Friday, August 19, 2005
A bizarre interview
I went to CI Investments (aka CI Funds) this morning. I had applied to them in April and reapplied in June but not heard anything until last Wednesday.
They start out by describing the job and the shop. They are Weblogic on Sun. I ask the manager what I am doing here. They have acquired another company (Asante?) which has WebSphere on AIX, but outsourced to IBM. They want to repatriate it.
The hiring manager keeps talking and talking, not referring to or taking any notes. He does have my resume. He and the incumbent ask a few questions about my experience (support responsibilites, scripting, performance monitoring, type of problems encountered, Sun). There are no indepth technical questions and no soft skill questions at all. The team is relatively new, and the manager hasn't done many interviews/hires. No kidding!
He asks me if I have any questions, and this is where I take over the interview. The position is open because the incumbent has resigned supposedly due to her commute. There are only three people on the team (small!) but there used to be four. Another resignee was not replaced. Their performance management is an annual meeting with the director. It sounds like as long as everyone likes you, you do OK (yikes!). The company doesn't support certification! They acquire three or four companies a year! There is no pager bonus or paid overtime! They just started an oncall rotation; otherwise, oncall was 24/7 for everyone. Why would anyone want to work for this company? I must be a piker.
The interview lasts almost an hour. I am the first to be interviewed. The manager doesn't know how long the recruiting process will take. I'm not sure that I care.
D.
They start out by describing the job and the shop. They are Weblogic on Sun. I ask the manager what I am doing here. They have acquired another company (Asante?) which has WebSphere on AIX, but outsourced to IBM. They want to repatriate it.
The hiring manager keeps talking and talking, not referring to or taking any notes. He does have my resume. He and the incumbent ask a few questions about my experience (support responsibilites, scripting, performance monitoring, type of problems encountered, Sun). There are no indepth technical questions and no soft skill questions at all. The team is relatively new, and the manager hasn't done many interviews/hires. No kidding!
He asks me if I have any questions, and this is where I take over the interview. The position is open because the incumbent has resigned supposedly due to her commute. There are only three people on the team (small!) but there used to be four. Another resignee was not replaced. Their performance management is an annual meeting with the director. It sounds like as long as everyone likes you, you do OK (yikes!). The company doesn't support certification! They acquire three or four companies a year! There is no pager bonus or paid overtime! They just started an oncall rotation; otherwise, oncall was 24/7 for everyone. Why would anyone want to work for this company? I must be a piker.
The interview lasts almost an hour. I am the first to be interviewed. The manager doesn't know how long the recruiting process will take. I'm not sure that I care.
D.
