I've interviewed people of all ages and it is not something exclusive to Gen Y, and probably not more common (not enough data to know for sure). It is extraordinarily common in the field of IT, though. If they once read a sentence in an email that referred to a technology, they list it on their resume.
This is totally true. I remember getting a chemistry job asking for practical lab experience. I did get that job, but then they basically told me to forget the meth lab style chemistry I did before and learn it their way which was totally different. Why even bother to ask that I have lab experience if you don't want me doing it the way I was doing it before?This is in response to employers listing a technology as being needed when in fact a smart person could pick up everything they need to know in a couple of days.
I blame it on the 4th place ribbons. Horse-shit; if you didn't win, you didn't win.
Hey I got a 4th place ribbon in my kindergarten bean bag throw.
Don't be jealous.
My wife and I have had discussions about the "Generation Y entitlement mentality" and arrived at this conclusion:
Most Generation Yers were preteens and teens during the large booms of the late 90s and mid-2000's. Many families were able to live in a financial state they normally wouldn't be able to afford because of easy credit or high tech jobs that didn't exist before. At the same time, rapidly evolving technology has given Generation Yers some pretty awesome shit none of the rest of us have had when we were kids. Naturally, because their parents were making and spending more than they normally would have because of the .com and housing bubbles, these kids were spoiled more than usual.
This is totally true. I remember getting a chemistry job asking for practical lab experience. I did get that job, but then they basically told me to forget the meth lab style chemistry I did before and learn it their way which was totally different. Why even bother to ask that I have lab experience if you don't want me doing it the way I was doing it before?
i've googled companies while on a phone interview before but typically when i get a call, the first thing i do is google the names and numbers given to gather info.If the laptop was manufactured in the last 3 years, they partition a portion of the drive with the original image on it. As soon as you boot the laptop, you'll see what key you need to press to bring up the recovery option. They don't include recovery discs nowadays.
Here is another tip for your interview. Get a list of all the people you'll be interviewing with and google the hell out of them. Find out where they went to school, what programs and conferences that they have spoken at. Get details. Know who you are talking to and you'll do a better job in the interview. Whatever you do, don't brag that you virtually stalked them, that is not the point.
One job I applied for was doing software support. I went through the company's public website and found all the support procedures and followed it to the letter during the mock call.
The mock call was talking them through troubleshooting a dishwasher not working. I covered everything you could imagine even though I knew nothing about dishwashers. Was there something stuck in the blades to stop them from spinning, was it getting power, were there any lights on the front regarding errors, were other appliances on the same kitchen wall getting power. Etc. In the end, I gave her a workaround which was to wash the dishes in the sink until I could research the issue more, I then gave her a made up case number which was part of their procedures.
The goal of the call was to have you work on something you likely knew little about. It is to see that you are creative in your troubleshooting and that you don't give up easily.
I blew them away with the case number bit. I ended up getting the job and kicked its proverbial ass for a few years before moving on to bigger things.
It is all in how you prepare for the interview, do your research and you'll rock it out.
Another funny part from that phone interview; one of the first tasks they asked you to help with was creating a shortcut to a document that they used all the time. I told her to right click the document and choose Send To>Desktop (create shortcut). The phone went silent and the she said she never knew that. She then mentioned that she forgot to start the stop watch but she put down that my answer was instantaneous and new.
I blame it on the 4th place ribbons. Horse-shit; if you didn't win, you didn't win.
I won second place
I was home schooled and my mom won first
It's gotten tougher. Like panning for gold. Prior to the recession, you could pick out the golden nuggets my moving the pan around. Now you have all this sand in the pan that sticks to everything and ain't worth your time.
So far in this thread, you've managed to trash talk the HR division of your company, an entire generation of potential employees, anyone who plays a video game, and all those who use Google. To be honest, to this Gen X'er you sound like a bit of a dick - maybe the the problem is the hiring manager and not the applicants? I'll also bet from this post that you likely have mismatched expectations about the quality of applicants you expect for the level of salary you're looking to pay.
My experience with working with Gen Y'ers is that they tend to be all or nothing. Either they're straight shooters who work hard, learn fast, and are a real asset or they're total bozos with little in between. The hard workers we have a hard time keeping because they have to keep chasing ever higher salaries than we can pay as they are usually buried in student loans. The burners tend to get themselves fired within the first couple months by doing totally stupid crap that can't be overlooked like losing their driver's licenses to DUI or stealing company equipment or wrecking company trucks doing stupid stuff or surfing porn or parking placarded company trucks in strip joint parking lots or getting in stupid arguments with extremely highly paid subs over stuff they don't even understand* or basically not showing up for anything on time. Fortunately the bad employees reveal themselves quickly enough that we can cut our losses.
On the other end, baby boomers tend to hire baby boomers regardless of qualifications for the job. Since these folks have decades of experience in sucking up and BSing, it takes longer to figure out that they are worthless and even longer for baby boomer managers to figure it out.
The real issue is that HR basically looks at a requirement that you know say PHP, then rejects everyone without it listed on their resume...before they even get an interview.
Bastards.
I thought that it was funny that to under me you need to have more experience and be better educated than I am. We sure got picky....
HR wins twice this way. They justify their job by helping with the current hire, then when the economy recovers and that individual quits because they outclass the position in 2-3 years, they get to make another hire!
It's even worse when HR get's to write the job requirements.
I thought that it was funny that to work under me you need to have more experience and be better educated than I am. We sure got picky....
I got my first job out of college because I was the only person who interviewed that passed the "pencil test". The interviewer said that she broke her pencil and needed it sharpened.
I walked through the basics like find a sharpener (didn't have one), get another pencil(couldn't find one), ect and finally asked her if she had a pocket knife...which oddly enough she did. And then walked her through how to whittle down the pencil to get it to the point of writing.
They told me that if I could successfully walk somebody through sharpening a pencil then I could support their users.
And that's what I try to look for in candidates that apply for our positions. We are mostly support based. I try to focus on problem solving and their troubleshooting progression.
Folks, don't blame HR.
Yeah I've seen that too. I once saw a job for a "quality control technician" and all it said was someone with QC experience. Well wtf does that mean? I worked QC in a drug lab, so do I qualify? I called them for more details and it turned out to be a job for materials testing, and the kind of person they wanted would probably be a mechanical/materials engineer. I don't know how they could fuck up a job post that badly.The real problem is a lot of hiring managers do a piss poor job of writing the posting, or defining their requirements. I've seen shit where the position description and the actual job had little to do with one another, both on the hiring side and as an interviewee.
Oh yes I can. The problem is that the engineering department is all nerdy men while HR is typically women. Not just any women, but braindead women who are incapable of doing any other job if their life depended on it. They filter out all of the technical weird people, who are often men that seem slightly autistic/assburger and creepy, and the final round of interviews with the department manager is cluttered with complete idiots who suck at engineering. I'm sorry but no we don't want jeanine the "cute" engineer who will fuck shit up and make everyone's job 10x harder. We want that creepy fucker who will write our scripts for us so our AutoCAD files open twice as fast and take half as much hard drive space.
EXCUSE ME?!
<-- HR Lady.
Thankfully, in my organization, I don't do ANY hiring. We make the hiring manager do all the interviews, pick the candidates, come up with their own questions (since they should know what they want) and we'll sit in if necessary. It's not our fault if they pick out a dud, and they come to us going "oh maybe we should have listened to you when you told us that dude was weird. Can we get rid of him?"
Dear Baby Boomer,
Human Resources is a joke. If thats where you ended up in life, be prepared to deal with the consequences.
Your supposition is that any information you may need is on the internet. That is patently false and, in fact, the majority of information and recorded human experience is NOT available online or even mentioned. Your narrow view of using the net may work for your situation but, it is not the only source nor even the best.
We want that creepy fucker who will write our scripts for us so our AutoCAD files open twice as fast and take half as much hard drive space.
I'd use that overtime pay to buy me a boat, but I don't want to be called a boating enthusiast. I just want to be called a guy who likes to boat :thumbsup:Dear Fellow Gen Y/Z/Whatever:
STFU.
HR people generally don't have 70-hour crunch weeks. Software developers do.
Who's the smart one, then?
Those people are the best. We have one of those guys at my office. He's this really smart guy from Britain, he doesn't say much, but he's good at his job and he gets things done. He actually has a lot to say if you try talking to him.I think I know that guy. Or, perhaps, several of that guy.
Except some of them are, in fact, female.