thank you email, don't hire them". I recently went through a short job search for programming work in Austin. I made it all the way to the final, on-site interview at three places before landing an offer. Every time I did not get an offer, I would get an email saying "thank you so much for your time, please reply with your concerns or questions!" And so, each time, I sent and email asking…

Aren't there legal reasons why it's unfavorable to the company to really go into too much detail why they didn't hire someone?

Yes, there's no way to win as the hiring entity, you just open yourself up to discrimination lawsuits. So it's better to do the inhuman thing and say nothing!

Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

#73

Post by kitten_mittens_ »

mnm1 wrote: post #45
cgriswald wrote: post #23

> Why would people want to work in such a homogeneous culture? Why would they want to work for someone who couldn't even be bothered to search the web for "How to pronounce Nguyen"? Hilariously, I did a search for "How to pronounce $my_last_name" and each result I checked mispronounced it the same way English speakers always mispronounce it.

Yeah seriously. Almost every single American mispronounces my name even after I say it multiple times. Hell, they mispronounce common, one syllable American names like "Lou" more than half the time. When I tell them my name is like another name they can pronounce except without the "o" at the end, they still can't pronounce it despite being able to pronounce my name with an "o" at the end. After three decades of this…

Germans pronouncing my American first name is the same way. It's a boring common Old Testament name. German has all the phonemes they need to say it too, even if the vowel is off a bit.

It's just something that happens, and I don't blame them for it after so long. I get the feeling that Anglicizing or Deutchifying names is universal.

Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

#74

Post by meansSomething »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #67
rhizome wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After that, I quit playing the ultra polite send-a-thank-you for every single phone call or meeting I was graced with, and sure enough, I got a couple job offers after that. I wouldn't be surprised if deciding not to worry about details with unknowable significance and inconsistent response allowed you to relax a bit more in future interviews.

Same trick worked for young me when I started dating...

Probably means trying to master that one little trick (interviewers hate him) is for the birds.

Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

#75

Post by kovrik »

axle334 wrote: post #12

These "rules" miss the big picture. People react in certain ways for entirely different reasons. Example: Recruiter mispronounces my name. I don't say anything. This can be because: 1) I'm a coward. 2) I don't care. 3) I care and am not a coward, but think it would be petty to interrupt the conversation to point this out. 4) I'm overly practical and don't care about this kind of details. 5) I think the other person m…

Agree.

People often 'mispronounce' my first name (can't even pronounce last name). Honestly, I don't care. I don't blame them because they pronounce it from English point of view which is obvious as they are native speakers.

Some people ask me how would I say my name (I am Russian, but live in NZ), I tell them. Some people then try to say it that way, sometimes they 'forget' and fallback to English pronunciation. What's the big deal?

I can't even imagine myself being offeneded by that (Is author a child or what?). Same goes the other way: NZ is a diverse country, we have people from all around the globe here, and I bet I mispronounce every second name/last name.

Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

#76

Post by ravenstine »

IshKebab wrote: post #55
overgard wrote: post #48

It's almost not worth complaining about because of the ubiquitous of it, but I absolutely hate and make a point of never doing this if I'm interviewing someone: 1) Puzzle questions not related to the work they'd be doing. It's ok to have a somewhat puzzling geometry puzzle if they're doing, say, 3d work, but for a web dev? Etc. etc. 2) Coding on a white board. Can't you just setup a laptop in a conference room? Or ha…

I write code on a whiteboard, when discussing how to solve a problem with colleagues. Almost exactly like in an interview. Do people really not do this?

I don't ever do this, and none of the teams I've worked on have ever used whiteboarding. Even pair programming is more common.

Morevover, testing a candidate on whiteboard is like expecting all your candidates to be good with Emacs, even though that says zilch about their coding skills. Whiteboarding is just a tool like any other, and you(the interviewer) are limiting your talent pool by expecting everyone to not only be comfortable whiteboarding but to approach whiteboarding just like you do.

Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

#77

Post by fencepost »

brandonmenc wrote: post #47

>"If someone doesn't send a thank you email, don't hire them". I recently went through a short job search for programming work in Austin. I made it all the way to the final, on-site interview at three places before landing an offer. Every time I did not get an offer, I would get an email saying "thank you so much for your time, please reply with your concerns or questions!" And so, each time, I sent and email asking…

each time, I sent and email asking "what did I do wrong, and what could I improve?"

There's no upside for the company in giving any substantial answer to questions like this, and significant potential downside.

Among other things it's generally not going to be that you were rejected for the position, it's that someone else was chosen over you. "Rejected" would be "we'd rather leave the position vacant than hire you" and if that's the case there's even more reason to not tell you unless it was for purely technical reasons.

Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

#78

Post by skookumchuck »

ogdrhr wrote: post #71
Gravityloss wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there legal reasons why it's unfavorable to the company to really go into too much detail why they didn't hire someone?

Yes, there's no way to win as the hiring entity, you just open yourself up to discrimination lawsuits. So it's better to do the inhuman thing and say nothing!

That's right. The other reason to not give feedback is the rejectee will inevitably start arguing with you about it, demand more detail, try to reopen negotiations, tell you how unfair/wrong you are, etc.

I've tried it both ways. Not giving feedback works much, much better.

Re: The Secret Rules For Getting Hired

#80

Post by gumby »

Grustaf wrote: post #33
gumby wrote: post #20

> "The whole team thought you were great. You were probably the strongest candidate overall, but we were looking for someone with experience in XYZ." Wow, my GF just related this to me literally last week. She liked the team she interviewed with as well. (I'm relieved actually as she got a job offer in hand for a place much closer to home).

If you have a skill that might be relevant to the company you're applying to, wouldn't it be in your best interest to emphasize that? Sure, recruiters are often quite clueless, but that's just how it is, so we have to increase our chances given the circumstances.

You don't always know what skills are appropriate -- that's part of the purpose of the interview, for you to learn what the job, team, and company are like.
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