5.2.2004

I wouldn't want to work for you, either.

I just got a rejection letter in the mail from a place I interviewed with last week. Interviewing is as much about whether you like them as it is about whether or not they like you.

Let me tell you, this place was grim. It was painted in bright candy colors. No one was smiling. There were lots of toys around. They all had dust on them; apparently, no one was allowed to touch them. Very Joan Crawford, the Mommie Dearest years. They were attempting to hold a board meeting in the conference room. People wandered in and out of the meeting; they had the attention span of fruit flies. All in all, a disorganized and uninviting place.

The hiring manager was no better. His thick accent and rapid-fire used car salesman delivery made him impossible to understand. What little I did appalled me. The company in question was a dot bomb. I'd done my research on hoovers.com before I'd gotten there; the company had been around since 1998 and had never been profitable. Moreover, it did not appear as if they ever would be. This company had been in and out of bankruptcies, been sold, divested, and then acquired again. Through it all, the no talent ass clown who sat before me had reigned supreme over the technology end of things. That told me all I needed to know.

I'd gone into it with reasonable expectations, thinking that maybe they'd worked out the kinks and that they'd had sufficient change of management to ensure that they'd be a going concern in the years to come. Not just no, hell no. From the technology end of things, they were massively overstaffed. Their infrastructure was kludgy, tangled, and unbelievably complicated. Their database design was a joke. As was to be expected, their posted job description bore no resemblance to the skills you were expected to have once you were in the hiring manager's office and were subjected to the Spanish Inquisition. As they say, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition"!

I should have checked f'dcompany.com before I went into the interview; a search on their company name got over 400 hits. That means over 400 discussions in which this company's name turned up. (If you're an f'dcompany aficionado, yes, this was an idealab company. Pretty much tells you all you need to know right there.) If I'd known then what I know now, I might not even have gone to the interview. Nevertheless, I had other errands to do in the vicinity, and it was a good experience anyway. Apparently, not all the dot bombs are out of business. It will be a long time before I forget an experience like this. It was like attending a funeral in a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant.

Another thing I'd noticed...

I've been reading a lot of articles lately in the Denver Post about how people have finally found jobs, etc. One guy just found a job after seven months and 300 resumes. Well, good for him, but the mistake these people are making is that their number of resumes submitted is way too low! I mean, a Job Fairy in full flat out search mode can send out 300 resumes a WEEK. We ain't foolin' around here. I can easily send 75 - 100 a day; that's low compared to what some of the other Fairies can do. That's why we have those automated little cover letters, save our resumes as text format, and have everything set up as signature files in our email programs. We've streamlined it for speed. Recruiters barely read our resumes; we don't do personalized cover letters for every job because few people are even looking at them anyway. A recruiter will know in 30 seconds or less whether or not they can sell you. If you need a cover letter for a particular client, they'll tell you. Otherwise, stick to the basics, cover as much ground as possible, and your time to find a new job will be considerably less. In the early stages of the job search, it's all a numbers game. Don't worry; just apply, apply, apply.

We got some feedback about the site!

"Hi! I love your website. I hope you don't mind if I refer to it as I look for work even if I'm not a woman. :) "

Thank you for the compliment. Of course we don't mind that you're not a woman; we want to help everyone survive their career in IT and keep all their marbles. Please use our site all the time, and tell your friends about it. Good luck finding that job! Thanks from all the Fairies.

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