Funny you should mention what you did, one of my biggest pet peeves when
I interview for positions is "I want you to meet our whole team"
statement. As an example I flew for on-site interview for a Security
Architect position in a major Medical Organization some time ago, before
my current position.
Before I agreed on flying onsite I did talk to the manager who would be
my direct report, and he grilled me technically for about an hour or so.
That should have been my first clue, anyone who runs an interview like a
Physics Finals, you need to watch out and probably consider not to
pursue the position.
But I really thought the opportunity was terrific and the geographical
location was where my wife wanted to move to. So a few days after a
phone interview they asked me to fly in for an interview. Second clue I
had that this was not going to go well, is when they asked me to do a
one day turn around, meaning fly in in the morning and fly back in the
afternoon. I got up at 4am to catch my 4 hour flight. In the past I
have always turned things like this down, because you need to be at your
best at an onsite interview, and its hard to be at your best with
several hours of sleep and 4-6 hours of travel.
Third clue I had and did not pay attention to, is that the hiring
manager would not be there, he was out of town. Anyway I arrived at the
site and started the interview process with two people who would be my
counterparts, it went very well and they actually were very pleasant and
knew how to tactfully perform a technical and personality interview.
After two hours with them I was invited to sit in a middle of a circle
of about 15 other employees, some of which would be my subordinates,
that went relatively well I though... :)
At the end of about five hours of interview I has a short conversation
with my potential counterparts, and they volunteered that everything
went well and they were very pleased with me.
A few days later I learned from a recruiter that I was passed for the
position, because some of the "team members" found me too aggressive.
Since I know I didn't try to bite anyone and I was too tired to lunge
towards someone, it came down to a potential subordinate being
threatened by me for what ever reason. I'm not claiming I was unjustly
judged, I am sharing this story, to maybe help others recognize clues
that they can use to avoid a bad interview.
Final note to mention is that this facility has been recruiting for this
position for over 9 months, so obviously what they feel is a team
approach is not necessarily the best. One more comment to share, I am
and have been a hiring manager in the past, and I have used a
subordinates ("team members") to conduct a technical interview. One
event that stands out in my mind is when I had a "team member" conduct
an interview and he said the person "was not technically fit" and he
strongly suggested that we don't consider him, fortunately for me My
manager and I felt different we saw through his nervousness and realized
he was simply not good at being "grilled", we did hire him and he turned
out to be one of our best Senior Network Engineers.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Golden_Eternity [mailto:bhodiat_private]
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2001 3:09 PM
To: securityjobsat_private
Subject: RE: buzz words/resumes and call backs with recruiters
> Not to say that a badly written resume is as good as a well-written
> resume, heavens no. Just that it seems broken to buzzword-stuff a
> resume in order to get past a broken hiring process. Would you really
> *want* to work for a company stupid enough to let people in field A
> make hiring decisions for field B?
At this point, I will work for anyone that will pay me. That would be a
step up from my last job.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jul 05 2001 - 09:14:48 PDT