The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

The Seven Year Itch

by Dan J. in Tales from the Interview on 2013-02-27

Say what you will about the life of a contractor, it's full of surprises. A seasoned veteran of the work-for-hire world, Don knew every gig came with a new environment and new people. So even though Inverness is no Edinburgh or Glasgow (it's more like the Scottish equivalent of Boise, Idaho), Don put his CV in for an IT manager role out there anyway. He was ready for anything... except his first phone call with Gordon, the company's hiring manager.

"I'm sorry," Gordon interrupted Don in mid-sentence, "you're a contractor?"

Everybody Out of the (Hiring) Pool

by Dan J. in Feature Articles on 2013-02-14

In mid-2003, David was a naive student in his final year of university. But when he applied to the Belgian government's three new pools of French-language IT candidates (Belgium's other official language being Dutch), he wasn't surprised by the results. After two written tests and an interview for each pool, he was ranked top of the list for the Sysadmin and Programmer pools, and bottom of the list for Project Management.

Merely applying to the pools didn't guarantee anything, though: it only made you eligible for the positions that arose at a variety of government departments. It wasn't until October that David got a bite: L'Agence des Départements was offering an Oracle DBA position. Everything went like clockwork. Hands were shaken, questions were answered, evaluations were evaluated, and David was ranked top man.