June 13, 2011

  • advice

    Quick word of advice to job hunters (or at least to job hunters that I'm going to interview):

    • No typos or misspellings in your CV. Ever. I will judge you. 
    • Also, no lame mission statement up top that talks about being "results-oriented" or "committed to excellence and integrity." Seriously? 
    • If you claim that you have a deep interest in cloud computing, then you had better be able to explain to me what you think cloud computing is.
    • If you are interviewing at my company for a job in the legal department, which makes it into the news pretty much very day (for better or worse), then if I ask, "Can you think of any news items or product launches involving [my company] recently that raised interesting legal issues?" you should never answer "I don't really keep up with any of that." Maybe you don't usually keep up with tech news, but you should at least cram a bit before your interview.
    • If you claim to be experienced in software licensing, then don't be surprised when I ask you about it, and be able to say whether you work with object code or source code, and why that matters.
    • When we're near the end of the interview, and I ask if you have any questions, and it's the first interview of the day, you should probably have something better than, "Uh, how long have you worked here?"
    • Also a bad idea: asking about work-life balance and whether it's a 9-to-5 job. Even if you're applying somewhere that has good work-life balance, you should probably wait until you get an offer before bringing that one up. You ask that when we're still evaluating you, and I'm going to assume that you're a slacker and recommend someone else be given the job.
    • If I give you my business card at the end of the interview, you should probably write me an email afterwards. I had no idea how uncommon thank you notes (or thank you emails) were until I started interviewing people for college admissions and jobs. A well-written and personalized thank you email = big bonus points.

    Who teaches these people how to job hunt??

Comments (3)

  • i love the cloud!!! =D

  • You would be surprised but your #2 is advised by some of these peeps doing the "how to apply and how to pimp my CV" courses here. I always felt these are lame but they want to see some of that nonsense...

  • @Iassi - Yeah, when I see those, I immediately hate the person who is applying. It's very hard for me to overcome the assumption that the person is a total douche.

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