In late November I applied to a competitive job. It had five stages of selection: the application, a video interview, a couple of work tests, and a final interview.
I made it to the final interview. I wasn't selected, but given my good performance, they passed on my details to another related company. This related company e-mailed me with an invitation to apply and to chat with the department director.
After the chat last Friday, they said that putting my CV in was just to have my "information in the system" and "X will get in touch about some logistics next week".
Well, after uploading my CV and a cover letter over the weekend, letting the research director know, X has indeed got back to me with a boilerplate rejection.
As far as I know, the chat went well, my CV is virtually the same one I used for the role with the original company. One of you lads must have done hiring - what in God's fucking name happened here?
It could be practically anything. Hiring in most companies is a total shitshow. The hoops they make you jump through are just a veneer of legitimacy to a) persuade their bosses that they know what they're doing and b) cover their arses if something goes to an Employment Tribunal. It looks like a formal and rational process, but in reality it's a lot more like dating. People get rejected for stupid reasons and get hired for equally stupid reasons.
As often as not, they already have someone lined up for the role but need to orchestrate the pretence of an open hiring process to avoid accusations of nepotism. Sometimes you unknowingly step into some awful office politics situation where two people who absolutely hate each other are jointly responsible for filling a role and just reject all the candidates out of spite for the each other. Sometimes they don't actually want to hire anyone, it's just convenient for a manager to pretend that they're horribly understaffed and can't get the right people. Sometimes people just irrationally dislike you for no particular reason.
It could be that the director of the other company didn't think you'd fit in culture/personality-wise.
That said, having previously been involved in hiring for a department I used to run, the biggest factor is often this: you cannot control who you are up against. You could have absolutely smashed it and not put a foot wrong but miss out because of another candidate. I've hired people who were worse than people I've had to reject simply because the quality applicants at different times has varied. For all you know a number of you were passed on to this second company.
>I've hired people who were worse than people I've had to reject simply because the quality applicants at different times has varied.
I've done this a lot. You can patiently hire nothing but four or five star peeps for the whole time you're in charge then suddenly one memau you overlooked generates a skrasher on the entertainment deck and you've no choice but to hire every Groulien Salt Hog and Kasvagorian on the station to deal with it. By that point there's nobody left but the one, two or even zero star peeps on board to choose from.
It's always the ones that smell faintly of cabbage that get me. I've tried to run a pleasant and cabbage odour free workplace for so long, but somehow right when we most desperately need someone to man the DNA fixer and I've got people working double shifts on the jelly vats, a candidate with all the right qualifications in psychiatry and research comes along, and I'll jump at the chance to make an offer. Then it hits me.
>>14231 >you cannot control who you are up against
Excellent post. A lot of people are crap at customising their CV or their cover letter for the job - thats a big thing. But you also can't forecast or control who you are up against. I've recently missed jobs because I wasn't available (3 months notice) or the other candidate was a bird and they wanted diversity. C'est la vie. I'm cool with that, no matter how disappointing it might be.
OP, here. Strange thing, I did exactly as >>14235 suggested with a note to say I'd been invited to apply to this job.
About 45 minutes later I received another e-mail with an apology, saying there'd been a mixup with the recruitment system and that they hadn't intended to send out the boilerplate rejection.
This raises so many more questions.
Thank you to you lads anyway, all your suggestions may well have been the case. It turns out that I'm still in the running, however.
>>14240 Once we hired 6 temps through an agency from the 30 odd applicants the company we recruit though told everyone they didn't get the job. So I phoned up the agency to arrange when I was going to interview the 12 we shortlisted. Everyone got sent the same rejection letter and most of them being actually competent got jobs elsewhere in the 2 weeks between posting the job ad and the end date. This meant we had to re-post the job and go through a load of CVs again.
>It had five stages of selection: the application, a video interview, a couple of work tests, and a final interview.
Seems a bit much. I hate this sort of thing. I just avoid it nowadays. Once they ask me why I am no longer interested, I tell them that their process is too long, and ridiculous.
I had one company ask for video of me talking about my experience and projects I lead on, alongside the application, interview, assessment, a presentation, and a final interview. I had another company that wanted me to do a two hour presentation on some subject they would share with me at the first interview.
It is too ridiculous. I am not applying to become the CEO.
How are you supposed to answer "Why do you want to work for our company?" when the truth is simply that they offer competitive pay? This is for a semi-skilled job (I think that'd be the term) where anyone would be qualified after buying a 5 day course.
>>14247 That sounds sensible but I'm somewhat puzzled by the underlying reasoning. Surely the interviewer hasn't bought in wholesale to whatever marketing bollocks is on the website. Is the point just to demonstrate that you've done the minimum of research? Even if that means engaging in an obviously insincere charade?
Often the people who are in charge of recruitment are the HR or company lifer types who actually do fall for the Company Values horseshit. I work directly with people in meaningful roles at my place who do actually think our company's main mission is to 'be there' for the customer, rather than sucking money out of their pockets.
I hate the question too, but as someone who conducts interviews, in reality, it's not a terrible way to find out if someone has enough brain power to figure out how to bullshit creatively, or at the very least be prepared enough to have an answer to a question that can and should universally be answered "to pay my bills".
I wish we as a nation were braver with interviews. What we should really be asking is "no, why should I want work for this company?"
>>14250 I have no firm plans to move from my current job but would like to know where my position is in the market, so I'm planning to do some interviews for similar positions. As I'm secure I can go in there with a lot more confidence than usual and ask them exactly those sorts of questions. What's so fucking good about you lot then, eh? Am I supposed to be impressed? Give me your top three reasons to work here or I'm walking out the door right now.
>How are you supposed to answer "Why do you want to work for our company?" when the truth is simply that they offer competitive pay?
They all know it's bollocks and that at the end of the day, you are applying for one reason only, and that is that you want or need a new job and they have one going. So they don't really, really expect you to come up with some heartfelt teary-eyed explanation that you've wanted to work there since you were a weelad, and that it seems like just the kind of challenge that you were looking for or that what you bring to the table is such a perfect fit for that company.
It's all about being a good bullshitter. About selling an idea, in the face of it being all too obviously a bunch of rubbish. Because you are going to have to do just that day in, day out at almost every imaginable job where you need people to do any number of inane things for you.
It's also a great opportunity to flatter the interviewer(s). If you talk about how their company is uniquely positioned in the market, does everything better than the competition, or is a big clever brain house for clever big brain people, then what you're effectively doing is blowing smoke up their arse about how talented and clever they are for already working there. And naturally, they'll like you that little bit more once you've indirectly complemented them on their life choices.
I once had an interview with a company I really wasn't bothered about, but the recruiter was really egging me on to talk to them, so I took the call and handled it very much like this aiming to see how much I could annoy them.
Turned out that was exactly what they wanted, the company was a lot cooler than I expected and I've been working there two years now making loads of dosh. Give it a go.
>Thank you for taking the time to interview with us for this position, we enjoyed getting to know more about your background and interests. We've now completed interviews and shortlisting for the next steps, and I'm afraid on this occasion the team have decided not to move forward with your candidacy for this position. (DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR) really enjoyed connecting with you and your experience and background is impressive, but we had some extremely high calibre applicants for this position so it's been a tough decision making process for this next step. Overall your application was strong but at this stage the team felt that this position wasn't necessarily as well aligned with your longterm career motivations and interests as for some of the other candidates we met with.
Can someone translate this from HR to English for me?
>but at this stage the team felt that this position wasn't necessarily as well aligned with your longterm career motivations and interests as for some of the other candidates we met with
There's nothing in it that tells me it's not a boilerplate response, it's as vague as a Barnum statement. Unless a rejection email specifically mentions actual unique details relating to your application then it's best to assume it's just a copy-paste job and not bother reading too much into it.
I think you're probably bang on with this translation. Thinking back, I may have misspoke and revealed I have an interest in a kind of job that was (I thought) strongly related to the one I was applying for, anyway. I can't believe that would have scuppered my chances.
>I can't believe that would have scuppered my chances.
It probably didn't. I can read HR speak, for sure, but as >>14261 says, this could just as easily be boilerplate - that statement could apply to anyone if you think about it.
Even if this response was somewhat tailored to you (how big is the company? if there's more than 10 people working there, it probably wasn't), then it still doesn't necessarily mean that was their actual reason for passing you over, it's just a nice neutral example they picked up.
As a hiring manager, I can tell you that 99% of the time, qualified suitable candidates are rejected all the time, and it's usually because we're only allowed to hire one of the three or four or five people that we liked, and when you put their CVs and interview notes on the table next to each other, applicant number 3 had a year's extra experience in something relevant, or showed their personality a little more, or had nicer hair and it subconsciously made the panel like them a little better.
The process is undeniably grim, and I'm not sure if knowing that sometimes, you lose out on a job by one 'point' or simply because the guy after you said the right industry buzzword at the right time to the right person, is soothing or horrifying, but the fact is that sometimes it's simply out of your control. And in many industries, you have to remember that often the job is already going to someone who already works there, or is related to someone who already works there, and you're simply an unwitting part of the charade.
Try not to take it too personally, because it's rarely, if ever, a personal issue that lands you in a rejection.
Anyway, this might make you feel better - I've been reviewing video interviews for a face to face customer service role, and this morning I saw one from an ex-copper. For his example of a time he provided stellar customer service, he described how he, and I quote, "dealt with the victim of a particularly violent rape".
His strong emphasis on the "particularly" in "particularly violent rape" was really the bit that made me shout "what the fuck" in a quiet room full of people.
I do interviewing for a large company (it's not my job, but I have to). Despite recent efforts to "decomratise" hiring it's a shit show. Candidates usually go through a phone interview and then 3-5 in-person interviews. Those are via video conference right now but used to be actually in-office.
You get some weirdly hung up people who don't seem to understand the idea of apprenticeships or teaching up people with promise. This is IT, so there is no real standards body that hands out qualifications. In interview follow up meetings, I've seen people turned down who had excellent understanding of how Linux systems work, excellent understanding of how to scale a system using of-the-shelf software, but got rejected because they didn't give the precise answer Mr. Linked List wanted in their, frankly obtuse, interview.
I assume other places are the same: it doesn't matter if you're qualified, if you cannot impress that one jobsworth who has a very specific idea of what you need to know to do a job that doesn't involve the question at all, i.e. who base their question on a second year BSc exam question, tough luck.
On the flip side: no, this is not a trick question. If you think interviewers are trying to catch you out, run for the hills.
Depressingly, there are now a number of companies offering intensive courses on how to answer bullshit tech interview questions. If people are metagaming your interview process, you're doing it wrong.
OP here. Posts like this help, because I'm realising how arbitrary and silly it can all be.
What's fucking me up most is with the message in >>14257 it seems like they're all but saying I'm qualified and I did well in the applications and interviews, but they don't want me anyway.
Whenever this happens I'm just left with questions like "what more could I have done?" when the reality is I can't know and the answer is probably absurd.
>Whenever this happens I'm just left with questions like "what more could I have done?" when the reality is I can't know and the answer is probably absurd.
The reality is that there was probably just a other candidate that was very, very, very slightly better/more experienced than you, and that's that. You said yourself it was a competitive position - sometimes someone else is just a bit more competitive.
I really wouldn't bother trying to decode a rejection email. If it's really bothering you, there's always the option of asking for further feedback, but again, you probably won't get a straight answer.
>>14272 >If it's really bothering you, there's always the option of asking for further feedback, but again, you probably won't get a straight answer.
I did in fact reply to them, which I know isn't always advisable, but I tend to try and make the most of a bad situation.
I thanked them for the feedback they gave, mentioned that I hope I didn't misrepresent my future plans, gave a sentence on why I applied for the job, and went on to say if they had any further thoughts on where I'd be better "aligned", I'd be grateful.
It's probably silly of me to hope, but this company does belong to a loose affiliation of similar organisations that may have a job for me in the future.
>>14272 >The reality is that there was probably just a other candidate that was very, very, very slightly better/more experienced than you, and that's that. You said yourself it was a competitive position - sometimes someone else is just a bit more competitive.
Reflecting on this, I think I'm actually more worried that it might be the opposite. If it's someone with a few years on me and direct experience running a few relevant projects, or a directly applicable PhD qualification, I could respect that. But I have no way of knowing how I actually stacked up to the others.
They may have had the edge, but they may have also been a better "culture fit" (i.e. the interviewer could imagine getting a drink with them) or they looked slightly nicer on webcam or they just seemed more agreeable or something. I'll try to stop bumping the thread, but this has got me in a right state.
I don't wish to presume, but it sounds like this might be the first time you've not been successful at a job interview? Otherwise I think you'd be more willing to accept the grim reality that having better hair is indeed still 'having an edge'. It's not just about sheer performance, if it was, there'd be no such thing as a job interview, it would just be a big long test, where the highest score won. You're hiring someone you have to then spend 40 hours a week with, so of course personal considerations do come into it. Is that unfair? Probably, but that's still how it works. I'm a little concerned that you're taking it as hard as you seem to be.
Nah, I've faced loads of unsuccessful interviews in the past. It's just the fact this was a really good prospect at a time when I needed it, and that the process has gone on since November. Months of testing and interviewing leading to nothing is a bit of a tough one to swallow.
>>14269 >got rejected because they didn't give the precise answer Mr. Linked List wanted in their, frankly obtuse, interview.
Ah, yes, Mr Linked List, the knob that spent years failing upwards and thinks that somehow his position means he's the template candidates have to fill. And yes, it's always a Mr.
To think in some professional communities some people will defend Mr Linked List as a "brilliant engineer" who's "definitely not mediocre" because he used to work at Google.
Months of flirting and banter, loads in common, it's going better than it ever has with anyone you can remember, you start to think "damn maybe being single for so long really was for a reason" and thinking about a future together. Then she just texts you one day saying "sorry, I don't think this is working out" and that's an end of it.
>Then she just texts you one day saying "sorry, I don't think this is working out" and that's an end of it.
These days, I guess you can count yourself lucky if you even get a text. Ghosting seems to be the new trend.
I once called a company where I interviewed ten days later to ask why I hadn't heard from them although they said they'd get back to me within a week. They said, "Yes, erm, we need a bit more time". I had no real stake in that job, so I just took on a "wait and see" attitude. Well, it took them four months to finally write me a brief e-mail that they were sorry but that position had been filled. Probably for the better that I didn't take up work at a disorganised place like that.
- CV submitted and acknowledged in the February.
- Email in May to say they'd be doing their shortlist in June.
- Email in August to say I'd be notified in September whether I'd be able to attend their assessment day.
- Invite to their assessment day in October
- Email in October saying I'd passed that and they wanted me to participate in a second assessment.
- Email at the end of November, after being chased up, inviting me to an interview in December.
- Email three weeks after the interview to say I'd been successful, but they couldn't give me a start date because it'd "depend on business levels".
They eventually called me in May, thirteen months after I'd originally applied, after I chased them up to say they still couldn't commit to a date so I told them to go and fuck themselves. This was when I was fresh out of uni, I'd have called them out on this much sooner nowadays.
The only time I've ever been ghosted was after I had a phone interview with Arla Foods for their graduate scheme.
>>14279 My second interview for the job I have now ended with, "When can you start?" Right away; how about Monday? "Okay, we'll email you to confirm because we have a couple more people to speak to." They didn't, and by Saturday, I emailed them (the interview was on Thursday but I was willing to give them a bit of time) asking whether or not I should stay up till 4am on Monday morning to watch the Super Bowl.
No reply. I watched the Super Bowl and wondered what went wrong. On Monday, I got an email from them saying they forgot to tell me they'd hired me, and to start the following Monday instead. I'm sorry if I've told this story here before, but I do love telling it.
>>14277 For me it's ex-FB people that are the most stuck up because they somehow attribute the companies technical success to themselves when they were just the pixie sweeping the dust off the shoulders of giants. But I guess that with any of the big-ish tech firms having to deal with the cast-offs from one of the others is an unpleasant culture clash.
What annoys me most about Mr Linked List is that the correct answer is "I'd look up the data structure" for a junior and "I'd use X library that solves this" for a senior. Of course they need to be able to provide genuinely novel implementations to problems, but if you test them on things found in SICP you're just being a smart alec.
>>14282 Early Big Tech folks have a tendency to be awful. There's an infamous memo floating around from inside Twitter, written by people who had arrived from Google, saying "we noticed you guys have no standards, so here's our criteria". It includes all the usual BS but the highlight is the "must have a CS degree from a good uni". The list of "eligible" institutions in Europe has one glaring outlier, which is there because on of the group went there, and if he went there and ended up at Google and then Twitter it must clearly be a "good uni".
One of my indicators of potential bad takes on Twitter is "has former Big Tech employers in their bio". You get about 120 characters to tell people about yourself, and you think the most relevant part is the companies you used to work for?
This would really get my panties in a bunch if I could still bring myself to care about that kind of peacocking. Sure, good education helps and there's no denying that, but particularly once you deal with people who've been 'round the block a few times it becomes increasingly irrelevant. Most of the folks I work with (myself included) have a university degree of some sort, though only maybe 3/4 have one in CS. That said, there are absolutely brilliant folks who have no "formal education" and learned by doing.
Categorically if someone insists a candidate has a university degree, and even more so if it needs to be from a particular institution, when said candidate has several years of industry experience can go sit on it and swivel.
>>14282 >>14284 As someone who did a CS BSc at an ex poly and a postgrad research degree at a "good" Russel group uni (where I was involved with some of the undergrad teaching) I'm not convinced that "good" unis are necessarily any better than lower tier unis when it comes to bachelor's degrees.
In my experience it was actually the opposite. The ex poly was more focused on good teaching than research and hired lecturers who were actually interested in teaching and often had plenty of real world experience outside of academia. The Russell group uni had a great reputation for research and as a result hired career researchers who weren't interested in teaching undergrads, and it showed.
>That said, there are absolutely brilliant folks who have no "formal education" and learned by doing.
Nearly all the best CS people I knew in academia were self-taught amateurs before uni who would have gone on to be those people if they hadn't decided to go to uni
>>14285 >In my experience it was actually the opposite. The ex poly was more focused on good teaching than research and hired lecturers who were actually interested in teaching and often had plenty of real world experience outside of academia. The Russell group uni had a great reputation for research and as a result hired career researchers who weren't interested in teaching undergrads, and it showed.
This is something I noticed from outside of CS. I'd say that even at postgraduate level my experience with a Russell Group university was staff focused on their own work more than the needs of their students which, let's best honest, is what you associate yourself with a Russell Group for. It certainly bears out in the teaching/research ratio expected between the two types of institutions and as a result the kind of staff they attract. I was studying law so my undergraduate had teachers who either worked part-time as solicitors or were former quangos, the result was something that felt much more hands on and probably in line with what the students wanted.
I'm not denying that what you do get with the more top-tier universities is opportunities, there were no career fairs and people coming down from an ivory tower to lecture at my former polytechnic and the library might've well have not existed outside of it's use for printing. Still, it did change my perspective on what a good school even is which like a workplace is more about the people who make it worth getting out of bed for.
OP here. My last post regarding this tedious saga: they were nice enough to get back to me to say they'll "keep me in mind for future opportunities and would love to stay connected".
That they replied at all was a pleasant surprise, but time will tell if anything ever actually comes of it.
>>14286 >as a result the kind of staff they attract
I'm not so sure about that one. The academics at lesser universities would relish the opportunity to spend more time working on their own interests and less time teaching A-level standard material to an overburdened classroom. The problem is they can't afford to because they won't get funding for it since all that goes to the universities with a better infrastructure for research already in place.
It's a chicken and egg problem, but we definitely haven't reached an equilibrium where people are choosing to pursue jobs at a university with lower research expectations so they can focus on teaching -- at least not in the hard sciences. There are certainly academics who value teaching, but in my experience nobody seeks a job as a lecturer so that they can be a teacher.
