Lone Coder Blog - A Lone Coder in a Big Pond

[Alex Beamish]

On 6/17/06, Ken Burtch <kburtch-Zd07PnzKK1IAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> This month I talk about dealing with depression if you are a programmer.
>
> "In 2005, I went for a job interview at a company in Niagara area which
> manufacturers equipment for dentists. The receptionist said I was the
> most polite and pleasant candidate they had interviewed. I walked into
> the meeting room to talk with the HR person. With too much make-up,
> over-styled hair and flirty-but-fashionable clothes, she looked like
> someone who wanted to be a regular on "Sex in the City". "Our company,"
> she said, "has offices in major American cities." You could almost hear
> her add, "And I won't be stuck in this backwater dump for long." She
> looked me over--overweight, glasses and balding--and immediately turned
> cold. I wasn't one of those handsome TV guys. I was a computer geek
> applying for a computer geek job. Interviewing me didn't fit with her
> plans for becoming Somebody..."


Hi Ken,

Dealing with HR is quite a challenge. They seem to be quite nice people, but
their job seems to be a really, really different job than what computer
geeks do. I think in order to make that meeting with HR work, you have to
play their game. You'll need the following Important Items:

[] Haircut, facial hair trimmed (men only);
[] The nicest clothes that you still feel comfortable in;
[] A briefcase if necessary;
[] Decent shoes; and
[] A positive 'Sales' attitude.

As another poster mentioned, a job interview is a meeting to see if you're a
good fit for the company, and if the company's a good fit for you. Both
parties are selling, and both parties are buying. This is no place for
"Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover".

After over twenty years of working on the software industry, I'm still not
sure what the right answers are to some of those HR stumpers:

[] Where do you want to be in five years? (I don't know .. In Madrid?
Driving a truck? Five years older?)
[] Why do you want to work here? (Because you'll pay me?)
[] Who's your hero? (Grace Hopper? Steve Wozniak?)
[] What's the accomplishment you're most proud of? (A dual mode
communications module implemented using a state machine with function
pointers, written using Object Oriented C .. are you OK? Do you need a glass
of water?)
[] Tell me about the last book you read. (Hint: Nothing from O'Reilly --
they mean something that had a plot.)

I think a job interview is like a performance, really .. and you have to be
up to giving a really good performance, even if it has little to do with how
you are in real life. In fact, a job interview is kind of like a software
demo. You smile, show everyone some cool stuff, crack a few jokes, they
laugh, applaud, and everyone's all smiles afterwards. To do that one on one
is tougher. A lot tougher.

I'm left-brained -- that means that when someone asks me an HR-type
question, I usually have to stop and think about an answer. One way to
prepare for that is to have someone bombard you with HR type questions --
you have to be ready to tell a story in 30 seconds that answers that
question. A yes or a no won't do it -- and a five minute discourse on
Captain Kirk vs. Captian Picard won't do it either.

Anyway, I'm just hoping my next employer is small enough that they don't
have an HR department, so I can skip that part of the hiring process
altogether. (I'm not looking for a job -- I'm just saying.) I'd rather drink
beer with a bunch of techies and see if we can work together, rather than
sit a chair with a glass of water in a really artificial social situation,
trying to make my way through the maze of HR-type questions.

I just wonder what it's like for an HR person to go through the same thing.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that.

-- 
Alex Beamish
Toronto, Ontario
ps Good luck, if you're still looking.
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