What do you do?

Heylel · Aug 21, 2015

So did I. There's an EEOC requirement that jobs have to be posted for X days before filling them, at least for public sector stuff. In this case, I'm really leaning towards it being a computer thing. I feel like my guy on the inside would have told me if there was someone ready to step right into the job.

The lesson here is to make sure that your internal referral is ready to jump and go talk to the recruiter on your behalf the moment you submit. I didn't realize he wasn't in the office that day, and I should have coordinated.

Noodleface · Aug 21, 2015

At my work, if I'm going to refer someone I submit their resume myself. I assume that our internal resume system takes employee referrals over outside applicants as they've always gotten interviews when I've done this (plus I get paid).

Heylel · Aug 21, 2015

Yeah this was new to me. I was just told to apply, put his name down, and he'd walk over to speak with someone. It seemed strange but it was his idea that I apply so I don't have any reason to assume it was a brush off.

I really think it just didn't get seen.

Update, because the thread has become my own personal jobs blog: Heard via a mutual contact (not my referrer) that my resume looked great but was too academic and they want someone with industry experience. This is the second time I've gotten that response.

Palum · Aug 21, 2015

Welcome to job hunting in the 21st century: structuring your resume to hit all major keywords.

BrutulTM · Aug 21, 2015

Borzak_sl said:
It's amazing the number of resumes I get that have a glaring spelling error in job titles, the industry they worked in and stuff like that. Plus the number of ones that have a phone number with an extra digit in it and stuff like that. Not even talking just a regular spelling error in a sentence. Doesn't help that even petro chemical won't go thru a spell check and a 1,000 other job related words. I have seen a few that I know they ran spell check and shouldn't have. Petrol-chemical is a common one. Nobody works in the petrol-chemical business in the US but that's what word changes it to.

I'm always tempted to call and ask if they knew who they worked for and what they did. Some of them are pretty obvious they "heard" it from someone but have never seen it written down.

When they offered me my job as a Telemetry Engineer my soon to be boss called me and asked if I was interested in telemetry. I said that I was and then as soon as I got off the phone with him I rushed to the internet to find out WTF telemetry was.

BrutulTM · Aug 21, 2015

Picasso_sl said:
I use excel substantially to get my shit done and I've never heard pivot table.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I am by no means an excel expert but I've used it quite a bit and never heard of a pivot table.

Noodleface · Aug 21, 2015

BrutulTM_sl said:
When they offered me my job as a Telemetry Engineer my soon to be boss called me and asked if I was interested in telemetry. I said that I was and then as soon as I got off the phone with him I rushed to the internet to find out WTF telemetry was.

My first real job here was solutions engineer. They offered me the job before I even knew what it was

PS it sucked

Big Phoenix · Aug 21, 2015

Borzak_sl said:
Thankfully next Friday hell or high water I'm out of this.

Guy who I was supposed to come in for an interview, lunch and spend some time looking around at the town etc...called me just now.

He got a flight this afternoon and flew back home. He wanted to know if he sent his receipt for his flight, hotel, and car rental if we would reimburse him.

What happened?

Borzak · Aug 21, 2015

We really didn't have a long conversation. He did email me a copy of his hotel and flight receipt. Last night all I said was umm no. He said it just wasn't for him apparently. Maybe too many Mexicans lol I dunno. Probably not it's like 98% white here and the shop has about 5 out of 100.

No clue. He called on my work cell phone and I was at the house so I really didn't want to get into it.

Borzak · Aug 21, 2015

BrutulTM_sl said:
When they offered me my job as a Telemetry Engineer my soon to be boss called me and asked if I was interested in telemetry. I said that I was and then as soon as I got off the phone with him I rushed to the internet to find out WTF telemetry was.

I did pick up a new interview technique from the president of the company here. When he interviewed me we took a tour of the shop and the yard. It took about an hour and he threw in a couple of things that obviously weren't true. Stuff like "We have always used D size plots" when they were C size. "Almost all of our welding is Mig", we toured their submerged arc deal they made to piece large panels together automatically.

He threw in a couple of more and when we got into the office and sat down I brought them up and he said he wanted to see if I knew what I was talking out.

Put it in my back pocket for later use. A couple of others in the office asked me what crazy stuff he told me during my interview because he had done the same to them.

But I have googled a few things that people bring up because it's all made the same but every customer calls it something else. I had no clue what a herseg was. I had to google to find out it was a Heat Recovery Steam Generator was. Looks like a lot of other shit I've done it's just got different stuff inside that we don't screw with any way.

Kintun · Aug 22, 2015

Gotta say, as an ex-IT person and currently as an entry lawyer, Pivot Tables are great for trending or parsing large excel data dumps. But on the same note I've noticed most people look at me blankly when I mention them. Definitely worth playing with assuming you have a large enough feed to make them worthwhile.

BrutulTM · Aug 22, 2015

I've never been a fan of trying to trick people in interviews. We used to have a guy who would make interviewees do stupid shit like draw a counter circuit on the whiteboard. To me that is bullshit because who the fuck cares if they remember some detail from a 100 level digital devices class? Maybe it's different when you're hiring people with a lot of experience, but when you're hiring people out of college I think it's a lot more important that they have a decent personality and that they will fit in with the group than whether they remember shit from their classes. If they got good grades then they are relatively smart and/or willing to work hard which is what matters. You're going to have to teach them the job anyway and if they need to know how to make a counter they can just google it.

Borzak · Aug 22, 2015

I can see that for people just out of college. The stuff he mentioned weren't really questions but comments about what they did. It was really really really easy stuff to notice it was completely wrong.

The QC guy said he thought he did it to see if you would correct the boss when he was obviously wrong.

It would like me asking an IT person a question and he didn't know the difference between a tablet and a server.

Angelwatch · Aug 22, 2015

A bit late to the party.

In Accounting we use Excel. A lot! Pivot Tables, Vlookups, graphs, charts. All of it. I actually learned how to make a Pivot Table way back in Excel 97 when I was putting together production reports for management. I took over the position as an intern and had to learn Excel really quick. Once I got the hang of them it wasn't too bad. Today you just select a bunch of data, select Pivot Table and drag and drop things around until you get what you want.

My resume hit two pages a few years back. In college they really stress only doing one page until you have enough experience to justify a two page resume. For years I jumped through hoops to keep it to a single page but now I lose too much relevant information by condensing it down to a single page. Once you have certifications, education, experience, computer skills and so on you really need a second page. But for a recent grad or someone without too much experience (only a single job for example) you want to keep it to a single page. In that case if you stretch it out to two pages it actually doesn't look good for you. I still have a single page "summary" version but my two page version is much stronger.

Mist · Aug 22, 2015

Noodlemod_sl said:
My first real job here was solutions engineer. They offered me the job before I even knew what it was

PS it sucked

Yeah, my new job is 'convergence engineer' which apparently means 'stare at alarm screens and write tickets until your will to live expires.'

Angelwatch · Aug 22, 2015

When I interviewed for an entry level Accounting position at a Financial Institute the hiring manager made me take a quiz. If you knew basic accounting it was really easy. It was just a test to see if you had a basic understanding of journal entries and how interest revenue was recorded. I nailed the quiz and got the job. A few years later when our team was hiring she continued to give that quiz and it was amazing to see how poorly some people did. It was definitely a good way to weed out people who had no business in Accounting.

Noodleface · Aug 22, 2015

Mist_sl said:
Yeah, my new job is 'convergence engineer' which apparently means 'stare at alarm screens and write tickets until your will to live expires.'

I actually got hired on as a software engineer because the company didn't have the solutions engineer role defined well enough, but I did no software engineering. It was really a systems engineer type job where I did what I could equate to as pcpartpicker.com stuff for our large business units. The difference was these groups were paying millions of dollars for us to design their systems.

Mist · Aug 22, 2015

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I would rather be dead than have this job. The hours are the absolute worst. 10 or 12 hour shifts running to midnight.

Heylel · Aug 25, 2015

Question for folks about internal referrals. Should I expect some sort of confirmation that my info was received? I've had three separate acquaintances ask me to send them a resume to pass on, but I haven't seen any feedback yet. With normal online apps, I at least get an email that they have my info in the system. I'm not sure how to follow up.

Vinen · Aug 25, 2015

Heylel_sl said:
Question for folks about internal referrals. Should I expect some sort of confirmation that my info was received? I've had three separate acquaintances ask me to send them a resume to pass on, but I haven't seen any feedback yet. With normal online apps, I at least get an email that they have my info in the system. I'm not sure how to follow up.

Never got a confirmation. Usually just get a call from HR/Internal Recruiter.

One suggestion is to ask the person who forwarded your resume to ask?

What do you do?

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