Job hunting - has it all changed?

webboo

When I applied for my mechanical engineering apprenticeship I think I wrote a letter asking for a job on the advice of a friend who worked there. I was then asked to attend an interview and was offered a job. No forms or technical stuff, I think they might have asked if I did metal work at school.
Mind it was 1970 and I was 14 at the time.

First.Aspect

All of the jobs I've wanted and have got boiled down to was I a good fit personally, plus one that I shouldn't have gone for and was a disaster. The person hiring will have known fairly soon based on the CV combined with whether they thought I came over as a d!ck.

I failed to get several of the jobs where they do the rounds of graduate interviews with various people who want to have a say. All that does is rule out all candidates where one of several people has doubts. In turn, the firm ends up hiring the person equivalent of an Austin Allegro. Hired by committee, bland and disappointing.

Jezyboy

First.Aspect said:

All of the jobs I've wanted and have got boiled down to was I a good fit personally, plus one that I shouldn't have gone for and was a disaster. The person hiring will have known fairly soon based on the CV combined with whether they thought I came over as a d!ck.

I failed to get several of the jobs where they do the rounds of graduate interviews with various people who want to have a say. All that does is rule out all candidates where one of several people has doubts. In turn, the firm ends up hiring the person equivalent of an Austin Allegro. Hired by committee, bland and disappointing.

Sometimes I wonder if after a initial sift of CVs, a random number generator should just be used to decide.

Stevo_666

Jezyboy said:

First.Aspect said:

All of the jobs I've wanted and have got boiled down to was I a good fit personally, plus one that I shouldn't have gone for and was a disaster. The person hiring will have known fairly soon based on the CV combined with whether they thought I came over as a d!ck.

I failed to get several of the jobs where they do the rounds of graduate interviews with various people who want to have a say. All that does is rule out all candidates where one of several people has doubts. In turn, the firm ends up hiring the person equivalent of an Austin Allegro. Hired by committee, bland and disappointing.

Sometimes I wonder if after a initial sift of CVs, a random number generator should just be used to decide.

You can avoid hiring unlucky people by chucking half of the CVs in the bin.

Pross

I suspect the initial sift will be done by AI soon (probably already is in some cases). I know they search CVs for key words which is why I've always ensured I tweak my CV to include whatever the buzzwords of the day are.

pblakeney

It was "a thing" for a while to simply add buzzwords at the end of your Word CV in white text. A human wouldn't notice but a computer would pick up on them. Still a thing?

Pross

Never heard of that one.

photonic69

Seems like all job appointments seem to be based on a Points system. Candidates are scored on various answers in their job application letters and during interview. The person that scores best is the one that gets the job rather than the one that would actually do the job best. It sucks.
Where I work our HR dept is hopeless. Always pushing out staff development training on being aware about racial or sexual/gender descrimination but when it comes to approving replacement posts for people that have left because they get better jobs elsewhere, it takes them months. And months. And months.

First.Aspect

Some are points based, yes. Seems like a good way to avoid the need to hire based on gut instinct and personality and end up with a team of people defined in advance by people they won't even work with, who devise the scoring system.

Stevo_666

photonic69 said:

Where I work our HR dept is hopeless. Always pushing out staff development training on being aware about racial or sexual/gender descrimination but when it comes to approving replacement posts for people that have left because they get better jobs elsewhere, it takes them months. And months. And months.

That's far from unusual. We call our HR department the RPD (Recruitment Prevention Department). They insert themselves into the process to an un-necessary extent when all we want them to do is arrange the interviews and sent out the offer letters. We can do the rest.

rjsterry

First.Aspect said:

Some are points based, yes. Seems like a good way to avoid the need to hire based on gut instinct and personality and end up with a team of people defined in advance by people they won't even work with, who devise the scoring system.

Sounds like people are just bad at defining the criteria on which they are assessing candidates.

Pross

I had one interview where the people interviewing apologised at the very start that they had to stick to a script and ask me all the formulaic standard questions. I think it's the STAR method "Give me an example of when you dealt with a challenging situation in the office and how you resolved it". I'm not convinced the people interviewing me often have the training to interpret anything from this as they are usually people from a very similar background and if they are from more of an HR / management background they won't understand what I can offer in a technical role. Again, it is something that tells me the company isn't the sort of place I'm likely to enjoy working.

pblakeney

My last interview (and thankfully my last) was on a similar basis to Pross's above.
HR posing unrealistic questions tweaked to an engineering scenario. I answered as best I could from an engineering aspect, then there was a pause. The engineering manager had to "translate" my answer back. Thankfully he knew that I knew what I was talking about otherwise it would have went nowhere. I do wonder how many people get into positions based purely on being able to bluff their way through these kind of interviews.

rick_chasey

pblakeney said:

My last interview (and thankfully my last) was on a similar basis to Pross's above.
HR posing unrealistic questions tweaked to an engineering scenario. I answered as best I could from an engineering aspect, then there was a pause. The engineering manager had to "translate" my answer back. Thankfully he knew that I knew what I was talking about otherwise it would have went nowhere. I do wonder how many people get into positions based purely on being able to bluff their way through these kind of interviews.

Lots.

MidlandsGrimpeur2

In theory the points system works but I have sat in on a number of interviews where the hiring Manager just doctors the scoring post interviews to award the job to the candidate they liked the best.

It also raises issues when there is no minimum benchmark. I worked for a very large charity where highest score got the job, but you didn't have to meet a minimum points score. I saw examples where all the candidates were poor but highest score had to be offered the job in line with policy, you could not just scrap it and re-advertise. Unsurprisingly, when this occurred the person ended up being a disaster.

bobmcstuff

photonic69 said:

Seems like all job appointments seem to be based on a Points system. Candidates are scored on various answers in their job application letters and during interview. The person that scores best is the one that gets the job rather than the one that would actually do the job best. It sucks.
Where I work our HR dept is hopeless. Always pushing out staff development training on being aware about racial or sexual/gender descrimination but when it comes to approving replacement posts for people that have left because they get better jobs elsewhere, it takes them months. And months. And months.

We only do points-based for graduates, because we get so many applicants. We apply grading based on degree grade and university, and we also have 3 people (technical people who they would be working with) give a number on the other factors.

Then we try and get ~20 to an assessment day (which is again run by technical people) to do group and individual exercises which is basically looking at how they work with others and under pressure. We usually recruit 2 a year although this year we went for 3 as we could not decide between 2 of them.

For more senior grades we tend to rely on our recruiter or personal recommendations/referrals (I much prefer this as the person then effectively comes prequalified if the referral is from someone we trust).

I get unsolicited applications to my email all the time and I just delete them usually... Half the time they don't even seem to be from people in the UK.

rjsterry

bobmcstuff said:

photonic69 said:

Seems like all job appointments seem to be based on a Points system. Candidates are scored on various answers in their job application letters and during interview. The person that scores best is the one that gets the job rather than the one that would actually do the job best. It sucks.
Where I work our HR dept is hopeless. Always pushing out staff development training on being aware about racial or sexual/gender descrimination but when it comes to approving replacement posts for people that have left because they get better jobs elsewhere, it takes them months. And months. And months.

We only do points-based for graduates, because we get so many applicants. We apply grading based on degree grade and university, and we also have 3 people (technical people who they would be working with) give a number on the other factors.

Then we try and get ~20 to an assessment day (which is again run by technical people) to do group and individual exercises which is basically looking at how they work with others and under pressure. We usually recruit 2 a year although this year we went for 3 as we could not decide between 2 of them.

For more senior grades we tend to rely on our recruiter or personal recommendations/referrals (I much prefer this as the person then effectively comes prequalified if the referral is from someone we trust).

I get unsolicited applications to my email all the time and I just delete them usually... Half the time they don't even seem to be from people in the UK.

The obvious risk with the latter system is that it becomes a bit of a closed shop with a small pool of acquaintances moving around similar roles.