Interviews as seen by HR and the candidate
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If HR isn't asking candidates about themselves as a person, or is only asking generic "Tell me about yourself" kinds of questions, then **they are doing it wrong. **
On the other side if a candidate doesn't have any questions about their future work environment, not just the role they applied for, then they too are doing it wrong. A candidate should care about whether they would fit into an environment / culture.
At its core employment is a relationship and both sides should treat it that way.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Yeah, some of the bandwagonny replies I'm seeing in this thread do not make their posters sound like someone you'd want to spend your working life sat next to.
You don't have to show interest in the company to help the CEO get richer, but you should probably show an interest in the company because it's where you're going to be spending 1/3rd of your entire waking hours from now on, and you're going to have a fucking miserable time of it if you've already decided to mentally check out before you've even got to the interview. Have some self-respect.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
It's either a business relation on both sides or it's a personal relation on both sides.
I was in Tech in Europe through the transition from when employees were people and the company was loyal to them and expected loyalty to the company in return (the age of lifetime employment), to the world we live in now were employees are "human resources", and for a great part of that period there was this thing were most employers expected employees to stay with the company whilst the company needed them and be dedicated to the company, whilst in return they treated employees as a business relationship with (in Tech) some manipulative "fake friendship" stuff thrown in (the ultimate examples: company paid pizza dinner when people stay working on a project till late, or the yearly company party, rather than, you know, paying people better or sizing the team to fit the work that needs to be done rather than relying on unpaid overwork) - still today we see this kind of shit very obviously and very purposefully done in places like Google.
Of course the "humour" part here is that plenty of managerial and HR people in companies still expect that employees are loyal to the company even all the while they treat them as disposable cogs who it's fine to exploit without consideration for their feelings or welfare - or going back to the first paragraph of this post: they relate to employees as a business relationship whilst expecting the employees related to the company as a personal relationship (often a "second family").
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To many people nowadays, the actual job itself doesn't matter, it's the fact that it's a job and it pays.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]IMHO, in Software Development it's a good idea for a candidate to ask about the project, if only because any good professional would want to know if they're a good fit or not.
Mind you, that makes sense in the Technical interview rather than with HR - no point in asking about what are the practical professional details of the work you will be doing from a person who doesn't really have a clue (the HR person) when you know you will be facing an actual professional peer in a technical interview who knows the work that needs to be done in your terms and with the level of detail and understanding only domain professionals have.
In my experience doing the Technical Interview side of things (and most of my career I was a Contractor - so a Freelancer - which is hardly a "company man" with a rosy view of my relationship to them or somebody who thinks people work for fun), people who don't ask about the project during the Technical Interview tend to as the interview proceeds end up get revealed as technically weak: an experienced "Engineer" would want to make sure they're well matched to the kind of work they're be doing (as well as, in my experience from the other side of the interviewing table, spot the messy fucked up situations before you take the contract so that if you can avoid ending in such disfunctional environments).
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You can buy loyalty. Give someone a high paying 3-year contract and they'll probably work to the end of it. But of course HR doesn't want to hear that.
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ASUS does seem to care more about their name than the quality of...
of anything they outputAre they bad? I have a plethora of ASUS devices and they haven't blow up yet. My TUF laptop in particular seems to be decently built, atleast with the shit tier standards of my country
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Yeah ok people.
It’s not possible to flourish in my line of work without genuine engagement, and a tenacity beyond curiosity to solve certain problems. A jobsworth will not do.
Neither, on the other hand, will a soulless boss or employer, manage to engage.
So keep up with the downvotes and good luck.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Look mate, I've been in Software Development for almost 3 decades, mainly in the Technical careed path (did some Project Management but, frankly, it's not my thing) and all the way to Technical Architect, in 3 different countries and most of it as a contractor, so I worked in quite a number of companies and work environment.
(I'm not trying to pull rank here, just showing that I've seen a lot)
In my experience, things like Enthusiasm are what bright eyed naive junior developers have: they're like me as a teen in the swiming pool having learnt to swim by myself and never having had lessons - intense strokes trowing water all over the place but moving very little for all that effort, or in other words lots of effort with little in the way of results.
Worse, Enthusiasm doesn't last forever and, further, most of the work than needs to be done is not exactly stimulating (if it was fun, people wouldn't have to pay money to others for doing it).
People who get at least some enjoyment of their work are good to have (and I'm lucky that after all these years I still get those moments of great enjoyment when at the end of doing something insanelly complex it all works), but in the real world most work that needs to be done is needed but boring so fun in that kind of task by itself won't be enough, plus such people are actually uncommon beyond the bright eyed young things, so if you want somebody who will actually deliver you results (rather than work a lot to achieve little) and you're not a prestigious company (say, like Google, which leverages their brand recognition to pull in such bright young things by the bucket load and drip them out drained of on the other side) and can't pay well above average, you're highly unlikely to get those kinds of people.
What you really want is people who have things like professional pride: they want to do a good job because they see themselves as professionals and feel a professional responsability to deliver good results in an efficient way that doesn't hinder the work of others.
I've seen over the years people with your perspective heading Startups or teams within small companies, and invariably they end up with unproductive teams filled with inexperienced people making all the mistakes in the book (and inventing new ones), enthusiastically. Maybe the people seeking such workers should've asked themselves what their real objective is in that: is it deliver the results needed by the company so that it prospers and grows or is it the pleasure of being surrounded by people having fun.
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R&D, software and embedded systems.
Small team, hugely collaborative by its nature and sometimes find ourselves faced with problems / puzzles with no apparent solution or precedent. Hugely rewarding when we can crack them.I do genuinely feel for other respondents who seem to be bitter or cynical - despite the banter.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Ah, no concreted metrics for efficiency and delivery of results.
Explains why you prioritize employees who have fun on the job rather than efficient professionals who are there to do a job well done - you can't really like to like compare with other teams (much less the broader industry) when it comes to delivering objectives because it's all open ended and unique, so you really don't know for sure which kind of employee is more effective but you do know for sure which kind is more fun to work with, hence you prioritize what you can measure - a fun team - not what is more effective and efficient.
Most work out there in software development is not "cracking interesting problems for fun without a strict timeline", it's "integrate new functionality into an existing massive custom-made system, which has at least 3 different styles of programming and software design because different people have worked on it over the last 8 years and only not a complete mess of spaghetti code if you're lucky" - not really the kind of work were Enthusiasm lasts long, but it still has to be done and sometimes, millions, tens of millions and even hundreds of millions in yearly revenue of some company or other rides in doing that job well and in a timelly fashion.
Don't take this badly, but from where I'm standing you're in the playground sandbox of software engineering. No doubt it's fun and even an environment others would love to be able to work in, it's just not the place for professionals and doesn't really reflect most of the software development being done out there, so not exactly a representative environment for determining what kind of professionals are suitable for the wider industry.
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Once I started burning companies the way they've burned me for years, employment got a lot better.
Fuck me? Nah, fuck you.
you won't get a good referral!
bitch, they won't call you anyway. I gave them my boss's personal cell number(my cousin).
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What is this for, absolute bullshit? You want to find somebody who fits in the team, that's exactly why you want to get to know them during the hiring process.
It's the same BS as that people shouldn't have pictures on their resume in the US. It's not like you can see based on first name and lastname(s) or if they even have second,. third, fourth etc names where the person generally has roots in a lot of cases. If you want to discriminate you can based on name as well.Edit: Companies shouldn't discriminate, but not adding certain info to your resume or not asking certain questions isn't going to help against discrmination.
Just to be clear, i didnt say it was to prevent discrimination, i said it was to prevent a credible discrimination lawsuit
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Are they bad? I have a plethora of ASUS devices and they haven't blow up yet. My TUF laptop in particular seems to be decently built, atleast with the shit tier standards of my country
The only laptop I bought from them used to thermal throttle in a 16℃ Air Conditioned room, despite being on a raised platform. They sold that in a country where 30℃ is considered normal. And this was a "Gaming" laptop.
Classic example of putting high TDP components in a low TDP box.
Then the customer support, to which I started my mail with something similar to, "I am not looking for Warranty", they just went ahead and kept on explaining why they can't provide warranty.
Another example of people not caring what you are saying.^[digression: this also seems why it makes sense to companies to consider using AI customer support. Because there standards are so low as to not require a consistent conversation]But granted, I didn't buy TUF etc.
When I was out to buy a GPU, I went with MSI instead of ASUS, because the pictures made me realise, they were not cooling the VRAM.
When I thought of buying an ASUS Wi-Fi router, I considered whether I really wanted to trust them with something like that, considering routers usually do not have active cooling. 10 years down the line, I haven't bought a new router and realised I never really needed it. Money saved. -
Regarding the payment info is why we need to have companies be more transparent all over the world. In NL it is already mandatory for companies to post some form of an annual report (sometimes very basic) and you can buy them for like 8 euro's or something. That way you can check those and see if how the company is doing in broad lines. If you notice that on their last annual report there iare red flags you can ask about that in your interview or just straith up deny working there since there is a risk they will miss payments.
In NL it is already mandatory for companies to post some form of an annual report (sometimes very basic) and you can buy them for like 8 euro’s or something
Same in IN, except that the "purchase" seems to be free over here.
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The part about asking what about the company resonates with you is a good interview question provided you hire for the long term. If you hire for a specific project what loyalty are you expecting?
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There are more things you could ask about even if the job description is good, though.
As a software engineer I like to ask questions about the team dynamic. I'm not interested in working with a bunch of bros, so having some diversity in the team is good.
Asking questions about the team and the work is how one detects and avoid shitty environments.
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In NL it is already mandatory for companies to post some form of an annual report (sometimes very basic) and you can buy them for like 8 euro’s or something
Same in IN, except that the "purchase" seems to be free over here.
Yeah idk why you need to purchase them, but whatever
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Ah, no concreted metrics for efficiency and delivery of results.
Explains why you prioritize employees who have fun on the job rather than efficient professionals who are there to do a job well done - you can't really like to like compare with other teams (much less the broader industry) when it comes to delivering objectives because it's all open ended and unique, so you really don't know for sure which kind of employee is more effective but you do know for sure which kind is more fun to work with, hence you prioritize what you can measure - a fun team - not what is more effective and efficient.
Most work out there in software development is not "cracking interesting problems for fun without a strict timeline", it's "integrate new functionality into an existing massive custom-made system, which has at least 3 different styles of programming and software design because different people have worked on it over the last 8 years and only not a complete mess of spaghetti code if you're lucky" - not really the kind of work were Enthusiasm lasts long, but it still has to be done and sometimes, millions, tens of millions and even hundreds of millions in yearly revenue of some company or other rides in doing that job well and in a timelly fashion.
Don't take this badly, but from where I'm standing you're in the playground sandbox of software engineering. No doubt it's fun and even an environment others would love to be able to work in, it's just not the place for professionals and doesn't really reflect most of the software development being done out there, so not exactly a representative environment for determining what kind of professionals are suitable for the wider industry.
A lot of what you’re saying is spot on and I respect your experience in this and the other comment.
I don’t hire for fun though. I hire for a diversity of perspectives, integrity and authenticity. We teach people how to constructively challenge and go after problems or objectives that may have no off the shelf solution (if they do, we may acquire it).
The problems are usually P&L quantified and prioritised before they get to us - we only have to do that legwork if it’s something we’ve generated.
It does feel like a playground to a degree and I do love the work - perhaps yes it’s less ‘professional’ and structured. We do have experienced devs and architects who I would hope aren’t reproducing problems - but it’s often our job to find a technical solution (if appropriate) to a problem, not to ‘productionise’ it or maintain it. This involves a handoff to others in the business and they ultimately determine how it is rolled out.
I get that this isn’t typical of the market and thanks for your response / take on this. One thing we have to be careful of is being ‘institutionalised’ and that will come across as naive, perhaps it is, but that has been a help.
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Yeah I'm not asking questions about the technical stuff I'm actually interested in to an HR drone
The answer to "What about us resonated with you?" would be:
"The job description you put up."
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Once I started burning companies the way they've burned me for years, employment got a lot better.
Fuck me? Nah, fuck you.
you won't get a good referral!
bitch, they won't call you anyway. I gave them my boss's personal cell number(my cousin).
You're married to your cousin? (/sarcasm, mostly)
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HOW DARE YOU ASK FOR COMFORT IN YOUR ONLY ONE LIFE???!!
Yeah its shocking we are not incredibly grateful isnt it.
"Nobody wants to work"...
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I've never understood why the HR people always see "not asking questions about the company" or "not demonstrating knowledge about the company" as such a red flag.
People are looking for a job, not a cult to join.
You would understand if you understood the mindset of HR employees. To them, you are joining a life mission, not just a job. And they have a plan for your life so it fits the company objectives. Super great. Except no.
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Jesus Christ, yes, I am a comfort hunter. You think I get up at the ass crack of dawn every day for fun? You think I want to push buttons on a computer all day because I'm just weirdly into it?
No! I do this shit because I have to!
Fucking hell. I've already accepted that I have to make your company money if I want to live in a house. For the love of all that is good in this world, PLEASE do not make me pretend to like it. I'm already weirded out that you're so into it.
You clearly are not a "team player". HR already has a plan for your life, all you have to do is follow their instructions and things are smooth.
Feeling unhappy? Deal with that outside of work, and make sure it dont affect your work.
If its one topic i really feel passionate about, its the entire anti-work thing. Because we are human beings. All of us work because we have to. And thats it.
