Tag Archives: Career

Job Search Woes: An Interview Episode

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While I am actively looking for a new position, I thought I’d do a series on job search woes. This will document the random and sometimes funny and weird people I meet while looking for a new position. Here’s the latest one….

Earlier this week I went for an interview, which should rate as one of the weirdest ones I’ve ever gone for!

Early in the week, I chanced upon a position in one of the job boards I frequent which really appealed to me. This was very similar to a previous position I was doing and I could do the job easily. Plus the position would also stretch me professionally (or so it seemed) and so very excitedly I applied for the position. This was around 10 am in the morning. Sometime around 1:30 pm in the afternoon, I get a call from someone asking me if I was interested in coming down for an interview. I don’t think they mentioned the name of the company (or perhaps I didn’t hear it?), but I agreed and we discussed dates and times and agreed to meet the next morning. Soon an email arrived from the person I spoke to earlier confirming the interview, but again no company name, just the time and address.

I reversed searched the number from where the phone call came and got the name of the company. When I logged into the job board, I was very excited to see it was for the job I had applied that morning. I did notice that the same company had multiple positions open at that point, but didn’t really check them out. I was very excited thinking that they had seen my resume and since I checked all the items they needed for the position, decided to call me for an interview so soon. Boy, was I to be proven wrong! I spent the rest of the day preparing for the interview.

During my research of the company, I came across some points which made me a bit nervous. Like this place, I had worked briefly at another place which had a similar structure and was essentially a one-man show. The owner/founder called all the shots and if they were unhappy with someone, out they went, justified or not. I hated working there from my second week and could not wait to get out. I am sure I do not want to be in a similar environment.

The next day I reached on time for the interview. When I arrive at the venue, while searching for the stairs to get up to the office, I saw two women seated at some chairs downstairs in the open. From the body language, it seemed that one lady was interviewing the other. My feeling was that this was my interviewer and the person they were interviewing was the person before me. I did wonder why they could not do the interview in the office but walked to the office to find out.

At the office, which was a small open-plan office, I was met with 4 youngsters (early to mid-twenties, all of whom from the accents and the way they spoke English seemed to come from the same Asian country). I was asked to fill up an employment form, which had no space to write anything (even the space for telephone numbers was woefully inadequate). So I wait there for the lady to come up to interview me. She comes up after a bit and then starts my interview. She asked me to go downstairs with her which I did. Now comes the fun part.

While walking down to the chairs arrangement, she starts by asking me if I have sales before. I found the question a bit funny because the position I had applied for was not a sales position. I thought she was pulling it from my resume and started talking about all the times I did sales and what I did in the different roles.

She keeps talking more about sales, asking me about big achievements and targets when she realises that I’ve applied for another position. She turns to me saying, “Oh, I see you’ve come for this position and not the other one”. I say yes and start talking about why I am a good fit for that position. So then she starts reading my resume and can’t find the information I am talking about. That’s when I ask her if she has a copy of my resume and she says, “Yes, I have this”, showing me a print-out. The print out was a screen shot from someone’s phone with just the top quarter of the first page of my resume (I have a three -page resume). The paper she had just had the accomplishments and core competencies, with nothing of what I had done previously. So I laughed and told her this is just a fraction of my resume and asked her if I could send her a copy. I didn’t have a soft copy with me but emailed her a forward from another application. All this while talking to her about myself.

Later, on reading my resume, she asked if I was interested in this other sales position. When she explained the position, I did say it was interesting, but I am clearly not very interested in it. She also spoke about working late on a regular basis, but I was quite pissed off by then, so I told her that while working late was not an issue with me, I am a big proponent of work-life balance. I also brought up my India trip in November (even though I wan’t going to at this stage), but I wanted to put all my cards on the table so if they do want to proceed further, they have all the information. As with all companies, salary also seems to be an issue here, with her asking if I will reduce my asking salary.

We quickly wrapped up the interview in less than 30 minutes (including the time I took to send her my resume) and she said she will speak to the CEO and see if she can try to arrange for a second interview with the CEO based on my resume for the position I applied for.

What was so strange to me was that it looked like they’ve just called all candidates who applied for an interview, without even going through their resumes. Second, they can’t even print out a legit, full copy of the resume which the job board would have sent to them. Third, they don’t even know the position the candidate has applied for!

I’ve pretty much written off this company and am not expecting anyone to call back. But the position (as it sounds on paper) was fascinating and if it is as it looks like, it’ll be something I’d love to do. So let’s see what happens. So far, they’ve not gotten back to me, though I suspect they won’t.

Ah well, c’est la vie….

Job Search Woes

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As you all know (reading my weekly rants), I’ve been actively looking for a new job the last few months. As it happens, nothing has yet materialized, but I have been mulling about this for the past few days.

 

 

In addition to corporate organisations, I have also been applying to educational institutions and government agencies. Most of these have a form that you have to fill in, which includes your credentials. These credentials include transcripts and marks for all the subjects you gave exams for from as far as the equivalent of your O and A levels. I understand that if you are a fresh graduate applying for your first job, these marks would make a difference to the hiring manager, especially if the position is in your field of expertise and your marks reflect your understanding of the subject.

But what if the position in question is for someone with a couple (or more) years experience? Why would your ‘O’, or ‘A’, or even graduate degree marks and grades matter? Most likely than not (except for some specialised fields), the person’s educational qualifications have nothing to do with the position in question. I mean a marketing or admissions officer would not have studied anything of this sort in school? At the most, the most relevant qualification in question to the position should be taken into consideration when asking for transcripts.

 

I can never understand this obsession with irrelevant grades here (though I am not sure how this works elsewhere). Recently the government made much-needed changes to the PSLE exams (which BB & GG went through last year) and the goal is not to compare children against each year and remove the dreaded T-score but allow for a more holistic educational experience. But with this in their lives 10-15 years down the line, what message does that send to children?

 

Another thing which really bugs me no end is the ghosting by companies. When you send applications for a position, you mostly don’t hear back from them, unless you have been short-listed for an initial interview. While I understand this, given the sheer number of applications each position must receive, what I don’t understand is a similar stand when they call applicants for an interview. Unless you are the successful applicant, you will have no idea on the status of your application – it’s all floating in the ether! Surely when companies take the time to speak to an applicant to gauge if he/she are a good fit for the organisation, then surely, they can take 5 minutes of their time to let the applicant know if they make the cut or not.

 

After going through years of my applications being lost in space, I’ve learnt not to take anything for granted. I will consider the job mine, only after signing on the dotted line and perhaps completing the probation period. After all, anytime between the signing of the contract and becoming permanent, the company is still within its means to say goodbye to me summarily.

What about you? Do you have any interesting job search woes? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section…

Wish we could mute some people!

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When you work with someone eight hours plus everyday five days a week, you get to learn quite a bit about that person!

Some people immediately connect with you and you become friends at the snap of a finger and some people, for reasons probably unknown to you, except at a very subconscious level, you just can’t seem to be in the same room with without getting irritated with something they say or do.

There was this person J who worked with me a few years back who was someone like that. He walked into a cushy job with hardly any talent, actually I am wrong; he did have the talent to schmooze with the boss and since he used to help the boss with a lot of personal things (read ferrying him home and to the office, using his personal time to do the boss’ personal work), you get the drift right?….

Anyway, this person used to bulldoze people and get them to do work and take complete credit for it.

This story is about one such incident, which at that time made me mad, but now in retrospect, makes me laugh!

At that time, the management committee wanted to hire a deputy for ‘the boss’, but the boss didn’t want anyone but him to be the alpha male of the pack. He didn’t have much choice, so he reluctantly advertised for the position. When the applications started coming in, he sent the whole bunch over to me to short-list, which I did. Then interview invites were sent to some 7-8 of my top picks and the big day arrived! Since I was responsible for shortlisting people, I was asked to join the boss and two other senior persons for the interview. J could not take this lightly, since he saw that as diminishing his status, so he got himself also invited to the interviews. Another colleague, who was in the same position as me and J (experience, qualification etc.) rounded up the number as she could not be ignored too.

So we are six people in the room, of which four are technically people who could be reporting to the successful candidate. The interviews start and by the second interview I realized one thing – every question I asked the previous candidate was now posed hurriedly by J to the next candidate. The first time he did it, I thought it was a coincidence, the second time I noted it, I got irritated and by the third candidate, it became funny! Then it became a game with me to ask the most candidate-specific question I could ask (which was easy for me since I had reviewed their resumes before short listing them) so that J could ask them the next time round.

And it was funny the way J would ask the question quickly (the first or the second) before I was able to do so, so it that I could not reuse my own questions…

The shocker was that at the end of this whole pointless exercise, ‘the boss’ was quick to appreciate his protégé with the insightful questions he asked.

It was puke or laugh hysterically there and then! I took the cowards way and excused myself to run to the washroom where I could laugh and rant simultaneously

I finally did i…

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I finally did it! After months of agonising over it, I took a huge – and I mean a really HUGE leap of faith and did it on Monday. What did I just do? Well, I resigned from my current employer without having a new one all lined up. This is the first time in my career that I’ve done this. And it seems not a moment too soon. My domestic helper who returned back from her holiday after unexpectedly getting married has been giving me so many problems. Today she crossed all limits. She likes to dish out insults to me all the time, but will not take anything. So I’ve decided to terminate her services and send her back to let her transfer to another employer.

So now I’ve to review what I want to do in life plus search a new helper. Wish me luck…

Dilemma of a mother

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Yesterday at work I got a call from GG. She sounded quite upset and asked me this question, “Mama why don’t we both spend more time together doing things?” I was quite set out by this question and the rest of the work day deteriorated. I spoke to her after I reached home and told her that when we go on our holiday (soon, very soon), we’ll do some mom-and-daughter stuff together like shopping and leave the boys at home

This morning when I woke up and checked my Facebook news feed, I saw that an old school friend had quit her job to be a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom) since her daughter was giving the equivalent of what is the O Levels here in May 2012. She wanted to be with her and give her moral support.

Everyday, especially now that the holidays are on, both G & BB don’t want me to go to work. On Monday when I was at home nursing a cold, both of them were so happy to see me there with them the whole day that it literally broke my heart!

This is an issue I’ve been grappling with for the past year or so. On on hand I do want to be a SAHM and be there physically for my children, but on the other hand, without the intellectual stimulation that work gives me, I am worried that I will mentally atrophy. I think going to work gives me the much needed ‘me time’ I need without needing to be a mom 24/7 and getting called to settle any/all differences/fights (choose the word) at home. The income I earn is useful too, to ensure that we are able to give our children all the extras that we want.

On one hand, I do know that if my current position was as interesting as it was made out to be in the initial interviews, then maybe I would enjoy this a lot more. As it is, the project I was hired for has been moved to mid next year and so i do not have any ‘output’ to show. Also since I leave about 3 hours earlier, the impression I get is that I am not thought as part of the team and things are happening without my involvement. Aah well, the best thing for me to do is to either accept this or quit. I have about a month to think through this well and would have made my decision by the time I am back from my holiday!

In the meantime, here’s something that came on my Facebook newsfeed a couple of days back. It’s an ivillage article about being able to afford to stay at home and what you can do if that is what you want to do.