1 year ago I talked about how not to host an interview. That was based on a couple of interviews that I’d attended as a candidate and the interviewing companies really screwed up and steered me elsewhere. You could say that they made a lasting impression.
In college, my IT course featured classes on all sorts of business subjects such as law, maths and marketing. Marketing was sometimes interesting. One of the most interesting things I learned was that (a) a happy customer might relay their positive experience to 2 or 3 people and that (b) an unhappy customer will relay their negative experience to around 13 people. That certainly has held true in relation to my experiences last year.
I’ve seen Company A sponsoring events I’ve been at, trying to recruit people. I suddenly feel the urge to retell my story from there. You can imagine the response of anyone when I tell them of the advert for an architect that was actually a break/fix engineer and the rude & unprofessional manner of one of the interviewers.
A colleague who I’d rate as being very skilled recently told me he was interviewing for a job with Company A. I reminded him of my experience. He rightly said he’d try it out anyway. Following the interview, he emailed me with a story of his own. This skilled engineer was told over the phone that he wasn’t skilled enough. Hmm. It sounded like someone was let out of the basement to do interviews again 🙂
Then this morning, the recruitment agency that sent me to Company A last year rang me up. Allegedly, Basement Boy has been "sidelined". Yeah, right! Either that or he’s been cloned. My name came up in relation to a job there. I politely said "no thanks". Anyway, I’ve got something good going right now so I don’t need the hassle of dealing with underground dwelling engineers who haven’t seen the light of day since the millennium. I’ve dealt with politics-playing morons in the past and I won’t voluntarily go waltzing into that playground again. I’d want to see a photocopy of his P45 before I’d even venture into the office … and you’d better bet my contributions to the employment contract would be … creative.
Anyway, first impressions last.