Job Interviews in the IT Sector

Work relationships, just like the relationship between two people, are a moment when two sides meet. The pot and the lid. And just as in personal relationships, there is no single formula for work relationships either - what attracts two sides and what repels them. Although the classical relationship formula includes such a formulation as mutual complementarity, looking at people one knows, one must conclude that the basis for long and lasting bonds in relationships can be many unimaginable reasons and coincidences of circumstances.

People can be not only intelligent or unintelligent, but also courageous/shy, tidy/untidy, precise/sloppy, punctual/absent-minded, and endowed with other qualities besides. However much one might wish to be assessed as a person, it is precisely as a person that you are assessed. Not your knowledge, education, appearance, or communication skills, but all of these together. And each employer assigns their own weight to each of these components, which cannot be known or guessed in advance. What may seem important to you may seem unimportant to the employer, and vice versa.

mimooh - http://www.inf.sgsp.edu.pl/pub/MALUNKI/ROZNE/

The Employer.

By ability to pay, employers could be divided into the following groups:

1. Businessmen. Those who will devote an unimaginable amount of time to finding the cheapest possible employee.
2. The "guess then" employer. The employer has a salary figure in mind and you as the job seeker must guess it. Incidentally, naming not only a higher but also a lower sum will mean you have lost.
3. The honest employer. During the conversation they state what sum they are prepared to pay.
4. The generous employer. Prepared to pay a lot, but also expects good output.
5. A state institution.

The Job Seeker.

Job seekers can also be divided into groups:

1. Businessmen. Those who will devote an unimaginable amount of time to finding a job where they will have to work little but can receive a lot. No less oddly, they find one too.
2. "Don't know, need to look". A broad-profile specialist who cannot give a concrete answer to any specific question. For example - how long will it take you to complete this task? Answer: don't know, need to look, etc.
3. Hoppers, or fortune seekers. Have not worked in one place for longer than a few months. Even upon starting a new job, they are already looking to where to jump next.
4. Freelancers. Do not want permanent employment on principle. Incidentally, can be very hardworking and precise. Possible variations - accumulate many small jobs and miss deadlines, or work sloppily and without responsibility.
5. Researchers. Can conjure up the gloomiest theories and rush headlong into them, neglecting urgent work. Very poor understanding of how money is made.
6. The ordinary employee. Arrives at nine, leaves at five. Tidy, precise, and with no interest whatsoever in the work being done.
7. The Pro. Master of their field. Does everything with remarkable enthusiasm.
8. The universal employee. Very capable of switching and immersing themselves in very varied and even dissimilar tasks. One moment can be programming, the next fixing the boss's car, etc.
9. The scatterbrain. Takes on everything and finishes nothing. The more serious case is scatterbrain + researcher.

Salaries

Unlike southern peoples (and Arab countries), northerners do not have a pronounced bargaining culture. As a result, salary negotiations frequently end with one side feeling offended. Accordingly, the employer takes offence if the employee has demanded disproportionately high pay (even though the employer themselves did not even indicate a range in the job advertisement), while the employee feels cheated if the employer offers considerably lower pay than had been hoped for (and even written in the CV).

The reasoning on both sides is simple:

Employer: very poor knowledge and experience to be paid such a salary.

Job seeker: a lousy businessman who can't figure out how to sell at a fair price.

The Job Interview

Based on the content of job interviews, I have crystallised the following groups of employers (interviewers):

1. The STEM types. Skills acquired in preparing documentation and solving informatics olympiad problems are the be-all and end-all. Although in its early days programming was connected with solving mathematical problems and finding numerical methods, nowadays, for example, to demand knowledge of mathematics in web (WP) programming is somewhat odd. Not knowing what integer division is? Horror, horror… Not knowing what bubble sort is? Horror, horror… One might think that all of this cannot be learned in 5 minutes. Unless you have graduated from the very same faculty as the interviewer - the chances are slim.
2. Logic people. Questions are based on logic or attentiveness. Evidently the employer has decided that it will be simpler to work with sharp-eyed employees.
3. Practical work under time constraints. All is fine if the task is precisely formulated. The task may contain hidden pitfalls, or the employer may have "forgotten" to include a requirement which they then demand. For example, that HTML formatting code was not to be used, etc.
4. The exam type. A few years ago this was practised by Exigen. Brainbench questions are sent out and must be answered within a limited time. Another form is the recitation of factual information - for example, how many characters are in an md5 hash? Etc.
5. A conversation about a process or problem. In my view the most democratic method, looking at it from both the employer's and the employee's perspective. Provided, of course, that the goal is not to catch someone out on not knowing a specific technology.
6. The measuring contest. Essentially the entire interview is oriented towards admiring the interviewer's own wit.

Marginal cases are probably not worth examining. For example, in an interview for a PHP programmer vacancy, questions about C++ are asked.

Overall one can conclude that it is not so much that there is a shortage of specialists willing to work for small sums at mega-companies with mega-many branches and a rich history (what other explanation could there be for a three-person office demanding a cover letter?), but rather a lack of elementary mutual respect. It remains only to wish those entrepreneurs who lament the shortage of specialists in the sector to perhaps look a bit more critically at their own attitude. Meanwhile, job seekers should be more determined and persistent, and from time to time look critically at whether the money they are receiving, the competencies they are acquiring, and the time they are spending are worth it. The fact is that in the IT sector there is much that must be learned independently, and it is better to acquire these competencies while young.