Is there anything worse than a job interview?

[MrHat]

I love these threads.

Ditto on the confidence thing.  I have found that answering a question firmly and quickly (there's a fine line between quickly-smart and quickly-robot), you can generally fake your way into anything.  Just make sure that when you give the answer, you are already thinking of ways to support it.  Even if it's half assed.

Smile alot.  Make sure you ask them questions too.

I'm writing this down because I'm in the unique position that I'm moving to Balitmore and have waastaa at a few of the bigger engineering firms/contractors.  I'm going to play the whole "got out of EE, did sales, found it wasn't for me, want to get back into EE design" with certain parts being shifted for the jobs/companies.  Any specific advice for that?  I didn't get exceptionally good grades (2.8gpa) in college, and am not confident in my base knowledge of EE.  But I learn fast.  And I'm sexah in my pirate suit.

[Margalis]

Ditto on the confidence thing.  I have found that answering a question firmly and quickly (there's a fine line between quickly-smart and quickly-robot), you can generally fake your way into anything.  Just make sure that when you give the answer, you are already thinking of ways to support it.  Even if it's half assed.

I suppose it depends a lot on the interview, but if you were interviewing for me this is exactly what *not* to do.

Usually when I give interviews one of the first things I say is that I don't expect someone to know everything, and if they are going to make a reasonable guess at something be *sure* to say so first. The last thing I want to see is a guy who is quick and confident with wrong answers, because it tells me he A) doesn't know what he's talking about and B) doesn't realize that. If a guy knows he doesn't know tha answer that's fine, but a guy who is quick with a bad answer is trouble. If I'm hiring I want someone who knows their shit cold, but barring that knows that they need to look it up or ask.


My advice in your specific situation is to be up front and say you need some memory refreshment but are a quick learner. And expect to be asked why you wanted to get into sales, then why you wanted to get back out. One of the things I'm wary of is hiring people who don't really want the job they are interviewing for. I hire engineers and it seems like everyone with more than 2 years of experience wants to be a team lead or project lead or techinical lead or architect or CTO or "get more involved in the customer facing side" or "more involved in the business aspect"- hey guys, no, not everyone can be the boss! I don't want 5 engineers who are all aiming to be the director of engineering in a couple of years. It means a couple years down the road people are going to be unhappy and either bail or start complaiing or lobbying for different positions or whatever.

[Pococurante]

Sure it's nice to have people who know their limits.

But a company heavy in drones is a disaster.  I have a hard time tolerating a team lead let alone a manager who doesn't grasp the people-side of management.  Mentorship is extremely important to me and it's usually with a bit of sadness I find someone who just wants to sit in one position for all of their career - rarely does that kind of personality perform well, just consistently mediocre, and even more rarely do they keep their skills current or keep me apprised of problems that need fixing.

But such folks are often very good at softserving management.  Huge negative...

[WayAbvPar]

My favorite job interviews are the ones where where it's a bunch of rookies that can talk a good game to investors, but are in way over their heads.  About halfway through, after I've gotten through nailing their "hard" questions, I start interviewing *them*, asking things like "So, what is our strategic planning for our market placement of this title?"  Generally, the marketing guy in the room will start riffing off demographics, I let him go on for a bit, then throw in: So, what's our primary gameplay targets to reach this market?  Here, the producer or lead designer who's supposed to be my new boss starts mumbling some things.  After he's dug humself a deep enough hole, I close it with: "So, what are our fallback positions if we run into implementation barriers or bottlenecks?"

"Like what?"  So I name off the top five that have entered my head in the course of the conversation.  Responses usually alternates between dismissive, they think they already have that handled and it can't possibly cause a setback, and stunned, they never imagined that could be a problem.

Sometime about there, the brighter guys in the room realize that I should be interviewing to be their boss, and not their flunky.  Usually this is when they wrap things up and get me off the phone or out of the room, then go have scrreaming fights for the next day or so.  Maybe I never hear back from them, maybe a PA calls me in a few days and says "Ummm, we don't think you'd be a good fit."  If the PA was nice to me, I give him the Cassandra act: Tell him exactly how the whole thing is going to fly into pieces, and how to plan his exit strategy. I understand that typically sets off more fights.

If I was the proper kind of weasel, I could soft-pedal the interviews, get inside, and tear the joint up.  Unfortunately, I have certain ethcal standards that keep me from going that route, mostly not wanting to have to wake up in the morning and see a flaming douchebag in the mirror.  I really don't like the person I have to become to play that kind of politics, and I can never bring myself to be ruthless enough.

--Dave

Weasel your way in and then write a book about it. You can call all the douchebaggery 'research' then.

[schild]

If I was the proper kind of weasel, I could soft-pedal the interviews, get inside, and tear the joint up.  Unfortunately, I have certain ethcal standards that keep me from going that route, mostly not wanting to have to wake up in the morning and see a flaming douchebag in the mirror.  I really don't like the person I have to become to play that kind of politics, and I can never bring myself to be ruthless enough.

You should be. The young hip managerial suit deserves absolute devestation. Professional douchebags are the worst.