Just wierd.

We are currently very short handed at work. Still. For months now we have been missing 3 of 7 system technicians. Various people have left or taken different positions within the department. With the environment we are in and the need to cover 6am-Midnight 7 days a week, they are stretched quite thin. So, last week and this week we have been interviewing to fill these positions. We do a 3 person panel interview and I was one of those panel members. Most of the interviews were pretty standard fare with some decent candidates and some woefully underqualified. The technical portion of the interview has some very basic computer / network troubleshooting questions. One person that came in for an interview had an exchange with us like this:

Us: How comfortable would you say you are with Active Directory.
Applicant: Active Directory? What is that? Can you rephrase the question?
Us: How comfortable are you with printers?
Applicant: Oh, I print all the time. Im comfortable with them.
Us: We are asking more about how comfortable you are troubleshooting, maintaining and repairing them.
Applicant: Well I could probably get out a paper jam or something.

Mind you, those were two of her better answers. Now I fully support people going after jobs that are maybe just outside their area of expertise to keep challenging themselves, but if this individual was an employeed of another department here, they would be the one calling up to unlock their password 4 times in a single day because they couldn't handle changing and/or remembering it. Thats a lot of nerve to apply for a position with the sole responsibility of helping and supporting people that are just as bad on computers as you are. Thats like asking your neighboors mildy retarded dachsund to take your mastiff for a walk. Not only is a dog not qualified to walk another dog, but because of the size difference you know the dachsund is scared. And dogs can smell fear. So what you end up with is the mastiff running around the block with a dachsund dangling from his collar, bouncing on the ground periodically. While comical and I suppose does in some kind of way get the job done, its far from what you are looking for to fill the position.

Let me toss out a bit of advice for those of you doing interviews these days. If you are applying for a technical job and have zero technical experience, education or even basic technical aptitude that might imply that you could at least be taught, you need to be smoking hot. In the IT world, there are generally very few women .. and the number of those women that could be labled as hot are fewer and far between. Let me say that if you come in looking like this, I would hire you on the spot just to brighten the workplace. Department moral is important people!



One of the other candidates came in.. and brought props. Yes, props. When talking about skills they possesed, this individual brought out network cables, laptop hard drives, and a laptop itself. We managed to stop him before he brought out a cable tester too. This applicant is actually one of the best we have seen thus far personality wise and skill wise, but I am still just speechless about the props thing. I suppose people will say that he accomplished his point which was to get his name to stick out among the applicants, but still... was an odd experience. I think for my next interview I'm going to have a TV setup with an Xbox 360 so I can demo my mad Guitar Hero skills. That is bound to impress and make me stand out right? Oh Yeah! Did you see me beat Satan in a guitar duel there? Anyone can change passwords in AD, but not everyone can destroy Satan with a rippin version of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia'!

That candidate was a bit odd, but like I said, was a very nice guy and knew his stuff. The wierdness I refer to in my title came from an earlier interview. The person that came in for the interview was pretty close to my grandfathers age. Now I have zero problem interviewing someone older than me, but this age gap was not 10 or 20 years even.. we are talking more like 40. That in itself was a bit strange, but that was to be the most normal part of the whole thing. Basically the entire inteview boiled down to a sad story of an old man. He had relatively little as far as computer related skills and basically said that if he had his way he would be eeking life out on his social security and military pension but that he had lots of bills from an illness in the family and that his wife both wanted him out of the house and wanted him to have a paycheck coming in. I feel for the guy, really, I do. As bad as I felt however, going for the pity routine in an interview for a technical position that has to be relied on to be able to handle troubleshooting and maintaining a 400+ computer network solo in the evenings and on weekends, is NOT the way to get a job. This poor guy should have been at home taking 3 hours to read the morning paper with his dog Jethro out on the front porch. What truly makes me a horrible person however, is that all I could think about was asking him to repeat the line "Welcome to Wal-mart!" to try it on for size. Yes, I know.. going straight to hell for that one! But I figure Hell can't be any worse than an Arizona summer.. so bring it on. Actually I am not going to hell anyway. Satan couldn't handle the shame of me walking around down there knowing full well I kicked his ass in Guitar Hero 3!

One other applicant worked for the company I do previously. She was fired for attendance problems. On the morning of her interview to be rehired at the place she was fired from for said attendance issues, she calls and asks to reschedule the interview from the original time because she was going to be late. Then at the rescheduled time, sits in the interview and has the gaul... the unbridled audacity even, to give herself a 9/10 on both reliability amd dependability. At least the old guy was honest.

Well I guess in the end, the advantage of doing interviews is that I know what not to do when I am on the other side of the table. It just floors me the amount of people that don't have the basic common sense to hit the main points. Like show up early for your interview. Know what position you are applying for. Be at least able to pronounce the terms for the field you are wishing to work in. Oh, and for the love of all that is holy and sacred .. don't misinterpret the job description you are given to read and say "It looks like I will be your supervisor from what this is saying!" Oh, you are supervisor material all right. The local porta-potty company needs someone to "supervise" the pumping and cleaning and I will be happy to make you a reccomendation based on the strength of your resume and commanding presense! Best of luck to you in your new career and don't let anyone give you any CRAP. Get it? If you don't get the humor in that, you are dead to me.

Out of this round of interviews we are hoping for a couple of good candidates that don't turn out to be closet serial killers. You laugh, but one of the techs that left recently we are pretty sure has a woman trapped in a pit somewhere in his basement and goes home after a long day to work on his woman suit made from human skin. This is a guy that in the middle of a work potluck lunch somehow got on the topic of embalming and proceeded to whiteboard how the whole procedure works. He also like things that cut. I'm talking you could open his top desk drawer and see no less than 20 box cutters in there. All perfectly arranged. We used to screw with his head by putting the B&D cordless drill in the spot for the Panasonic. It would enrage him. This is a guy that spent two hours swapping keyboards and monitors in the server room so that they would all match.. color wise. Oh yeah, this guy was chock full of issues. But you had to be nice. You wouldn't want to be walking to your car one night after work and get pulled into a van and turned into a lampshade or something. I am not sure what he is up to these days, but I heard he was applying for a position with the Post Office. Ok, ok. I didn't actually hear that, but it seems right up his alley.

I should actually thank all these people. Every time I think I am strange and out there, these people give me a reality check and remind me that I am the normal one. The rest of the world is wierd. That is my story and I'm sticking to it.