what are your most frustrating experiences with job hunting

I HATE the Indian recruiters that call from all this misfit locations up north trying to cram you into a job you are not looking for.

"Hello this is Sudeep Parikh calling from CareerTech.com. I have a job for you that I think is perfect. It is a Share point Developer IV position at a reputable oil and gas company in Houston. Can I submit you?"

"Uhhh my resume said I have worked with Share point for 6 months and that was at a novice level."

"Well we can just submit your application and see what they say, is that okay?"

Or the annoying Indian ones that call you for a 3 month contract job when you have specified in your monster profile that you are only looking for perm pr contract to hire.


BTW I am Indian so i can talk smack about my annoying people.

 

Spoiler

Thanks for the reminder. What I hate the worst is the dumb-ass interview questions. In the hands of a competent interviewer, I suppose these might deliver some insight into candidates. But, I suspect most interviewers are asking because they read it in a book or in a handout from HR and they don't really know what to do with the answer they get back. As a result, I suspect they're actually a gaint barrier to getting to know a candidate.

More generally, it annoys me that there are candidates who interview well and others who do not and it seems like the correlation between interviewing well and doing a good job is mild at best. So, certain friends and colleagues of mine who I know aren't worth a damn are nevertheless parlaying interview charisma into more power and money than I can garner. Yeah, I'm a hater.

 

What do you do right now? IT consulting?

 

Ditto. I was interviewed a couple weeks ago by a senior software dev. at a larger company. It was an uncomfortably wide-ranging technical interview where I was being rapid-fire quizzed on math (including linear algebra and diff. eq), programming syntax and concepts (OOP) for several languages, and signal processing methods. As if this wasn't intensive enough for a phone interview, it was all being conducted by a lady with a HEAVY accent, and naturally, she talked as fast as that guy who did the old MicroMachines commercials...

I couldn't understand ANYTHING she was saying. I asked her repeatedly to slow down while tactfully blaming my poor phone reception for me not being able to understand - it didn't work. I had to ask her to repeat about 90% of the questions at least once.

You would think growing up around relatives who talk like this would help with this sorta thing, but no, it doesn't. For all you non-Indians out there, the accent is about as annoying for us too.

 

not hearing back after applying. at least a thank you but sorry would have been nice.

 

Lol what the hell could a dude on welfare be over qualified for? Take the janitor job , keep your head down and work your way up. Stop whining for once in your life.

 

Don't even GET me started on this! It is now been 2 months and I have had 2 interviews. The first one was about 2 weeks after I became unemployed and the hiring manager pretty much told me I had the job at a surprise birthday party for his wife that my wife and me were invited to. But several days would go by and I didn't hear anything. Finally the HR guy from this place calls to tell me that they had "downgraded" the position and they didn't think I wanted to drive an hour to make 12 bucks an hour as a temp. He told me to call him the next day. I did call him and the guy never returned my phone call. I later found out from the hiring manager that the position fizzled out and his quote was that the HR guy was very unprofessional for not calling me back.

Then on the 9th of this month, I interviewed for a HR position at the local gas company in town. The first thing I was told was "Don't expect to make what you made in your last job. You probably won't even make what you made at the job before that one." Not the best way to start off, don't you think? Any way, I felt I did well and I was told some song and dance about another round of interviews with the "management" team. It was all a lie as I got a letter in the mail last Wednesday, telling me that they had gone with someone else (probably less qualified).

But yea I have had over 30 applications in and have probably heard back from 5 that I am not being considered. Yet, I keep seeing the same jobs that I have applied for being posted on indeed, careerbuilder, etc.

The problem with applying on-line for a job is like others have said - the whole process is so damn convoluted and you never know if the right person is reading your resume and application. Too many times, I feel that my resume has been trashed within 5 minutes of receipt by the company. Networking is about the only way to go and a lot of times the best job is the one that NO ONE knows about! When I got my job back in 2000 (that I desperately wished I still had), I did not apply for that on-line. I knew someone high up in the company and they created a temp position for me. But those days are long gone for me, I am afraid.

All you can do is keep the faith and believe that things will turn around for you. But obviously knowing someone that can make things happen helps.

 

I recently read somewhere that online job sites account for ~25% hires, referrals 25%, and networking ~17%. I'll try to find it again.

Send them a thank you note saying you enjoyed learning about the company and will look forward to meeting them again in the future. Then call the person who set up the interview and ask when you can meet again to discuss the job even further.

It's all online, and people who call back have a better chance than those who don't.

Why do I know this? Because I'm looking around even though I'm employed.

Following up on a resume:
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/howtofollowup/a/resumefollow.htm

 

I guess I'll play devil's advocate a little bit. The huge online HR portals that filter resumes are actually needed. If not, hiring managers at major corporations that are sought out by potential employees would have to sift through 1,000 resumes for every position.

I think it is a necessary evil. The best way, however, IS networking. If you can get your resume sent to a hiring manager directly, you have a much better chance of getting an interview.

I also take the responsibility of following up on myself. It is perfectly acceptable to call to follow up about a position/interview once every week or two until you get a call back or someone else is hired.

I have actually worked in groups where people that called back and seemed excited about the job were given priority over those who never called back.

I DO agree about terrible interview questions, however. The best interview questions are specific questions that pertain to past performance, projects you've delivered, conflict resolution, how you would handle specific scenarios. The open ended HR type questions serve no purpose other than to waste time.

 

I don't intend to be rude or apathetic to your situation, but if you've been unemployed for two months and have applied for only 30 jobs... You're really putting yourself at a disadvantage. That isn't even a job a day.

Looking for a job, is in itself, a full-time job.

Good Luck My Man

 

Honest question: How are you supposed to "network" with people from a company when you don't know a single soul who works there? How do you even find out who the hiring manager is when most companies won't even let you so much as walk into their building without some kind of appointment, much less give out the hiring manager's contact info to a complete stranger on the phone?

 

I don't know what market you are in but I have really good relationships with recruiters and people all over Houston specifically and even all over the US. I never have to look for a job, they look for me. When opportunities come up, they call me. I get the stuff that never sees a website. I've built relationships with Microsoft, their employees, and several other partners that are specific to what I do.

Last week I was in Vegas for MMS (a Microsoft convention) and never attended a single session. I spent the entire week talking to attendees (prospective clients) and vendors (prospective partners).

The thing is, I am not a people person, suck at the business side of what I do, and laugh at the idea of selling. Seriously, I can't stand people and I'm terrible at sales. But I get out there and I build relationships. I am awesome at what I do and even when people may not care for me personally, they want to work with me because I am excited about what I do, I work really freaking hard, and technically I kick ass.

I've only reached where I am because of the network of people that I've built. It doesn't happen over night and you have to foster it. Even when I don't need work, I still maintain relationships with all of these people because I never know when I will need work.

Right now, in a down market, I've been able to get more work than I can handle to the point where I'm bringing in people to help me. The crazy thing is that we are still chasing our 2 biggest potential clients. When I say big, I mean big. Like 7 figures big. Each.

All of this is because of networking. I can't even begin to explain how important networking has been to what we are doing right now.

 

Networking is something that you should be doing all the time and not just when you are looking for a job. Getting your resume in the hands of a hiring manager is a large part of the battle and networking is a good way to do it.

 

OKC seems to be a good spot for RNs, and it seems like I remember you saying you did the OU program, right? Your degree from OU may hold more water in OK than in Texas. OKC's not so bad. Cost of living is rock bottom, and your salary would probably be about the same.

 

Well, I’m lucky enough to be employed right now but like most people, I’m always trying to keep my eyes open for something better that might come along.

In my case, this is a company that is in a totally different industry than my current company, but has a job opening that occasionally pops up on their website that is very similar to what I do now. The appealing thing is that this company is about 5 minutes away from my house, so I occasionally check out their career website and have applied to that same position before. It’s impossible to “network” in this case, since this is an industry that I have absolutely no contacts in and it would be totally new to me. But the job itself seems like it would be a perfect fit.

I do get the networking thing though. I do it constantly in my other job (musician). Pretty much every freelance gig I’ve done in the last 20 years is due –directly or indirectly – to networking on my part. So I guess it all depends on the industry.

 

did you **** her?