Frustrations with interviewing in this wild job market

At this point I am just here for the popcorn.   

Truth be told the Canadian job issues is actually sort of a thing at least in some fields.  Lotta people of questionable skill level were allowed to immigrate and are all happy to work for a few bones less than the next guy.  The funny thing is, my bro in Canada (native born Canadian in Hamilton) who is an ironworker with real marketable skills is gainfully employed and guys are knocking at his door to poach him. 

Can't say the same for the guys who came in to Canada on diploma mill visas - think about it this way - if I have made the decision to hire a diploma mill dude from India to do my IT, I have already decided that I am OK with some guy who may not be as well trained and definitely isn't as well integrated as a native born Canadian, but I am OK with it because I know he is cheaper.  So now why should I pay Canadian wages to get Indian service and skills?  I may as well just go right to India since I get the same level of proficiency for less money.  

In reply to SV reX :

He's not going to be a mechanic.

The first time a truck, covered in slush is on the lift and a big ball of nasty, dirty stuff drops on his neck as he walks under will be the last day at work.

That, or the familymobile that some kid spilled a bottle of milk in the back of and has been fermenting in the hot sun of the storage lot needs a cabin air filter or some other terrible thing like that.

My old boss has stories that will curl your hair. Minivans full to the belt line with food trash, cars you had to put ear plugs in your nose to test drive..

In reply to 93gsxturbo :

"Temporary foreign workers" at Timmys can't even get my double-double right half the time.

ShawnG said:

The first time a truck, covered in slush is on the lift and a big ball of nasty, dirty stuff drops on his neck as he walks under will be the last day at work.

I don't miss that, or my hands drying out so bad from salt that they're cracking wide open. 

at this point, let's quit E36 M3ting on Gameboy.  he has either heard us or he hasn't.  Hand hewn beams indeed.

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

You're right. My bad.

ShawnG said:

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

You're right. My bad.

not calling you out specifically. 

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

You're right. I'll own it too. 

In reply to SV reX :

nor you.

In reply to ShawnG :

I've had tropical dirtballs drop on me from the bottom of my Samurai before. One time I had to spend about 15 minutes in a building thick with epoxy fumes...to shut down some servers, doing IT work. My boss said I looked like I smoked a fat blunt when I came back out.

Doing crappy gig work with cars over the last year I've had a few nasty ones already. One that had a super-foul smell in it, the dealer suspected that a baby threw up in there at some point. Just today I had to spend time in an SUV that seemed to have been used as a driveable dog bed. Another time I got an old Jeep Cherokee with an interior condition that reminded me a lot of my Samurai the day after a rally.

Edit: Also barely holding back hand cracking with moisturizing cream right now from working in freezing wind all day. It's not easy on the face either.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

If you can get O'Keefe's Working Hands where you are, do so.  It is Cincinnati's gift to hands.  I have terrible cracking and splitting of my fingers during the winter and so far it's the only thing that I've ever found that works.

oh what the hell I'll chime in with my current state of the union address as a hiring manager in IT.  We've got jobs, lots of jobs.  I have had one or more open positions for the past two years.   

We've got candidates, piles of candidates, hell I've even told our T&A screeners to send me EVERYTHING, because I dont trust their screening.

What don't I have?   Qualified candidates.   Either due to skill level or more often due to attitude.   We have a very good team right now, to be a fit for the team you need to be a team player, a mentor if the role is at that level, and a skilled technician.   I cant tell you how many interviews went well from the tech side but the person's attitude was a definite no-go.   The few times we decided to take a chance on one of these candidates they never lasted more than two weeks.   

Some roles, we've even been willing to be light on the technical requirements since we have a very specific environment so you will be re-learning much of what you think you know anyway.  But if you come in with the attitude that you are gods gift, I dont even care if you are actually gods gift, you aren't part of our team.

Currently Im looking for a skilled Firewall technician in NC, hit me up if you know someone :)

GameboyRMH said:

In reply to ShawnG :

I've had tropical dirtballs drop on me from the bottom of my Samurai before. One time I had to spend about 15 minutes in a building thick with epoxy fumes...to shut down some servers, doing IT work. My boss said I looked like I smoked a fat blunt when I came back out.

Doing crappy gig work with cars over the last year I've had a few nasty ones already. One that had a super-foul smell in it, the dealer suspected that a baby threw up in there at some point. Just today I had to spend time in an SUV that seemed to have been used as a driveable dog bed. Another time I got an old Jeep Cherokee with an interior condition that reminded me a lot of my Samurai the day after a rally.

Edit: Also barely holding back hand cracking with moisturizing cream right now from working in freezing wind all day. It's not easy on the face either.

My Cherokee has smelled more like a dog bathroom than a dog bed. I do dog rescue. Even my nice car, The Mustang, has dog fur inside where my Border Collie rides shotgun.

When I go to the offroad park in East Texas, it takes me about a day to get all the red clay out from under, over and inside the same poor Cherokee. I actually do this stuff for fun.

Fun interview story to lighten the mood and show a bit how our process has gone.

Most interviews these days are still done over Teams/Zoom.  There are SOOOOO many people who think they are smart and are using google/chat GPT etc to answer the tech questions.  What they dont realize is that as an interview team we have someone putting the question into the same search engines to see if their answers match.  Many candidates have bit the dust that way.

So one day we're interviewing a gentleman for a position.  After/during every question he's looking down and fiddling with something off screen.  His answers were all solid and they weren't quotes from the searches we did to see if they were using tools.   Finally my one interviewer who is a great guy but pulls no punches just asked him, wtf are you doing over there.  Guy looks embarrassed for a minute then explains that as English is his 2nd language he's been writing down the questions in his native language because it helps him process his thoughts better.  He turned his camera down to prove it.  And there it was....Mr suit and tie up top was wearing pink shorts.....

He's one of the best members of our team :)

We just interviewed a guy for a leadership role. 

Our group had a couple of hours with the candidate. With that in mind, the team put together an extensive group of questions, half technical and the other half on personality and leadership. We were concerned that that we would only get through half the questions. LOL

The guy's resume was great, and he was nice enough. Everyone wanted him to be the "guy".  After the third or fourth question, we realized that he was not giving much detail and we were prodding him along. The candidate would give a shallow answer to the the question and then someone else on the team would ask a leading question to get the guy back on track. The other interview teams had the same result.
 

It's a lot of wasted effort to pull people from multiple levels and groups to do a high level interview panel only to realize that the candidate got through the pre screen process with all the "right" buzzwords and no substance. 
 

Both sides of the interview table can be very frustrating. 

Op (and anyone looking for a job) - I think you should go back through this thread and apply some CBT-like questions to all the statements you have made in your own posts (or simply think about recent thoughts you have had). Things like:

1. is this statement true?
2. can I prove it?
3. if it is true, and I can prove it, is it helpful (does it get you closer to your goal of landing a good job)?

perhaps obviously, untrue, irrational, and unhelpful thoughts are probably not worth putting too much energy into.

thought habits and patterns can drive your life if you're not careful. We can be intentional about which thoughts we allow to become our truths. I think you (this applies to everyone, always) can find some small ways to shift the thoughts you focus on to move you closer to your goals.

edit - this might sound preachy but I really think it is key. Frustrations will own us if we let them. Feel the frustration, identify the thought, and then evaluate if it is helpful or not. If not helpful, leave it there.

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

The OP of this thread was DirtyBird222. Is that who you were addressing?

As part of my severance package, I've got six months' worth of career coach services which includes access to a bunch of web-based tools (heh) that are supposed to help.  Like the General said, I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good.  So I'm checking them out.  One thing that I found very interesting is that when I put the same resume and the same job description through the ATS evaluator that they use I got a score in the high 30% range from their system while enhancv.com - which I had already paid for before this happened - ranks it in the low 70% range.  So it may be possible that many of the resumes that I submitted were far worse than the tool was leading me to believe.  I'm a man with two watches right now, though, so I'm not sure who to believe.  I can tell you that when I re-wrote and re-arranged things to get the new tool to over 90%, the enhancv tool was only around 82% or 83%.  My assumption going forward is that if I produce a resume that scores over 75% in both tools, I probably have something that is worth submitting.

But I found something else that makes me laugh until I cry.  I've mentioned before that this is an AI arms race.  One of the sections of their website is dedicated to explaining how to do well when a potential employer uses an AI-based chatbot to perform the initial screening interview.  The top tip for what to avoid is "Over-automation: While it might be tempting to use overly rehearsed answers, ensure your responses remain personable and genuine to avoid sounding robotic."

Ah, how far we've come.  I've been a lover of and believer in technology for nearly every day of my life, but damn if I'm not ready to go out and start smashing looms.

In reply to wae :

So, the highly over-automated AI robotic counseling system is telling you when you are communicating with a highly over-automated AI ChatBot that you should be careful not to over-automate?

I' m glad I'll be retiring soon. 

In reply to SV reX :

What's even better is when you hit the button to have the AI generate the content.  It'll think about it for a while then populate the editor with content that it created.  And then proceed to criticize that same content. 

In reply to wae :

I just listened to the Dinner with Racers episode with Barry Wanser. He said "If you've got a pulse, can use tools somewhat effectively, and are willing to travel, you could probably get a job with a race team in Indy right now." Something along the lines of young kids these days aren't willing to put it all in to be part of a team like that. 

Sounds like I would explore opportunities like that if you're still shopping for a joba nd like turning wrenches. 

JThw8 said:

oh what the hell I'll chime in with my current state of the union address as a hiring manager in IT.  We've got jobs, lots of jobs.  I have had one or more open positions for the past two years.   

We've got candidates, piles of candidates, hell I've even told our T&A screeners to send me EVERYTHING, because I dont trust their screening.

What don't I have?   Qualified candidates.   Either due to skill level or more often due to attitude.   We have a very good team right now, to be a fit for the team you need to be a team player, a mentor if the role is at that level, and a skilled technician.   I cant tell you how many interviews went well from the tech side but the person's attitude was a definite no-go.   The few times we decided to take a chance on one of these candidates they never lasted more than two weeks.   

Some roles, we've even been willing to be light on the technical requirements since we have a very specific environment so you will be re-learning much of what you think you know anyway.  But if you come in with the attitude that you are gods gift, I dont even care if you are actually gods gift, you aren't part of our team.

Currently Im looking for a skilled Firewall technician in NC, hit me up if you know someone :)

I'll be the devils advocate here, is it a lack of qualified candidates or are you targeting unicorns and upset when you don't get someone who can be both a software developer while simultaneously running your efforts for FedRamp and writing/enforcing all NIST 800-53 controls and policies? 

That's the problem I saw with my terrible job hunt. This reqs would want people who could do everything and have certifications for everything too. Then they would want to pay as if it were someone with a junior level skillset. 

The IT world is phuked six ways from Sunday in how they recruit and retain talent with unloftly expectations and a total reliance on certifications as a premise for ability vs. experience. 

I got lucky and landed a job with a consulting firm that understands not everyone has every skillset; however, they are more than willing to pay you to get an education or experience in that field if they need you to work in it. Unheard of these days, and the CEO is a total car nut. 

There's stuff out there, you just have to spread your seed like a tree does with pollen, cover large swaths and the probability should go up for a match. 

In reply to Indy - Guy :

At first I thought you were referring to this thread.

I've defended GB for most of this thread because I'm on the ground here in Ontario. I know just how bad the situation is, and I don't think any of you keyboard warriors are, or do, but I've also wondered for a while if he's been having a little fun at your expense.

In reply to Peabody :

I was referring to the AI resume generator that wae was describing:  generating content and them immediately criticizing the content it just created.  

But now that you mention it, I've avoided this thread for quite a while (because GB obviously doesn't actually want a job, just wants to complain.) {Canadian welfare system must pay pretty good?}

I saw wae was participating and I popped in to see what he was contributing.  I'll exit the thread again.