I’m working too much. How am I supposed to treat this as a boondoggle if they’re working me all day every day? I’m interviewing people like a coked up Larry King. Or trying to, anyway. The HR manager at CTS, Ragesh, has been lining up interviews like crazy. If 50% of the people actually show up, the day is considered a success. Whether or not those candidates are actually qualified is another matter entirely.
Apparently, it’s ok here to blatantly lie on your resume. “Familiar with” or “knowledge of” a product does not mean “I’ve heard of it” or “I saw the box once in a store”. We all exaggerate our resumes, but if you can’t even tell me what it does, don’t list it. Why put it on your resume only to flail in the interview? Most of these people can’t even answer the equivalent of “where is the on button?” about this stuff. One guy today, when I asked him to describe his specific usage of a piece of software his resume (of course) claimed he used extensively, started reciting what I now believe are the marketing bullet points from the website.
And the language barrier…I mean, I don’t want to be an insensitive American prick about this, but if you’re going to be working with a development team in America, and conference calling your American boss once or twice a week, when I very slowly and with perfect enunciation (I swear!) ask you “Where is your current development team?” you should not respond with 5 seconds of blank staring followed by “I work in QA”. Good lord.
Some of these people I actually feel kind of sorry for. Some are so nervous and twitchy and desperate seeming I want to hire them out of pity. What do I care? I’m not hiring for my product. One dude was practically deaf. I almost burst out laughing when I caught myself yelling simple phrases towards his good ear. It’s like I was interviewing a 7 year old Helen Keller with rudimentary QA skills.
Was that too far? Eh, you’ll be fine.
This extraordinarily shallow talent pool makes me just that much more thankful for the rockstar team I have right now. Too bad for the other managers that my product is all staffed up with the good ones and these other products have to choose from the dregs. Bwahahahahahahaha! *cough*
In more pleasant news, I booked tickets to
You’ll notice there are still no pictures on this magnificent blog. That’s due to the fact that, apart from not going outside as much on this trip, I broke my f’ing card reader. That’s what I get for bragging about it costing only $8. It broke due to operator error, not due to any sort of product defect…but still. Karma is a bitch. Not like it matters. They work me like a Himalayan Sherpa here, allowing me only glimpses of the sun through a dirty window as I trudge my way to the printer to pick up another superlative-laden yet criminally misleading resume.
