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JawnV6 posted:Not sure if this is common at other places, but when I give interviews the goal is to require prodding. When a RCG joins, they're not going to be independently trailblazing new domains, they're going to be owning a part of a larger whole. A person's ability to know when they're stuck, and to a larger extent their willingness to ask for help, is an important characteristic. Microsoft did this. They always gave the vaguest requirements and if you didn't ask for clarifications, you probably weren't a good fit. They always emphasized the spec.
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Feb 25, 2013 22:07
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Is it common for companies to require college transcripts during the application? Specifically, I'm talking about Cerner in Kansas City, MO. I don't particularly mind - their GPA requirements were relatively low at 2.8, but it still caught me by surprise. They apparently want unofficial transcripts [which are in plain-text online and easy to edit in the first place..], and an official one after hiring. Seemed a bit odd to me. Would they be upset if I didn't bother to pay to send an official transcript after I've been hired?
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Feb 26, 2013 01:42
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Sarcophallus posted:Is it common for companies to require college transcripts during the application? I would operate under the assumption that they will fire you you if you don't provide them with an official transcript. It's probably part of a standard background check, and they will assume you lied about your qualifications if you don't provide one.
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Feb 26, 2013 01:56
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tk posted:I would operate under the assumption that they will fire you you if you don't provide them with an official transcript. It's probably part of a standard background check, and they will assume you lied about your qualifications if you don't provide one. I doubt they'd fire him. He'd probably get some HR nasty-gram about missing paperwork though.
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Feb 26, 2013 01:59
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tk posted:I would operate under the assumption that they will fire you you if you don't provide them with an official transcript. It's probably part of a standard background check, and they will assume you lied about your qualifications if you don't provide one. To my knowledge they don't do any sort of background check beyond the transcript and generic, 'have you ever committed a felony?' questions. It just seemed odd to me that this was the first non-government position I've seen ask for it - and it wasn't until I got to the phone interview that I found out. I already have a technical interview scheduled, so this was more to satisfy my curiosity than anything.
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Feb 26, 2013 02:05
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Sarcophallus posted:To my knowledge they don't do any sort of background check beyond the transcript and generic, 'have you ever committed a felony?' questions. It just seemed odd to me that this was the first non-government position I've seen ask for it - and it wasn't until I got to the phone interview that I found out. I already have a technical interview scheduled, so this was more to satisfy my curiosity than anything. Chasiubao posted:I doubt they'd fire him. He'd probably get some HR nasty-gram about missing paperwork though. Not immediately, no, but I've seen it happen before. I can only assume the person in question really was lying about something, because it's not like they just surprise you on the 7th day and walk you out of the building if you haven't done it yet.
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Feb 26, 2013 02:11
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tk posted:I can't speak generally, but in my experience it's not unusual. Well thanks, I guess if I get an offer and decide to work for them I'll just eat the 60 dollars or whatever my Uni's fee is. If it was something they'd gloss over I probably would've skipped it.
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Feb 26, 2013 02:23
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tk posted:I can't speak generally, but in my experience it's not unusual. Well if you ignore the email, yeah  I just meant they'd probably give him a chance to correct it.
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Feb 26, 2013 02:26
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pigdog posted:I think your stuff looks quite good; although I haven't seen your code, I'd say your chances of landing a dev position with that portfolio are substantial. Don't sell yourself short. That's good to hear. Since I don't have qualifications, would it make sense to format my resume around the technology I've used? Also, details of implementations, ie: Unit Test coverage Undo and Queueing system for user interactions I dunno, there's more I can dig down to, and obviously I'd need to clarify it better. Also, how much should I go into my maritime experience? I worked for 8 years, lots of leaderships circumstances in very time sensitive scenarios, also planning maintenance sprints that last a month with a very hard deadline. That stuff worth mentioning?
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Feb 26, 2013 02:48
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Sarcophallus posted:Specifically, I'm talking about Cerner in Kansas City, MO. Disclaimer: I grew up there and now live in the SF Bay Area, but genuinely miss it.
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Feb 26, 2013 03:03
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Progressive JPEG posted:This may be an odd contribution in your context, but if you're not currently living in KCMO and considering living there, I personally consider it a pre-Austin in many respects; it has a disproportionate amount of interesting things for its size, while remaining extremely cheap to live in. Plus there's the whole Google Fiber thing.
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Feb 26, 2013 03:08
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Progressive JPEG posted:This may be an odd contribution in your context, but if you're not currently living in KCMO and considering living there, I personally consider it a pre-Austin in many respects; it has a disproportionate amount of interesting things for its size, while remaining extremely cheap to live in. While I don't particularly care for Cerner, I did like what I saw about KCMO. I'm primarily considering CA, Kansas City and Washington D.C. for my relocation, in that order of preference. Though it's a bit hard for me to make a decision since I've not spent any appreciable amounts of time in those places. Washington DC only because it seems like the easiest place to find a job, and CA because I want to escape sub-freezing Winters. Kansas City seems moderately temperate, but I've liked just about everything I've read about it.
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Feb 26, 2013 03:53
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Hopefully this looks significantly less  Still open to critiques and job offers, now that it doesn't look like crap. 
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Feb 26, 2013 04:03
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2banks1swap.avi posted:Hopefully this looks significantly less The two-column format for your skills section isn't doing you any favors--it makes the whole page look imbalanced, leaves big blank areas, and emphasizes the least impressive part of your resume. Not to knock your regular expression or algebra tutoring skills, but your work experience and education is infinitely more likely to get you hired. Also "edited XML files" is not a good bullet point for your job description, any more than "edited Java files" would be. Describe the actual purpose of what you were doing. And if you're bilingual, it's worth saying so explicitly.
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Feb 26, 2013 05:05
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greatZebu posted:And if you're bilingual, it's worth saying so explicitly. Really? I never bothered listing it anywhere because it didn't seem important to the jobs I was applying to.
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Feb 26, 2013 05:09
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Sarcophallus posted:Really? I never bothered listing it anywhere because it didn't seem important to the jobs I was applying to. It probably won't matter to most employers, but sometimes it can work in your favor. It's more likely to help than, say, biology tutoring experience.
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Feb 26, 2013 05:13
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2banks1swap.avi posted:Hopefully this looks significantly less To be honest, you're not approaching it right. Resumes should be designed to present the most information in the easiest to read format. Take advantage of whitespace and typography (ie: minimize the whitespace while calling importance to the whitespace that is there and increase the font-size on the important information). Look into using a font like Georgia instead; it's professional, easy to read, and unique. Your section headings are poop, I can't tell the divisions in your resume, and that skills section is WAY too complicated.
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Feb 26, 2013 05:15
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I really need to go find a drat professional resume person in the industry. My school can't figure out why I'm "so picky." Then again they're working at school and I'm trying to go do something besides that. Also, no, I'm not bilingual, but I had to format 30K lines of descriptions of medical procedures that had intermittently fumbled capitalization, spacing, and line breaks without taking the time to do it manually. As nobody else at work had done regex, and doing it by hand would have taken a LONG time, I learned how to to get regex to do it for me. I really have a lot to learn and Universities don't often cover some of the most important things.
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Feb 26, 2013 05:57
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Sarcophallus posted:Really? I never bothered listing it anywhere because it didn't seem important to the jobs I was applying to. Always list it. Especially with smaller/mid sized companies. It is not going the thing that gets you the job. But it might be an extra point that helps you get an interview. Or all other things being equal, gets you a job. On the smaller company perspective - one that is looking at expanding especially - having people that can help step in a scenario where you need another language, can be a huge help. Huge corporation? Matters less, they have a team of people for that. But smaller-mid sized, definite plus.
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Feb 26, 2013 12:34
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Sarcophallus posted:Is it common for companies to require college transcripts during the application? Huh, they must have raised the GPA requirement since I worked there in 2006  I don't recall giving them a transcript at the time but if they had asked I would have provided. I don't think it's terribly uncommon. I've heard that Garmin, which is also in the Kansas City metro, does it too and they care about GPA for much longer (10 years of experience in the field? Cool but I've gotta see that GPA first.)And for what it's worth I agree with Progressive JPEG - I love Kansas City. Interestingly enough I relocated here for Cerner as well. I don't work there anymore but this is where I've bought a house and plan on staying for quite some time.
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Feb 26, 2013 19:29
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Sarcophallus posted:While I don't particularly care for Cerner, I did like what I saw about KCMO. I'm primarily considering CA, Kansas City and Washington D.C. for my relocation, in that order of preference. Though it's a bit hard for me to make a decision since I've not spent any appreciable amounts of time in those places. Washington DC only because it seems like the easiest place to find a job, and CA because I want to escape sub-freezing Winters. Kansas City seems moderately temperate, but I've liked just about everything I've read about it. My whole career has been in DC, and although there's a lot of good engineering being done out there, there's a lot more enterprisey, crank out what the customer wants contracting. So be prepared. Also DC has a veritable worst-of list when it comes to weather, (Rain? Sleet? Snow? Hot? Humid? Really humid?). Also, the kind of outrageous cost of living that comes with the nation's 2 richest counties acting as suburbs. That said, you are right that there's a lot more tech jobs than people now, and complaints aside I'd rate DC in the top 10 places to consider living if you're young.
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Feb 26, 2013 23:56
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hieronymus posted:Go on indeed or craigslist or dice or monster or whatever for your city: Thanks for the info. I had never heard of such a thing. I'm not sure I have the skillset required - or even what that skillset is - but I will look into it.
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Feb 27, 2013 01:10
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greatZebu posted:The two-column format for your skills section isn't doing you any favors--it makes the whole page look imbalanced, leaves big blank areas, and emphasizes the least impressive part of your resume. Not to knock your regular expression or algebra tutoring skills, but your work experience and education is infinitely more likely to get you hired. Also "edited XML files" is not a good bullet point for your job description, any more than "edited Java files" would be. Describe the actual purpose of what you were doing. And if you're bilingual, it's worth saying so explicitly.  How about this? Fake Edit: I'm trying to get the layout straight before I go with finer detail about explaining "I can do regex on huge files to catch formatting bugs, and teach myself new tools as needed" - I'm trying to figure out how to put down my related coursework and current skills. It just doesn't feel as good as my experience and education right now. I know I can do better. Fuck them fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 03:54
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Sarcophallus posted:Really? I never bothered listing it anywhere because it didn't seem important to the jobs I was applying to. If you're in Canada and native English/fluent French, tech companies (or at least the one at which I work) will jam wads of money into your mouth.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:30
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So I just did a phone interview and drew some blanks when they probed me on some definitions. I answered the algorithm question correctly though. How screwed am I and what should I have done when I couldn't remember something?
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Feb 28, 2013 01:28
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KNITS MY FEEDS posted:So I just did a phone interview and drew some blanks when they probed me on some definitions. I answered the algorithm question correctly though. How nitpicky were the questions? Was it something like "how many bytes are in a 32 bit integer?", or useless trivia?
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Feb 28, 2013 01:40
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b0lt posted:How nitpicky were the questions? Was it something like "how many bytes are in a 32 bit integer?", or useless trivia? More like "how would you implement an unordered_set?" after I mentioned an unordered_set. Generally, if I mentioned some data structure I've used, he'd ask me how it worked under the hood. I gave partial answers but I'm not optimistic. e: Oh wow, I should've taken the hint when he gave me a question about hashtables after that one. Acer Pilot fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 01:46
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KNITS MY FEEDS posted:How screwed am I and what should I have done when I couldn't remember something? In my phone screen for an electrical engineering position, I fumbled for the term "Karnaugh Map". You know, the most fundamental method to solve boolean formulas that every undergrad sees in their first class? Couldn't answer it. Not sure if it was nerves or misunderstanding the question, whatever it was I didn't have the answer. It's not a dealbreaker if you don't know one question, but it can be if the conversation goes south because of it. In general if you're stuck, acknowledge it. Ask the interviewer clarifying questions. They want you to succeed, if nothing else so they can quit interviewing people. Part of an old team's post-interview session was asking how the candidate dealt with tips e.g. if I give someone a massive hint and they completely ignore it and continue fumbling, it's a red flag. edit: KNITS MY FEEDS posted:More like "how would you implement an unordered_set?" after I mentioned an unordered_set. Generally, if I mentioned some data structure I've used, he'd ask me how it worked under the hood. I gave partial answers but I'm not optimistic. JawnV6 fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 01:48
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JawnV6 posted:In general if you're stuck, acknowledge it. Ask the interviewer clarifying questions. They want you to succeed, if nothing else so they can quit interviewing people. Part of an old team's post-interview session was asking how the candidate dealt with tips e.g. if I give someone a massive hint and they completely ignore it and continue fumbling, it's a red flag. I acknowledged it when I couldn't quite remember something but is it appropriate to ask for clarification or hints on a definition question? e.g. "Can you refresh my memory on that topic?" And thanks for the replies. e: Would it be for me or against me if I e-mailed the interviewer and said that I will review the thing I blanked out on before the next interview? Acer Pilot fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 01:54
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KNITS MY FEEDS posted:More like "how would you implement an unordered_set?" after I mentioned an unordered_set. Generally, if I mentioned some data structure I've used, he'd ask me how it worked under the hood. I gave partial answers but I'm not optimistic. In my experience as an interviewee and my opinion as an interviewer, the only time when being unable to answer multiple technical questions during an interview will lead to a negative opinion is when it implies that you lied about your qualifications or you refuse to ask for help or make headway into the problem. Honestly even if you say something like "Master C++ engineer" and you bomb my C++ quiz, so long as you make an effort to do well and you're willing to admit your limitations I wouldn't see it as an immediate negative.
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Feb 28, 2013 02:00
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KNITS MY FEEDS posted:I acknowledged it when I couldn't quite remember something but is it appropriate to ask for clarification or hints on a definition question? e.g. "Can you refresh my memory on that topic?" I edited my post just above this one. If it's the kind of thing where you just need a little push in the right direction and can pick up and give the last half of the answer then go for it. Even if you're completely lost, it's better to be talking your way through an incomplete answer than sitting in awkward silence. If you're talking through it I get to see how you think and how you approach problems even when information is lacking. If you're silent I've got no clue. KNITS MY FEEDS posted:e: Would it be for me or against me if I e-mailed the interviewer and said that I will review the thing I blanked out on before the next interview?
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Feb 28, 2013 02:02
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Thanks a lot for all the advice guys. I'm probably just reaching Woody Allen levels of over thinking things.
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Feb 28, 2013 02:09
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KNITS MY FEEDS posted:Thanks a lot for all the advice guys. Try not to sweat it, I always tend to find the interviews I felt like I did really badly at, were the ones I aced. Seems to be true of a lot of friends/colleagues too.
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Feb 28, 2013 15:27
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KNITS MY FEEDS posted:More like "how would you implement an unordered_set?" after I mentioned an unordered_set. Generally, if I mentioned some data structure I've used, he'd ask me how it worked under the hood. I gave partial answers but I'm not optimistic. Weirdly, I was interviewing a candidate on the phone recently for an engineering position, and the topic of underlying data structures behind common abstractions in libraries and how runtime implementations might work for things like reflection, or dynamic dispatch came up when the candidate was talking about some stuff. They were able to answer some things, but not everything convincingly, but it didn't kill the interview. If you made an effort, said something reasonable (showed your working) and didn't just leave dead air it was probably okay.
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Mar 1, 2013 00:00
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return0 posted:Weirdly, I was interviewing a candidate on the phone recently for an engineering position, and the topic of underlying data structures behind common abstractions in libraries and how runtime implementations might work for things like reflection, or dynamic dispatch came up when the candidate was talking about some stuff. They were able to answer some things, but not everything convincingly, but it didn't kill the interview. If you made an effort, said something reasonable (showed your working) and didn't just leave dead air it was probably okay. That being said, if you interview for a programming position, know what dependency injection is and how to do that on the whiteboard with real working code. Otherwise you're out the door.
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Mar 1, 2013 01:24
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hieronymus posted:That being said, if you interview for a programming position, know what dependency injection is and how to do that on the whiteboard with real working code. Otherwise you're out the door. Unless they don't give a poo poo about writing clean, refactorable, testable code. [edit] Which most places don't 
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Mar 1, 2013 01:25
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hieronymus posted:That being said, if you interview for a Java/C# middleware programming position, know what dependency injection is and how to do that on the whiteboard with real working code. Otherwise you're out the door.
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Mar 1, 2013 02:47
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Can I ask what dependency injection is? And Inversion of Control? I've looked around for it, and usually I start seeing junk about XML configuration, and I click the little "X" button on my browser tab, because I have better things to do.
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Mar 1, 2013 05:51
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Suspicious Dish posted:Can I ask what dependency injection is? And Inversion of Control? I've looked around for it, and usually I start seeing junk about XML configuration, and I click the little "X" button on my browser tab, because I have better things to do. Let's say you're writing an app that forecasts the weather. You have some internal component that does geolocation to figure out where you are, and a component that looks up forecast data given your location. If you hard-wire those services into your application, when you try to do testing, you'll be in trouble. You want to be able to test all the weird corner cases for locations and make sure all the possible weather forecasts look right and make sure that your app degrades gracefully when the servers are acting weird. But since you don't control the servers and can't make them do what you want, testing is difficult. A dependency injection approach to this problem might be to make generic interfaces for GeoLocationService and ForecastingService that are implemented by your components that talk to the actual servers. Then you provide dummy implementations of those services for testing purposes that can be made to fail on demand, provide weird weather forecasts, or whatever it is you need, all without contacting any real servers at all. Inversion of control is a related concept where you don't choose the implementation of your interfaces at compile time. This is probably where you've seen the xml configuration junk, because you can specify the names of classes that way in some frameworks. I get the impression that this stuff is really common in bloated "enterprise-y" middleware systems, but I mostly take it as a recommendation not to hard-code dependencies without some really good reason.
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Mar 1, 2013 06:38
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OK, so dependency injection is basically "implementing interfaces". Why did we need a new term for that?
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Mar 1, 2013 07:35
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