AJ'S SQA Space

Interesting Interviewing Incidents

Forgive me 4 trying 2 come up with a clever title to this entry! I'm tired of saying I this and I that since I've been interviewing very actively recently...

Some incidents and fun things that happened to me over the past few months while interviewing I wanted to just share with you.

Situation 1:

Dealing with ambitious interviewers…

During the last year or so, I’ve been part of both ends of this situation!

What do you do when the candidate you’re interviewing happens to be clearly less qualified than yourself for the job they’re interviewing for… Say: Your own manager!

Well in my opinion… This is when you take a slap in the face, update your resume really quickly and start interviewing with other companies, because your own manager does not see eye-to-eye with you and prefers to hire somebody else rather than promoting you! I’ve interviewed somebody like that, and perhaps subconsciously was too upset to even see the person in front of me. I was really passive, but I was trying not to offend… But the person nevertheless was offended with the style of questions I asked. Well sorry for being a little too critical.

On the other hand… I’ve interviewed many places in the past few months. I only wanted to mention this to see if others shared the same experience and how they adapted to it and if so, what success rates they had with it! So while interviewing, I’ve noticed a few places where you meet the lead of the QA group, who although is experienced, is clearly less qualified than you… Well this person may have a hidden agenda! In a lot of cases these people would feel threatened by hiring you since it may jeopardize their own advancement or gaining a promotion to manage the group perhaps a year down the line. So getting you in the company may derail that ambition! So the end result of that interview is that even you think you did really great on that interview and answered every question, hit every curveball out of the park and thought your had charmed them, they come back with the feedback of well so and so guy thought you were weak on something which is probably not even part of your job but because they had learned something that only they knew, they expect you to have that feather on your head also!

I know I mentioned the 1^st situation 1^st because it happened to me in that order, but I actually have hired people that I believed were really good and deserve to be in my company for being really qualified and even if that may hurt my promotions in the future, which actually was the case, but I’m a firm believer in “love for others what you love for yourself!” Even if you may get somebody in who happens to be better than you, at the end of the day, your company is benefiting and therefore it’s translating into benefit for yourself. I have hired people who became my managers, but I truly believed they were better! But when your manager or director gives you a candidate who is clearly really junior to yourself, I would take that personally! I do not consider that selfishness! All I demand in life (and I know, I usually earn) is respect!

Situation 2:

To Be Continued…

So Perhaps the subject of this entry should be Unbelievable Underworld of Unemployment…

To make it U U U instead of I I I !

:)