Caltrops - Still Life





	[quote name="Rafiki"]I have to hire a contractor to help me out. I hate reading resumes. I hate interviewing people. I hate talking to people. On the phone. In person. Looking at their ugly faces with bad teeth. Making eye contact. I hate people. I'm a good fit for this. This is in the Midwest, so naturally the recruiters are sending me an avalanche of gems. First two resumes I get are from 2 guys who have 8 pages of a gigantic wall of every tool and technology and platform they have ever heard of listed under each job they held. No real description of what they worked on, beyond, "USED ASP.NET TO CODE THE WEB PAGE. USED HTML/CSS FOR LAYOUT." Contain completely meaningless statements like, "USED JAVASCRIPT TO IMPROVE EFFICIENCY OF THE USER EXPERIENCE." No one ever used Javascript to improve anything because you can't. Fuck you. I'm assuming they were coached on the wall of tech to improve the likelihood they would show up in resume search engines. Needless to say, I was not impressed. PASS. Received a resume from a guy who started his career at IBM for several years then ended it at some random pizza joint (doing software!) in the middle of nowhere. Maybe he was hot shit and made a killing early in his career so he could fuck off and do whatever he wanted because he didn't need the money. On the other hand, his resume was a steady depressing decline over 20 years. PASS Received a resume from some woman who had been building websites via contracting for the last 10 years. Held 3 degrees: biology, fine arts, writing. Had never held a single job related to: biology, fine arts, writing. What? PASS. Received a resume from some woman who had a degree related to programming (it wasn't SE or CS, I don't remember what). A masters in Computer and Information Systems, which is great because we're doing a huge redesign of exactly that! She specialized in what we're working on! Maybe she can bring in some of her knowledge! Had a GPA of 3.4+ for both degrees. She also had 6 years of relevant work experience at some decent companies doing exactly the .NET work we were hiring for. Brought her in for an on-site interview because she was close. Chatted with her a bit, and she mentioned that she was contracted for 4 months at her current job but finished her work in 3 and had worked voluntary overtime to make sure she got everything done on time. Holy shit, did we manage to hit a jackpot? Intelligent, hard-working, relevant skills and experience. Then came the Q&A. She could not answer a <b><I>single question</I></b>. Not just technical questions, she couldn't even answer questions about her own resume and work history. And I don't mean she gave a wrong answer, or rambling nonsense answer, or lied. She said <I>nothing</I>. Dead silence for <I>minutes</I>. And she wouldn't just say, "I don't know," and she would insist on not moving on even though it was obvious she didn't have an answer. It became so awkward and embarrassing that every time I asked her a question I would immediately stare down at my notes worried that this was the most humiliating moment of her life. These weren't even complicated, challenging questions! They weren't supposed to be, they were just probing for boilerplate knowledge to weed out the stupids. For those of you that know anything about programming or web development, these are two of the actual questions that were asked: Q: [on web development] - What is a session, and give an example of when you'd use one? A: dead silence Q: [general software design] - What is the difference between an abstract class and an interface, and give an example of when you'd use each? A: dead silence This question is where I broke down and started trying to coach her through and make it easier and easier just so she'd get SOMETHING right. I eventually just asked her if she could give me an example of a single interface in the entire .NET framework and she couldn't do it. Questions about her work history: Q: It says here on you used AJAX on [project for past job], but it doesn't say how. What'd you use it for? A: dead silence for about four minutes, until finally I think we only used it one time, and I don't remember why. Q: It says here that at your current job you built an application from scratch. What does it do? A: dead silence Finally, after about 2 minutes, "I.....I'm not sure what you mean." I was so taken aback by this I didn't know what to say. Me: Uhhhhhh...I mean, what does the app do? Like.......just describe the basic functionality. Her: I don't....I... LOOK OF CONFUSION, LIGHTLY SHAKING HER HEAD AT ME Me: Uh, well, I mean, like, uhhhhh people used the app, right? Who's using it, what are they using it for? Her: Oh! The employees at the company are using it. [VERBATIM] Me: Well no shit. I'm lying here, but jesus Christ, how does someone not understand how to describe their own work? The next day I got an e-mail from the recruiter asking me what I thought because she thought the interview went great and was hoping to hear back. >:( [/quote]