I would be so tempted, in such circumstances, to report the guy to the police as a missing person … Well, why not? He’s not where he’s meant to be, and his friends either don’t know where he is, or are being evasive about it - time to put on your best “concerned” expression, and explain to the cops that, well, you’re sure it’s probably nothing to worry about, but it does seem a bit peculiar …
Think of it this way; if he actually has been kidnapped by the militant wing of the Pork Byproducts Liberation Front, you’ll have done him a favour. And if he’s just skipped out on the job and can’t be bothered to tell you, well, he will learn a valuable lesson about how actions have consequences, so you’ll still have done him a favour. It’s win-win, really.
Perhaps. I’ll bet our HR people would think it was some violation of privacy, so we wouldn’t do that. Our policy now is to attempt to call and e-mail for one week, then write them off.
We had another guy, similar situation. He signed up for a Summer Internship in engineering - a paid job ($10 an hour) to shadow engineers and work with them as an assistant, to give work experience over the Summer. Typically, any Intern worth a damn has a pretty much automatic job offer when they do graduate too. And this was in 2002, when there was a HUGE bust in the engineering market, and we typically had THOUSANDS of resumes sitting in piles from both new and experienced engineers desperate for a job. We ourselves had laid off thousands of people, and hiring an Intern was very unusual, but we felt like he was a good match - an investment for the future.
Well, we hired him as an Intern in December for the following Summer, and he asked if he could come in and work for free over Christmas break to “get more experience”. And we said yes (actually, we paid him) and everyone was happy. He worked for 4 weeks, seemed decent, then went back to school.
April comes and we try contacting him to set up his Summer Internship. No reply from any e-mails or phones. We leave messages on his dorm phone and his cell phone, and get no calls back. We start getting his roommate at times who does the “oh, you just missed him…” trick. One time we called and his roommate said “he’s taking a nap, he’ll call you back”. Finally, June arrives and we get an e-mail from the guy - sent to the wrong person, not HR, where he says he needs a “6 week leave of absence” from a Summer Internship - in June. Um, dumbshit, how many weeks does that leave in Summer?
Six weeks come and go, and nothing. We try the contact bit again, and nothing. “He’s at the laundromat”, “he’s at a party”, “he went back home for a few days”, “no, I gave him all your messages”. Finally, his roommate tells off our HR person, saying “stop calling and harassing him!”, and then they block our number via their caller ID thing. :eek:
December rolls around, and we get a phone call - from dude. He wants to come in for a Winter Internship, but only for 2 days. The rest of the time, he has to “see family”. We tell him that not only do we not want to ever see him again, but his fucking around with the previous Summer Internship cost some other potential engineer the opportunity of having a killer job experience. So then what happens? He, according to my HR person, broke down in tears on the phone and accused us all of being “anti Jewish” and that it was the raging antisemetism of his mentor and boss during last Winter “scared him too much” to come to work again. He said we were lucky that he didn’t sue us, as the free legal help on his campus said he could get “millions” from us in small claims court and would represent him for free. That’s right, small claims court.
But you see, that seemed unlikely from another aspect, as his mentor happened to be Jewish, devoutly, the “I won’t even turn on a light switch on Saturday” sort, and his “boss” was out on the road the entire last Winter at a project site in Indiana and never actually met him in person. It also was unlikely because he had actually put on his resume under “leadership abilities” that he was very active in the Methodist youth group as a camp counselor - what the fuck was he, a atealth Jewish missionary trying to convert heathen Methodists? At that point, we started telling him “oh, they’re not here, but I’ll give them your message” and eventually he drifted away. I found out later he got hired by GM.
I guess we were better off not having him. It amazes me how often someone with a “stellar” resume is a raving psychopath.
Sadly, it happens a lot. I’ve been seeing LJ, MySpace, and other blogging links all over resumes that have been crossing my desk as Summer approaches. And they are almost 100% the wrong freaking thing to put on. There was one exception where one guy had written some very elegant write-ups almost like SD Staff Reports of engineering problems, but other than that…shoot, just pick any LJ at random, and then imagine you’re a potential employer reading through it as you hold their resume in your hands. Maybe all sorts of people do all sorts of shit after they’re hired, and I certainly have no beef with any “normal” LJ which has a mix of the usual fluff and stuff and bitching and profanity and obscure inside jokes, but like I said, most of the people who look at the resume just don’t understand the Net and Net culture.
At dinner a few months ago I brought up Wikipedia as a decent quick reference on some subject or another, and 5 out of 6 people who I thought were reasonably “net savvy” had never even heard of it. I showed off another vBulletin board I set up for a client to a small group at work, and half of them were scratching their heads as they didn’t really understand what a “board” was, and how threading worked. They get on ESPN, maybe a day-trading site (hey kids! Remember the Clinton Era? Day-trading is back, to clog up the days with hours of unproductive employee time as dumbasses sit on the clock and start playing Gordo Gekko with the $500 they managed to scrape up via a home equity loan…), or perhaps a football or baseball “fan blog”. That’s it.
by the way, I hate it when they ask the question: “tell me about your self”
why don ask questions that are more specific and questions that are related to the job
i was on an interview lately and got this question by a female employe - i felt like smacking my fist in here face
I guess to see whether your thoughts are organized, whether you are creative, and whether you can take the initiative in responding to goals that aren’t pre-defined down to the letter fo you. And also if you have any violent or misogynistic tendencies.
It’s really meant as an icebreaker, I think. It gives interviewers a place to start. What they really mean (in my experience) is “Tell me about yourself, in the context of this position.” That is most definitely related to the job. Besides this, thinking and speaking on your feet is a tremendously important job skill. I’d put it up there with being able to write and communicate effectively.
I have to ask, though: why aren’t you prepping it? You know it’s coming. I haven’t had an interview that didn’t start with it. Take ten minutes the night before to think about it and come up with an answer; present yourself in a basically honest way that the company will like. Make yourself personable and professional; first impressions are very important.
You’d spend ten minutes in the morning getting dressed and presentable; why shouldn’t you spend ten the same time to get the interview off on the right foot?
Anyone who has been on more than one interview in their life will have a prepared answer for this question, since it’s pretty much standard in any interview.
Seriously, if you can’t answer this simple question you’re probably not cut out for any job requiring any amount of communication skills.
Having been on both sides of the interview desk, I would have to say that this is THE standard question in any job interview.
It’s intended to be non-specific, to allow the candidate to explain why s/he is a good fit for the job, and to relate experiences and facts that don’t translate well to a resume.
If you get frustrated and annoyed by this question, you’re in for a lot of grief in your job searching.
We’re running into the same thing all the time, too. We were joking around at work the other day, and they said I got hired just because I showed up!
Minotaurus, you will be asked many pointless, stupid questions in interviews. Look at them as your opportunity to shine, by using them as a platform to tell the interviewer in yet another way why you would be such a perfect fit with their company. If you can’t answer pointless, stupid questions to put yourself in the best light, you aren’t prepared for interviewing. I strongly recommend that you look up the billions of interview sites on the net and do some research for yourself.
My college has an e-mail forwarding service that lets you put myrealname@alum.fancynamecollege.edu right at the top of your resume. It seemed worthwhile at the time. If yours doesn’t have that, myrealname@hotmail.com is a good idea, too.
Having been a surprised/unprepared interviewer myself (Hey, Elvis, can you talk to this candidate for 20 minutes until the next interviewer’s meeting is over?), I’ve resorted to “Tell me about yourself” too. I think it’s a good one - it shows if an applicant is serious enough about the job to prepare an answer, and it shows how well s/he understands their own qualifications and how they’d fit. The rest of the interview keys off your response. It’s really the same thing as the 30-second “elevator pitch”, which is another absolutely necessary jobhunting tool that you’d better have ready.
I just don’t get blowing off an interview, though. Even the largest industry isn’t so large that word won’t get around. People get around too, and the manager you blew off when you didn’t feel like working for ABC Co. may be the one who won’t call you later about his open position at XYZ. Even if you don’t take the job, you’ll still have connections made, and you may change your mind and want to go there sometime later, anyway.
Yeah. That’s fine. Although if I were looking for Engineering work, I might like the above as opposed to “bestactorever@yahoo.com” or some such. Make the email match the gig (or come close) at least. It’s so easy to set up a free account for this type of stuff.
And while we’re at it… Don’t send an electronic resume call “Resume.doc” or “Myresume.doc”. I get so many of them named like this and I just can’t believe people don’t know better.
Like the email rule above, use some form of your name as the title so I can pick it out of all the other ones.
