Interviews: How Not To Hire Good People
Back in August 2006 I went to a job interview. I haven’t been to all that many interviews in my ten years of working but I can say without a doubt that this was the worst interview ever; both from my perspective and from the employers perspective. Simply put, this was a classic case of ‘how not to conduct an interview’ in the technology sphere. To protect the innocent, I won’t name names (other than myself) and I’ll simply refer to the potential employer as ‘The Corporation’.
In hind sight, I should have never applied for the job. The Corporation’s website used to apply for jobs is terrible. The careers section is one of those out of the box solutions that everyone inside the corporation thinks is cool, mostly because after paying for the product they didn’t really have to customize it. But, those same people already have a job, so they never had to use the careers section, so they wouldn’t know any differently. And job prospects certainly aren’t going to criticize the careers section because the person doing the interview might have been the one who implemented it. And should the interviewee get hired, well then they no longer care how crappy the careers section is because, well, they have a job. Back to the site though. Remember when the first web content started coming out back in the mid-1990s and most sites wouldn’t let you cache anything that you submitted through a form? You know, you’d get that crap message about the cache had expired, even though you had ‘just’ hit the page? Well, I haven’t seen many instances of that anymore, and in fact the only instance I can think of off hand is when signing in to my online banking. So that I can accept. But in the case of The Corporation, any time you did a search for a job posting, checked out a job and then tried to click the back button, you’d receive the ‘expired cache’ error. If they were posting jobs every few minutes I could maybe understand, but in this case it is highly unlikely that a new job would be posted during my 5 minute job searching session. That expired cache problem drove me nuts. And when combined with the fact that some of the links to log into the career section didn’t work or redirected to the wrong spot should have been enough to push me away. But I thought that given my experience and smarts, I would be a good fit and moreover, I was excited about the position as it sounded like just what I was looking for.
My next clues about the job should have been picked up during the interaction while scheduling an interview. If, at anytime, the person scheduling the interview jokes around or is anything but professional, you should probably figure out and excuse and call it even. In my case, all emails to me from the Corporation contained not one but several smilies (emoticons), for no real reason whatsoever. At this point, even Ali was skeptical and suggested calling it off. But, I still felt that this job would be a good match for my skill set and offer some new experiences; so I scheduled a time.
On the day of the interview, I wore a suit without a tie. The emails I received from the Corporation specifically about the interview (how to get there, parking , etc) mentioned that they would be in business casual clothes but that I could wear a suit to impress them (followed by several smilies). Again, I looked past the smilies and the lame reference to making an impression by wearing a suit, and decided that this was still the job for me. In my defence, I almost always wear a suit for interviews so that part had no effect on me. I arrived at the Corporation’s offices, several floors up and phoned the contact person from a phone in the lobby. The person came to the door, introduced themselves and led me to the location of the interview - their office; their small office I might add. At this point, everything was starting to add up I was getting a bad vibe. From this point on down, I couldn’t wait to get out. But, still I persevered.
At this point another person also joined us in the small office and the three of us sat at a small table to conduct the interview. Or more accurately, the three of us carried out the Corporation’s interview ‘script’. Interviewer number one directed act one, which most people would call the HR question section and interviewer number two directed act two, which would be likely referred to as the technical part of the interview. Bot of these acts were read verbatim from pre-printed ‘scripts’ and at no time did we sway from the script. Seriously. So imagine yourself sitting in front of two people whom will likely be your boss(es) and having them with their heads down reading questions from a piece of letter-sized paper, then scribing down as you respond. Nice. Oh, and if you don’t follow the script and answer in a way that they are expecting then you are specifically told that you need to follow the script. Seriously. Even though their script is in front of them and your script? Oh, the director didn’t print one out so you have to improvise. But your script better match the director’s script or you won’t do well.
After act one, it’s on to act two. You’d think you’d have a little more leeway here in terms of the script but no, this is simply a knowledge act. You either know the answer or you don’t. Because smart people know acronyms and project code names. Ya, smart people don’t ever need to explain how they built a scalable, server farm that provided load balancing and redundancy or how they designed some enterprise system to tackle some problem more efficiently. Nope. Never mind that this job entails enterprise technologies and design. No need for that information, because the smart people just need to know what EJB and JSP and WKRP stand for. And they should also know that Oak was the codename for first version of the Java programming language. Seriously. Oh and they should also have in depth knowledge of the specific technologies being used by the Corporation today, because that what’s in use today and the Corporation doesn’t think about tomorrow thus there is no need to choose people that will be smart enough to adapt to the next great technology chosen by the Corporation.
After answering ‘no’, ‘not sure’, ‘no idea’, for most of technical questions, I asked a few questions about life at the Corporation and left. And my interviewers told me that sometimes they forget to let people know one way or the other whether or not they got the job so if I hadn’t heard form them by a certain day, to email or call them. To date, I have yet to hear anything. Not that I mind, since right after that I accepted a great job at Critical Mass.
I was initially going to summarize how to conduct a good interview, but I think Joel has covered that subject more than enough. Instead, I provide this example of how not to recruit good people. Of course, to accept that premise, you will have to accept that I am a good person - I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
And for the record, I do in fact know what EJB, JSP and WKRP stand for; those were not questions asked by the Corporation.
IFR Pre-Flight Test
Life is hard. Unless you have no friends or family, are single, can run efficiently on four hours or less of sleep and have enough money that you don’t have to work, it seems that everything gets in the way of what you really want to be doing – flying. And that’s how it’s been for me. Don’t get me wrong though; I love my life. It’s just that for the past two months (yes, I said two months) it has been impossible to get my IFR pre-flight test done. First there was a trip to Prince George for my brother’s wedding. Then it was off to Kelowna for my sister-in-law’s wedding. Then there was job turmoil, followed by a new job. The Nav Canada decided that between staffing shortages and various construction (or whatever other lame excuses they published in the NOTAMs), that IFR training flights around the Calgary airport were out. Joy.
I actually almost got the pre-flight test done two weeks ago, but then Calgary Terminal decided on a bizarre blackout period and doing the flight would have required flying at hours that normal people should be sleeping during. So that was out. But today, a miracle happened and the flight was a go.
My instructor for the entire training up until this point has been Jason, but today I flew with the club’s chief flight instructor. Not because of scheduling or because Jason was fed up, but because Jason has taken a job with Borek Air. Jason’s going away party was last night, but because of today’s flight I kept the rowdiness to an unusual minimum.
During a late breakfast at Melrose on 17th, I called Calgary Terminal and booked a training slot. Because the entire flight takes place within Terminal’s airspace and because it’s a training flight, it’s not enough to simply file an IFR flight plan. That way, Terminal can decide that they’re too busy and simply deny your request. But today, as I said, I lucked out and was given the 1900-2000Z slot. I then filed an IFR flight plan for Calgary/Springbank to Turner Valley NDB (TV) to THIRD (a non-compulsory reporting point) to Calgary VOR (YYC) and back to Springbank, with a hold at THIRD and two approaches at Calgary.
The flight went pretty much as expected, with being vectored around for the first bit before being cleared to proceed to TV and on to THIRD. Once I got past TV and was established on the way to THIRD I received my hold clearance which had me holding north of THIRD on V301. The hold on the north side threw me for a bit of a loop as I was expecting to hold south – lesson learned; don’t anticipate anything more than you’re given. If you’re told to expect a hold at point X, you can try and figure out what the orientation of the hold might be but don’t let that mess things up when you actually receive the clearance.
Then it was on to Calgary International for two approaches, an ILS on Runway 28 and an NDB on Runway 16. The ILS approach was fine, though I initially tuned the wrong frequency for the approach. Other than that, I kept the localizer pretty much centered and the glideslope pretty close to center for most of the approach. At the decision height the runway was right there in front of me – very satisfying. But a little disappointing at the same time; runway 28 is a great runway to spot planes as it overflies one of Calgary’s bike/blade/walking paths. As this was likely on of the few times I would actually fly this approach I was hoping to sneak a peek out and see if I was overflying any people on the path. Instead, I was forced to wear the hood [of shame] for the entire approach, only peeking at the decision height to see where I was. After that, I was vectored around the NE part of Terminal’s airspace to get setup for the ILS for runway 16, which we actually did the the NDB approach for. The approach was likely my best NDB approach ever, given the favourable light winds. At the MDA the runway was right out in front of me. As we went missed we crossed over the path of an incoming Dash-8 on short final for Runway 10; very exciting (and draining) to be doing training at CYYC during the close-to-peak times. Then it was back to Springbank for a regular landing without the hood [of shane].
After landing I had a quick debrief on the flight. Essentially the flight was good, I just need to ensure I double check my frequencies and stay on top of resetting the heading indicator (which, in my defense I got out of the habit of doing due to all my time in the club’s 182 which has a slaved HSI). And, the best part of the day is that I have the club’s sign off on doing the actual Transport Canada IFR flight test.
Flight time: 2.1 hrs
Instrument time: 1.6 hrs (hood)
Approaches: 2
Good Customer Service Makes All The Difference
It looks like I’m finally going to be able to do my IFR pre-flight test. Jason, my instructor is moving onto a dream job with Ken Borek Air so I’m booked this Sunday with CFC’s chief flight instructor, Pierre. But my IFR maps and CAPs are now two cycles behind since I had needed to update them, so this morning I ordered new maps from Map Town, located in downtown Calgary.
I ordered my usual six items: CAPs GEN, 2 and 3, LO 1/2, Terminal Area Charts 1/2 and the CFS. I paid by Visa and had it delivered by local courier as it’s far more efficient for me to do that than drive around looking for parking, plug a parking meter, get the stuff and leave. It sounds silly but the $5 courier charge is money well spent. My stuff was delivered to my office only a couple hours later and everything that I asked for was there. There was however a small problem; instead of keying in LE12 for the Low Enroute Chart 1/2, the Map Town employee had keyed in L12 which is an Indonesia ONC aviation map, which happens to be $7.00 more expensive.
I called up Map Town and the first person I talked to listened to my problem, apologized and then asked me to hold on while he put me through to someone who could help. Not more than 30 seconds later another person answered, listened to my problem, apologized and then refunded the difference to my credit card. What an amazing customer service experience. Mistakes get made and I accept that; and when they are made and you handle the problem with swiftness and professionalism, especially when dealing with customers, well that makes me want to continue doing business with Map Town for as long as I’m living in Calgary.
Sometimes Things "Just Don't Work"
It’s often said that the great thing about Windows-driven machines is that everything just works. And then Mac fanatics take that a step further and note that their machines not only work but also are stable and, in fact, work that much better. And often this is a response to the growing Linux user base. But with all things, things often don’t work not matter what you are using. My wife’s Windows-based laptop 50% of the time is unable to find the wireless network in our house, even if we put the laptop right beside the router.
I mention this because in catching up on some RSS feeds, I read Kris’ entries on his issues with his MacBook: battery problem, then battery problem take #2 and finally, a problem with wireless connections. I mention this not as part of an argument to switch to Linux, but to note that when it comes to computers there really isn’t a silver bullet. But the nice thing with Linux is that if need be I can dive in and muck around with the config files directly or the code if need be.
But my point is that even with non-Linux systems there are headaches, frustrations and millions of users who throw their hands up in the air and just accept the way something is functioning.
KDE 3.5.5
KDE 3.5.5 was released this morning. I had been eagerly anticipating it’s release for a week now as there are some good fixes and updates in this release. I am writing this using KDE 3.5.5 as I built the latest KDE triumph last night while the source files were still being pushed out to the mirrors.
I don’t normally build KDE until a few days after release as I’m usually too busy to grab the 150MB+ of source files and then wait 12 hours while my machine builds it. But last night I couldn’t sleep so I figured I’d surf over to KDE’s main FTP site to see if the files were available yet. But the site was non-responsive which I found strange, so I checked out another mirror and was delighted to see the 3.5.5 source code tar files available. So I grabbed the files and started the build. And knowing that I would wake up to a new version of KDE, I was able to fall back asleep.
A quick check of Gentoo’s stable Portage tree shows that the latest version of KDE available to those who don’t want to live ‘close to the edge’ is still KDE 3.5.2. As I said before, I’ve always found KDE to be very stable on Gentoo and I had zero issues with KDE 3.5.4 over the past two months so I’m not anticipating any issues with KDE 3.5.5. So, that said, once again my suggestion is to update your /etc/portage/package.keywords file and use the latest KDE; I doubt you’ll regret it.
VMware and Gentoo
My new job requires that I use Windows. Sorta. Realistically, there isn’t all that much in terms of software that is forcing me to use Windows per se as for the most part everything I need to use is also available on Linux. The exception to this is Microsoft Outlook. And although I could use Thunderbird, and I haven’t ruled that out, I decided to explore the use of VMware.
I’d used VMware Workstation 3.2 way back when but hadn’t used it since. And since that time, I’ve switched from a supported Linux distro (Red Hat) to an unsupported distro (Gentoo); you can view the list of supported distros in the system requirements page linked off the Workstation 5.x release notes. Luckily, like most software vendors these days, VMware has a ‘try before you buy’ evaluation licence which is good for 30 days.
Thus far, Gentoo and VMware Workstation have worked perfectly together. I was able to install Windows XP using Workstation 5.5 running on my Gentoo laptop and encountered no issues with respect to Gentoo. The only issue I did encounter was with the Windows XP install; I had to call in my registration as I used my Dell Windows XP CD and Windows XP was smart enough to realize that my product key was for a Dell machine not the “VMware machine” I installed it on. In any case, my guest operating system is running perfectly and I can now test my web apps and such using IE without the need to use a separate machine altogether. If you haven’t yet checked out VMware, I highly recommend it.
Still Alive
It’s been two weeks since my last entry. And the entries have been sparse for the past couple months. I think that’s a testament to how busy my life has been. To sum up things in brief: I’ve left one job, started another, learned the in an outs of ATG, rediscovered VMWare, and last, but certainly not least, there is a new addition to our family. More details about everything this weekend when I will try to get caught up.
And if the weather holds out, I will be doing a night flying convoy to Edmonton City Centre (CYXD) on Saturday night with two of Ali’s cousins who recently moved to Calgary from Manitoba. So I’ll have that to blog about also.
Parting Ways
Last week Zymeta and I parted ways. Actually we parted back in early August when the company was bought by the Edmonton-based manufacturer. But then the new owner decided after all that he needed Mike and I to help with transition training so the two of us spent the better part of three weeks in Edmonton on contract showing the ‘new guys’ everything we know.
And last Friday, I showed them the co-locate facility where the servers are hosted, gave them remote access via ssh and handed over the keys. And with that my tenure at Zymeta was done.
GCC 4.1.1
I spent the long weekend in Fairmont Hot Springs. Unfortunately we drove but it was a great weekend nonetheless. And although I didn’t do anything on my laptop per se, I did have the laptop turned on for most of the weekend, recompiling everything with the new release of GCC, version 4.1.1. As with most things Gentoo, the upgrade was seamless, though due to the age of my laptop, the upgrade was a two day affair. But all is good, with the exception of three packages, which seem to still work as is so I’ve ignored the fact that the recompiled failed for them.
I’ve since started the GCC 4.1.1 upgrade on my two servers, though I’m doing them one at a time. I’m sure all will be well there also. So if you’ve been hesitating on doing the GCC 4.1.1 upgrade under Gentoo, I don’t see why you’d wait anymore.
KDE 3.5.4
KDE 3.5.4 was released a couple weeks ago. As per my normal routine, I had my machine compiling it the night of it’s release and had the latest version KDE running by morning. But then I flew out to Prince George for my brother’s wedding the next day and forgot to blog about my success with KDE 3.5.4 like I normally do.
Gentoo’s stable Portage tree is still stuck back at KDE 3.5.2 but in the past two weeks since building KDE 3.5.4 I’ve experienced no problems whatsoever. So, if you’re impatient like me when it comes to your X Windows environment, my suggestion is to update your /etc/portage/package.keywords file and use the latest KDE because I suspect it will work just fine for you also.
