Interviewing

After spending 2 weeks being an interviewee trying to secure my new job, I have been spending the past week being the interviewer trying to find the right person to fill my current position.

I don't know which is worse. Being the interviewee and being grilled non-stop by the interviewers in the room. Or being the interviewer and having to put up with the interviewees. I mean its great if you have good candidates, but not if you have to put up with idiots.

I've interviewed 4 prospective people for my current position already. Some of which look really good on paper (their resumes). And I mean really good. One of the guys I interviewed had his MCSE, CCNA and has 10 years experience contracting in the industry. I seriously thought he was over qualified for the role. But since my manager has this thing about interviewing people who are willing to work at a much lower salary, I agree to do the interview. (see: Why should I hire you?)

Personally, I would probably never agree to an interview with a guy who is over qualified and is willing to work at a much lower rate than the industry standard. I mean, doesn't that just spell the word... W R O N G... to you ?! The second word that comes to mind would be 'Desperate'. Either way, something is obviously wrong. I mean if you are that qualified and why would you still want to be applying for such junior roles which pay at a much lower salary rate ... ?!

As expected, the 10-year-experience-guy was totally crap. He couldn't answer any of my technical questions. (and they weren't that technical either... e.g. the difference between RAID 0 and RAID 5... any reasonable Systems Engineer should be able to comfortably answer that). But he couldn't. The only 'standard' answer he gave me was, "You know, I've worked at very big companies before, and I know the answer, but I just can't say it at the moment." or "Sorry, I wont be able to answer that properly unless I'm in front of the server".

To which I said.. "The role requires a great deal of troubleshooting remotely over the phone, so how would you handle situations like that ?"

He's answer ? = *silence**

The second guy I interviewed wasn't much better. His only answer to any situation was to reboot the server.

Which is probably a valid point in any server environment with a Windows system running on it. But wouldn't you atleast look at the event logs or maybe check out what is wrong first ?! Nothing. And when I asked him that we have strict SLAs to conform to, which does not allow for much outages during the day, to which he would have to do something to try to keep the system running until he can reboot the server. And so with this situation I asked him what would he do in this case... and his reply was ? Nothing.

By the end of the 3rd interview, I was ready to knock myself unconscious against the wall and then proceed to throw myself out the 43rd floor of my building.

The forth guy was interesting. He's hobby is snowboarding and he has worked as a bartender before. Is a cool, bright, easy going and willing to learn type of guy. Technically, he is probably borderline. He couldn't answer half of my list of questions, but atleast he tried. I could tell that Friday night drinking sessions would not be boring with him around.

Well... when in doubt go with the one who is going to be fun to have around and will be an active member of the after-work-Friday-night-drinking-session gang.