Good Luck on your second interview! I hope you get the job!
What? I can’t put that in a PIT thread.
Bahahahaha! I thought your response to that request was a little odd. Thanks!
I’m currently cramming as much information into my head as possible as they’ve said they’ll be asking me a lot of technical questions, and I’ve been away from the industry for two years. I also have a head cold, so it’s a bit tough.
Just remember, if they’re any smart they’ll know that people don’t remember every single technical detail off the top of their heads, that’s what reference materials are for.
I know several people who got jobs where they’d “flunked” a technical test/questions because what the manager was really fishing for was attitude. Three off the top of my head:
in an interview for a position as Research Chemist, the hiring manager asked whether I could perform chrystallographic studies; I said I’d been taught how to interpret the results (although it had been a while since I’d last done it) but I’d never used an X-ray machine. Then he asked about some sort of chromatography and I answered I wasn’t familiar with it at all, sorry. He turned to the HR person and said “hire her!”
“But she said she didn’t know how to do some of those things?”
“Nobody, well, almost nobody knows how to use Xray machine, is not important; we will not have machine anyway! When we need Xrays we send to lab, we need interpret only. And the other test? I invent it, it does not exist and she is first person who’s said ‘I don’t know this’! She’s perfect, I want her!”
I’m not perfect but I do aim for honesty. Mine was the 30th! interview for that position, everybody else had failed the honesty test.
Friend of mine, electronic engineer. First interview after college, his diploma was still waiting for the signatures to dry. He’s in the room with a bunch of other engineers and they’re given pencils, paper and told to design a gearbox with 5 gears forward and 2 in reverse. It’s not his field at all, but he thinks, “what the heck, I’ll do it as a mental exercise, see if I can come up with anything”. He wasn’t able to get very far, but whatever.
They called him that same afternoon, “you’re hired” “uh? Me? But I wasn’t able to do anything!” “No, and we didn’t expect any of you to - but you’re the only one who tried, the job is yours.”
Littlebro, one of his first interviews, for a position as Treasurer in a Spanish corp. They asked him to do something in Excel; at one point there was a formula he didn’t remember (he used something else as ‘filler’ so he could do the rest and painted that step red). When they asked for his results, he explained that. His boss said “that’s in any accounting book, I don’t remember it either since we only use it about twice a year. But I’m up to here of fakers, someone who’ll be able to say ‘I don’t know’ will certainly be refreshing. Can you start on Monday?”
ibuprofen thoughts sent to EmAnJ
Thanks for the reassurance, Nava!
Well, the good news is that they’ve had to postpone until tomorrow, so that means I have all day today to go over the material. It sounds like it’ll be around noon tomorrow, but I’m waiting on confirmation still.
Any news?