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Admin
As a side note to this type of argument, I would point out that men are quite likely to base their opinion of a woman on her weight and how well she dresses. Neither of those has much of anything to do with what her intelligence or sense of humor is, or how well she might perform in other areas (such as cooking, listening, and such). Before you criticize someone for basing an opinion upon looks alone, you might look at the areas where you do the same thing.
Admin
We had a manager position interview with us. He was going to be our in-between person with the development staff and External Clients. As part of our interview process, we required each candidate to perform a group presentation on a topic of his or her choice. The idea was to determine the level of comfort with group situations, as well as the ability to handle Q&A. As we were all consultants who met regularly with clients, this was paramount. The candidate would be representing not just our company, but each of us individually and professionally.
One candidate came in for a second interview without a tie. I am a very casual dresser, but I still feel that this was inappropriate for an interview, especially for a management position. During his individual interview with me, his lack of development experience left me doubting that he would be the mentor to our team that we were looking for. The final nail in the coffin (for me), was that during his presentation, he held a can of coke in his hand for the entire thing!
Unfortunately, he was hired anyway, a mistake that killed our development group, almost ruined my career, and cost the company millions of dollars in lost development work.
As far as dress code, I am in the camp that work is work, and play is play. I worked for a big three defense contractor that felt that casual Friday's meant no jacket, and I worked for an engineering firm that everyone wore jeans and T-Shirts/Polo's. There is definately a corporate culture for each company, and I feel that you should dress one notch hirer than the position you are applying for when you interview.
No matter what the geek subculture tries to represent, the "suits" still make the decisions. Most "suits" will not turn over a multi-million dollar project to someone who dresses like they are still in high school. I'm sure there are the few "suits" that will get to know their employees that closely, but most do not have the time or inclination, especially in larger organizations.
What you wear on a day to day basis shows an insight to your personality. I do not want to be known as a slob who has to buck the system to make a point about how much of a geek I am. I also would not walk out of an interview simply because the dress code was higher than I wanted. If the pay wasn't commensurate with the dress code, than I would not accept it.
Admin
So is maturity. Would be nice to see more of it, rather than people who watch cartoons and play tag in the cube aisles.
What, exactly, is wrong with watching cartoons? They are a legitimate form of art and entertainment just like cinema, paintings, stage performances, or music.
Admin
I don't see any problem with watching cartoons, unless you're watching them at work. There are certainly plenty that are targeted at adults, going all the way back to Rocky & Bullwinkle.
Admin
I would have to agree to this one too, I personally worry when they ask the "why are you looking for another job" much like the question above. Me personally I always have another job to jump to before leaving a job, so I rarely have why I left a previous job.
Answering why I'm looking always feels like they will think I'm a money hog or something. Most of the time I get emails asking if I want this job or that, and my first question is how much. Cause if I didn't like my job I would be the one looking, not them looking for me, at least the way I see it. So for me to leave since I'm not looking, it will have to be for money and a decent chunk more.
Problem is they always seem taken back by it when I say the truth, I would then reply that I was not the one looking, but if I can do better for my family with another job for more money then I will at least check it out, you guys contacted me.
Though not long ago I got contacted by my dream company, but I just recently got a new job, so I wasn't looking, but I went to the interview (they flew me and paid for the car and hotel). When they asked "why are you looking for another job" I said it's because of who they are, and I always dreamed of working there. They asked if there was anything else and I told them I was bored, things were slow with the project I'm on, problem was they were the contractor that was sub contracting my new employer on the project I was on. They were the reason it was so slow, but I didn't blame them, I blamed the person leading the project (though I didn't say that), they knew instantly when I told them what project I was on and that it was one of thier's. Funny thing I was never offered, and I was never told they were not interested, I never got an email reply back (emailed several times) or phone call returned, I never got a letter in the mail saying thanks but no can hire. Nothing, it's as if I dropped off the face of the planet. It's totally werid how it went. I later talked to someone I know with that company and he goes "they will never hire someone from a partner no mater how much they want you, it would set a bad example, if you send your brightest, we will steal them from you, or some bs like that".
I'm still very disappointed, the whole interview went south after they found out the project I was on, though all the people in their company that I worked with on that project all love me and gave rave reviews, I'm supposed to be working on some more of that companies projects. Just goes to show, don't interview with a client of your company, regardless of how bad you want to be with that client.
Admin
I would argue, many are taught when growing up to always make the best first impression, just because day to day work isn't done in a suit, doesn't mean that someone that wants to go the extra mile shouldn’t be punished. This is the reverse of "he didn't wear a suit so I don't like him". Granted a suit might not fit into the working environment you may have, it doesn't mean any less of the person, and they just want to present the best image possible. People that want to show their best, might also do their best in other things.
Personally I think one should just go a notch better then anyone else in the building (to be respectful). If everyone is wearing jeans with holes in them, then maybe you wear jeans with no holes in them. I have personally researched companies I interviewed with, and just to make sure I don't get lost and come in late because I can't find the place. I would go and find the place and observe the people going in and out, the day before the interview. First I get to know how others are dressed, I know where it is and I go during the time I interview (so I know what to expect from traffic and such). I read up on what the company is doing and where they are heading and what their goals are. I find out how well they are doing in the stock market if they are public.
I have found knowing the most one can know about the company shows you are interested, knowing people that already work at the company also helps a lot. I do allot of community work, and knew 4 people at the company I currently work for now, doing all of the above ahead of time, and just one talk with the VP and I was told "Welcome aboard" it was just a matter of how much to pay me.
Moral of the story is to know what you are getting into and be prepared. Since being with the company in June of 06, I have gained rave reviews by the clients, and yes I'm a consultant in software development, I wear a suite when I first go to a clients site, and once we are cool with each other I go by whatever dress code the client has, that way people don't feel uncomfortable around me. Personally I work mostly at home, and wear very little, in previous jobs I was never known as the snappy dresser, talk about unwanted attention when I attended a co-workers mothers funeral in a suite, it's just good to be respectful to the fullest of your abilities.
It just ticks me to lump someone that wants to dress his best as not being good enough, I see this same kind of attitude when it comes to education. Get some smart butt CS graduate that read your CV and knows you are not a CS or even a 4yr degree holder and comes out and says “this is a typical CS question I know” and then blurts out the question. Of course I have no idea or have no real smart answer because it’s all theory and nothing used in modern software development anymore, or at least in anything I work with and boom I have no answer. I love how they also like to use lots of CS talk and me not coming from that world, I don’t always have a great answer. I’m a self taught, self motivated person, there isn’t anything I can’t do and I’m great at understanding and digging into technology and finding problems when people said it can’t be done. Though I don’t always use proper CS terms for what I do. Though some people consider if you don’t have a CS degree, you don’t know what you are doing. See how that can be the same, it’s everywhere.
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Admin
I'd guess that that is exactly what they're trying to find out. Your attitude ("it’s all theory and nothing used in modern software development anymore") shows that you are not suited for certain jobs. Where I work, we do some extremely theoretical things - compilers, virtual machines, workflow engines, stuff like that. If you think that "that CS stuff" is all theory and useless in modern software development, a job like this would not be for you. That's most likely why he asked you these questions: To find out what you can do.
Admin
They weren't those kinds of questions, mostly the answers were things you would never really do, or extremely rarely do if ever for certain problems, the other issue is they are looking for that stock answer, when the problem can be solved in a number of ways, which I go show on a white board. Half the time they never thought past what they were taught (like robots). I can't tell you the times they would go "wow, I didn't think it could be done any other way". Theories are fine, but when they become rock hard standards to do things and leave little room for a different way then you cut into imagination and the ability to work things out. I work daily with what you said, and can map entire scenarios in my head and look at different perspectives. I'm the guy that takes everything in from meetings and says little, but when I say something everyone shuts up, they know it's something major.
No, most of the time the way (body language, behavior) they go about asking these questions is a rub that I'm at the position I'm at while they spent years in school, I never could work well in school, it was extremely boring, I could make A's just reading something one time. I dropped out at age 16 and got my GED which just about made a perfect score (4 points off). Went on to college and found it just as boring, I would read though entire textbooks. Granted I'm not the greatest at English language, I come from a Spanish background.
Anyways, I understand what you mean, and can see your point, but asking stock CS questions (names for certain patterns I've used most of my professional life that I learned studying code but never knew the stupid name for that pattern is one example) knowing the person isn't flush in CS education terms, having the gall to go "This is a standard CS question" cause they know I don't have a CS degree, just to feel smug (you would know what I mean if you saw their face). This happened not long ago at the company I now work for. Come to find out, the guy that was smug about things and got his smirk ripped off (since I'm so bad at CS Terms I ask for more detail and I go to the whiteboard or paper to show). He was a very big supporter in my hiring.
Though it still urks me as you can tell, it isn't the first time, it's just funny that some people feel the need to try to put someone in their place. I think there is a certain bit of resentment on my side as well as their side, my resume and references and community work, can be intimidating and that attitude I get is "lets see if this guy really is as good as they say" though I didn't make it professionally knowing the silly name and who first came up with it for every little pattern (yes he would ask if I knew the name of the person (this happened more then once with other interviews throughout my history)).
My point in general is the attitude that the guy was dressed in a suit, hence he must be covering something up or not as good a programmer, I wear a suit, I know that I will get interviewed by more then the tech manager, it's only logical. Plus my reasons for wearing a suit is to not look cheap, I want them to give the best possible offer, if I looked like I just came out of goodwill with holes in my jeans as some suggest is aok to go into an interview with then I will not get the amount of money offered I would want. It's all about perspective and what you appear to be (not cheap) to land you the best offers.
The education aspect I ranted on has more to do with how some people view their own background and that they can't understand or acknowledge someone coming though the ranks without the same background. Plus you hear way too often about the hack programmers with no formal training that make big messes. I've made big messes, thing is I've learned from them over the years and I always strive to learn better ways to do things, have anyone here ever read "who moved my cheese" I know it's cheesy and all, but it proves a point. If you get comfortable in this field and don't keep learning everyday, you will become stagnate. I see this all the time, people that did stuff in VB.Classic continue to do things the same way in VB.NET and don't even want to learn a better way (please no cracks on VB blah blah blah, I program on a regular basis in 4 langs (VB/C#/C++/JS), my point in bringing VB up is a migration in versions and still keeping all your thinking behind the times, much like some of the C++ code that looks all too C, they just never got the concept (or took the time to learn) of OOP in C++ and still did the stuff much the same way they always have).
Opps got off topic again, though I think you can get the picture, lets say you got your 4yr degree in CS and have the same number of years experience as the guy you are interviewing, but he's been around and worked on some big projects and has a big name in the industry in his/her field at least state wide/regional, though does not have your educational background and you know he's going to be hired at a much higher rate then you. What do you do? You can see why this happens, maybe this is just my thinking but anyone that acknowledges a question may be off base and goes ahead and asks it, is doing just what I'm talking about.
Hope everyone has a great holiday.
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Admin
Hear hear!
I always dress for an interview exactly as I would dress for an ordinary workday. Being honest about one's work-habits is important too. Don't say you'll work 90hrs/week if you like coming in late and leaving early.
In one sentence: Be honest, it'll pay off in the end.
Admin
Or perhaps the interviewer has heard of day care. (She did say full-time mother.)
Admin
Undoubtedly. However, as others have pointed out, the day-to-day dress standards have little bearing on what you should wear for an interview, which is a formal one-time occasion.
And no matter how much time I plan to be spending naked and sweaty with a girl in the future, I do dress up for the first date.
Admin
You know I've found that when you're trying to get the database result set from a string, "rSet.getString("Message")", you can only retrieve 255 characters. When you are updating, "sqlStmt.setString(1, strMessage)", you are not so restricted. Perhaps he mistakenly applied the actual size a String class can hold and the size you could retrieve from the database.
Admin
That has to be the most irrelevant connection made ever. I can understand the part about dressing decent enough for an interview which may decide if you get the job or not, but then saying that since a person has a bod/dressing sense means he must be a lazy hippy is stupid. Some of the most hard working people I have known are casual dressers, to say the least. I am all for dressing the best way possible for an important interview but what if that was the best suit and pair of sneakers he could afford at the particular time? Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth you know :/
Admin
That is funny!.
Like you, I used to do tech interview (still do on rare occasions) at my past/present employer and have whole list of things I call 'gems' collected over the years. You can find it at http://selvans.net/gems/#interview
Enjoy!
Admin
Careful! I've never done any corporate espionage myself (per se) but I have brought candidates in for interview primarily due to their experience at a competitor which I was keen to hear about (technologies, working practices, etc).
I'm not suggesting this young kid was a corporate spy, but if you've got interviews with Company A and Company B, for whichever firm you select you could turn up on day one with some valuable insight for that next pitch where both companies are chasing the same client contract.
Admin
I think that hits the nail on the head. Not dressing up in an environment where dressing up is valued, or expected, or a sign of respect, sends the message that you do what you want to do, and you are not willing to subordinate what you want to what the company values. Or looking at it another way, it makes you come across as a prima donna, who thinks that the normal rules don't apply to him. In either case, a company would be stupid to hire such a person.
Admin
> "Or maybe the interviewer managed to remember that children generally have two parents."
Great, so when she decides she sucks at programming, she'll ditch the company, foisting the "baby" back on the father.
Admin
That's a horrible question to ask. Most people who have been in the IT/computer/engineering industry for a long time have just given up on memorizing acronyms because there are too many of them, and a lot are completely meaningless. I consider myself to be a skilled PHP programmer, but until I looked it up just now, I couldn't have told you that it stood for "Hypertext Preprocessor." Furthermore, I became a good PHP programmer because of my experience with Perl, and I forgot what that stood for (Practical Extraction and Report Language) many years ago...
You would have been better off asking him what the HTML tag for making a link or an image was, as that is actually relevant.
Admin
I was interviewed once at a large video games company. During the interview I was taken into a room to solve some problems in diagram form on a whiteboard. The company made a leading racing game, and wanted to know my strategy for exciting camera work whenever the player crashed the car. It was a rambling question of many parts, but as a bounding sphere test is a quick way to test for object intersections, I'd drawn quite a few sphere's on the board, including one around the camera, and another around an object just next to it. I was asked how I would ensure that nothing came between the camera and the focus of the scene, and drew a large capsule shape, as another collision volume, to suggest that if something intersected it the camera should switch to another gantry/effect. Only on standing back did I realise I'd just drawn the standard ten-year-old representation of a penis and testicles. The interviewers were stifling laughter, but I didn't have the courage to join in and pretended nothing happened. In the end, I got the job.
Admin
Totally agree.
No idea about psichological qualities to remark in a selection procedure.
Admin
Best answer to your greatest weakness is......ready for this.............JUNK FOOD !!!
Admin
Last Post!! woohooo
Admin
Are you an astronaut? That was a perfectly valid question. Not everyone at NASA is an anstronaut. There are lots of other things to do there, and astronauts come from every job background you could imagine. It's not unreasonable that he may have been one of the astronauts.
Admin
I would say the same thing goes for Apple vs. PC discounter (and Windows XP), but that's my opinion. In any way, when people wonder why I bought an "expensive" Mac notebook, they don't take into account how unhappy I'd be with a crappy Dell (I have one at work and that's enough, thank you) or how much time I'd have to spend to make Windows XP barely usable and secure, let alone fun to use. Of course there is some decent other hardware, and a modern Linux with KDE isn't bad, but then we're basically talking about the same price range, unless you are ignoring the fact that even supposedly "premium", $3000, non-Apple notebooks like the Sony VAIO VGN-AR21S come with a slower processor than the new 17" MacBook Pro, one and a half hours maximum battery life, 100 Mbps Ethernet, no FireWire 800, 533MHz RAM despite presence of a 667MHz FSB, two disks with same total capacity as one disk in the cheaper 17" MBP (think about weight and power consumption), much slower CD burning, and so on. Not to mention the plastic case. :-)
Man, I can find that same sony computer for like $300. I could also find you a way better computer than your mac book pro for $3000. Really what are you going to do with a 667MHz FSB?
Admin
@Peter Szymonik
This is exactly how I would expect a suit to behave. The real WTF here is the fact that a suit didn't offer a bright and curious candidate a shot, and lacks the self-awareness to recognize that he is the one with a problem.
Admin
Oh please ... a company that values what shoes you wear probably isn't worth working for.
Admin
The Wanderer.
If I was in an interview and knew the interviewer was having those thoughts about my attire I would get the interview over as quickly and painlessly as possible, knowing I had no intention of working for someone that backward.
Admin
Long experience has shown me I should dress as myself for dates. There's no point pretending because a woman who baulks at my casual dress is guaranteed to have some serious personality conflicts with me later. Experience has shown the same with work.
Admin
Not all guys are superficial. In fact, when it comes to clothing, I'm sure there are some who are, but I doubt it's a majority, unless you mean things like "is not wearing clothing that hasn't been washed in a month", or "is not wearing clothing with a large tear in the buttock region, intentional or otherwise".
Meanwhile, if I were in charge of hiring for a company, which thankfully I'm not (because I have no personal interest in that area), but if I were, I'd probably base my clothing-related decisions similarly.