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Drone posted:I sent an email to the VP saying I'm definitely interested in the position. He's already forwarded a note to HR that I've expressed advance interest before the job is internally posted. That job in itself will be very stressful, but the team is all pretty good and the benefits are great. Good for you. Just make sure before you actually agree on anything that there's enough tech work to keep you challenged/interested or otherwise help you with your actual career, and that it's not just a gopher position. Oh, and be prepared for your current boss to take the fact that you applied to another job as a personal betrayal. He may not be a narcissist, but he's already tried to manipulate you with a lie obvious enough to insult your intelligence, so just from what you've said so far he's tripping more than one of my alarms. It wouldn't shock me. Don't be afraid, though. As long as you don't curl into a fetal position, this is going to be a good thing for your career, one way or another.
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Dec 3, 2014 11:48
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Che Delilas posted:Good for you. Just make sure before you actually agree on anything that there's enough tech work to keep you challenged/interested or otherwise help you with your actual career, and that it's not just a gopher position. My office is quiet today, and I'm the only one in. The IT lead for Europe just came to sit across from me for a bit to tell me he'd heard from the Project Manager about the politics my boss is making, and basically asking me what happened and "well now we have to figure out what to do with you." He might recommend that they hire me as an actual employee.. maybe even going so far as having me report to him instead of my current boss. That'd be... interesting. Either way I'm sticking with the offer from the VP for now though. The job hasn't officially been posted yet, but he already gave HR a heads-up that I've expressed interest already. The IT department at this company can be pretty toxic and as much as I enjoy working with the team I currently work with, I don't think my day-to-day life would be much better if they made my current position an employed one as opposed to a contract. With the offer from the VP, there's a LOT more unexplored and unfamiliar territory for me, but also a lot more potential. Then again, the risk is that it's really just a Personal Assistant position. Drone fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 15:26
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theperminator posted:Yeah it was the middle of the night so I went to 2008 R2 and will upgrade that to a 2012 R2 edition. We just upgraded our CBORD server product this last summer from Server 2003 to 2008 and SQL 2005 to 2008, simply because CBORD refused to optimize their POS software for newer versions of Windows. This is, of course, after spending over $130,000 in 2013 on new registers and application and database servers. Diebold/CBORD is the worst software vendor.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:10
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Turns out the job two hours away is actually okay with me telecommuting most of the time, so that just got flipped to awesome instead of unsure. Thanks for the advice on not screwing them over. 
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Dec 3, 2014 17:30
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Golbez posted:Turns out the job two hours away is actually okay with me telecommuting most of the time, so that just got flipped to awesome instead of unsure. Thanks for the advice on not screwing them over. Wow, that's pretty drat cool.
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Dec 3, 2014 17:34
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i loving hate online skill assessments so much for that job
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Dec 3, 2014 20:50
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Race Realists posted:i loving hate online skill assessments Are you talking about the Likely to Unlikely situation questions?
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Dec 3, 2014 21:27
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no, the bs word and math problems. The problems with those is that I never get enough time to do them (61 questions in 61 minutes.. yeah all the time in the world). The IT related questions were a breeze though. Did not finish at all.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:31
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Race Realists posted:no, the bs word and math problems. The problems with those is that I never get enough time to do them (61 questions in 61 minutes.. yeah all the time in the world). The IT related questions were a breeze though. Did not finish at all. I think in some cases they don't necessarily expect you to finish all of them, I wouldn't sweat it.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:51
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Got laid off today. The CEO and COO pulled me in to tell me that they wanted the company to go in a different direction with projects, a direction that will no longer require a project manager. Good luck to them, I suppose, and 
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Dec 3, 2014 22:01
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My company is pulling health insurance and we're getting to go through Obamacare. It doesn't seem all that bad but I'll miss my previous insurance.
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Dec 3, 2014 22:04
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SHSC is rough these last couple of weeks. :/ Good look Colonial Air Force!
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Dec 3, 2014 22:05
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Drunk Orc posted:I think in some cases they don't necessarily expect you to finish all of them, I wouldn't sweat it. Honestly, I don't get tests that aren't impossible or nearly impossible to finish in the time allotted. If everyone has enough time to finish it at whatever pace, no one is rewarded for better time management or a having a more intuitive understanding of the material.
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Dec 3, 2014 22:20
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Honestly, I don't get tests that aren't impossible or nearly impossible to finish in the time allotted. If everyone has enough time to finish it at whatever pace, no one is rewarded for better time management or a having a more intuitive understanding of the material.
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Dec 3, 2014 22:22
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Drunk Orc posted:I think in some cases they don't necessarily expect you to finish all of them, I wouldn't sweat it. Got the rejection email almost instantly. Oh well. They'll be more opportunities in the future! this is me trying to hide my supreme butthurt 
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Dec 3, 2014 22:33
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Honestly, I don't get tests that aren't impossible or nearly impossible to finish in the time allotted. If everyone has enough time to finish it at whatever pace, no one is rewarded for better time management or a having a more intuitive understanding of the material. Isn't the point of a test to check your knowledge of the material, not your time management or "intuitive understanding" of something?
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Dec 3, 2014 22:41
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:SHSC is rough these last couple of weeks. :/ Good look Colonial Air Force! Thank you. Just in time for Christmas!
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Dec 3, 2014 22:46
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Race Realists posted:Got the rejection email almost instantly. Oh well. They'll be more opportunities in the future! You'll absolutely have more opportunities! I think I finally landed a couple job offers, one doing IT support at an elementary school and a separate doing NOC support after actively looking for like almost 4 months. Just don't give up and utilize indeed, linkedin, careerbuilder, etc., to search for jobs. I've probably applied to about 300 positions and didn't really hear anything positive until I got my Net+. Customer service counts for almost as much as technical aptitude too it would seem, at least for entry level positions.
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Dec 3, 2014 22:57
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Race Realists posted:Got the rejection email almost instantly. Oh well. They'll be more opportunities in the future! Look at it this way, a company that turns you down for a stupid reason like that is probably a company you don't really want to work for.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:04
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Inspector_666 posted:Isn't the point of a test to check your knowledge of the material, not your time management or "intuitive understanding" of something? If you want to asses if someone knows a given set of material, then yes. give them enough time and make it so every question should be answered. If you want to know where the knowledge runs out, to rank candidates or to identify areas for furture learning, then a test that is not completable with a difficulty curve is the tool to use. I would guess HR grabbed a tool designed for the second case, and used it for the first, because all HR departments are evil.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:05
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Finally finally getting through the background check/polygraph/psych eval portion to being hired on by the county jail. They've had this position promised to me for ages but it kept getting hamstrung by various stuff. Moving onto server support for the medical department and super involved with future projects. Benefits and a 12k raise so I am pretty happy right about now.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:07
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KennyTheFish posted:If you want to asses if someone knows a given set of material, then yes. give them enough time and make it so every question should be answered. If you want to know where the knowledge runs out, to rank candidates or to identify areas for furture learning, then a test that is not completable with a difficulty curve is the tool to use. Well if you're trying to test for those abilities then obviously it makes sense, but that's different from saying you "don't get tests that aren't impossible or nearly impossible to finish in the time allotted."
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Dec 3, 2014 23:07
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Race Realists posted:i loving hate online skill assessments I applied for a tech support position when I was first trying to get in to IT. Part of the entry was taking this IQ-like test online. Did it, presumably knocked it out of the park and got a call back. I was told to prepare to talk to one of the venture capital guys who just took over; he would give me some problems. Not tech problems, but bullshit programmer type problems, like how to figure out which tennis ball weighs less out of a group... I'm sure you are familiar with the type. Between his thick Indian accent and my general nervousness, I flunked whatever assessment he had. It was so ridiculous, especially for an entry level job. You would think I was apply at the Solutions Dept of Google or some poo poo, but there you go. ed: This was not a programmer job, this was figuring out why somebody's browser didn't properly display the company's web-based software.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:11
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I had to take an international CEO talent test one time for a database support temp to hire (it was an international CEO headhunting firm). It was absurdly hard, a huge jump above any GMAT sample question I've ever seen, and on a timer. After the hour was up I left the office with my eyes glassed over and my jacket buttoned up wrong. Then I did three hours of projective psychological tests at home.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:17
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FISHMANPET posted:Look at it this way, a company that turns you down for a stupid reason like that is probably a company you don't really want to work for. this x1000 ElGroucho posted:ed: This was not a programmer job, this was figuring out why somebody's browser didn't properly display the company's web-based software. this was probably one of those jobs poo poo, for my current position I honestly admitted when I didn't know something technical and didn't bullshit anything, but gave thoughtful answers when asked to give my thoughts about X. They wanted to see that I had the aptitude to learn, and that's the type of person you want to work for. Not some douchebag who will turn you away because you don't know some random port # off the top of your head. That's what loving google is for.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:21
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Inspector_666 posted:Isn't the point of a test to check your knowledge of the material, not your time management or "intuitive understanding" of something? That seems like a pretty narrow scope for a test. If you are interviewing two candidates, and one of them completes half of a test because they spent most of their time on a couple of questions they didn't know while the other recognizes that some problems are going to take more time and reprioritizes their work (time management), which one do you want on your team? Or how about a candidate that has to reinvent the wheel every time they are faced with a new problem, or one that can recognize its similarities to previous problems and use that to their advantage (intuitive understanding, so to speak)? More to the point, someone who is able to read, process, and respond to a given set of problems faster than someone else frankly just has a better understanding of the material most of the time (with the exception of people with learning disabilities - thanks Misogynist). e: Not defending any specific test which may very well be poorly designed, just not getting the hate for time limits that are more than formalities on tests. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 23:22
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I have complaints about my job sometimes, but I'm happy to say all the hiring we've done for IT, including me has been 25% knowledge and 75% "Are they going to fit in?"
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Dec 3, 2014 23:25
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:That seems like a pretty narrow scope for a test. If you are interviewing two candidates, and one of them completes half of a test because they spent most of their time on a couple of questions they didn't know while the other recognizes that some problems are going to take more time and reprioritizes their work (time management), which one do you want on your team? Or how about a candidate that has to reinvent the wheel every time they are faced with a new problem, or one that can recognize its similarities to previous problems and use that to their advantage (intuitive understanding, so to speak)? I think a time limit that shows you somebody meets those standard still wouldn't make a test "nearly impossible" to finish in the allotted time. And I don't understand the point of a test that is impossible to finish in the allotted time at all, really.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:33
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Unless you're hiring for a really high turnover job like a call center personality tests are lazy as poo poo and hilariously pointless. Any company that tries to put you through one, for anything other than an entry-level position that gets high application volume, is pretty much just advertising that their HR department has their head up their rear end and has way too much power in the company. If a HR troll (all of them) were to suggest I use a personality test in my hiring I would physically remove them from the room I was in and tell them to forget my email.
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Dec 4, 2014 00:24
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I honestly wouldn't be too concerned about not finishing or not knowing everything in skill assessments. If it's through a big technical company it's probably designed to break you. This isn't a bad thing they just want to measure your skills. When I started gig a few years back some of the guys started a week before I did, the company hired them earlier because they didn't do as well on the assessment test and trained them before real training began.
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Dec 4, 2014 00:27
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So got my first LinkedIn recruiter this week, position is actually close to what I do now and only 10k less than I'm currently making. I was expecting it to be insulting but it was pretty reasonable for a senior role in a company the size they are looking for. I'm obviously not taking it but I assume its worth taking up the guy on meeting and having a chat so he can keep me in mind for other stuff? On the topic of LinkedIn, do you guys bother filling out the summary? I feel like its definitely worthwhile but seems like it might give my employer the wrong impression. I'm not actually looking I just like networking with recruiters and having a presence so if something were to go badly in the future I could hit the ground running. Different question about certs. I'm an infrastructure architect (Whatever that means) with lots of design experience on vmware and networking. Is it stupid for me to go get a CCNA when I know I'll never have the spare time to work on a CCNP or CCIE? Does listing a CCNA when you have the working experience closer to a CCNP or higher just make you look less experienced than you are? I wouldn't be learning anything from it aside from the legacy technologies that I never use on a day to day basis. For whats its worth my job these days is 80% networking, about 60/40 WAN/Datacenter. syg fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 02:09
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syg posted:only 10k less than I'm currently making.
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Dec 4, 2014 02:19
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adorai posted:10k is likely negotiable for a senior position. Yes it is, he said as much. But I have a ton of other benefits at my current position, and quite a bit of loyalty. Hell I get sad when 5pm rolls around because I enjoy what I'm doing that much. Not to mention my company is much larger with much more interesting infrastructure. It would be pretty stupid to jump ship unless it was for 20-30k more than I'm making or a move into management. That being said, I'm not foolish enough to think that my employer is as loyal to me as I seem to them, so I'd like to be well networked for the future.
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Dec 4, 2014 02:31
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Those math questions are loving ridiculous. Reynolds & Reynolds is notorious for pulling that kind of poo poo, and every time I receive an email from them asking me to apply I immediately send it to the trash. Those types of questions work both ways, assholes - it made me certain that I never wanted to work at that place. I spent 30 minutes of a total 90 on that loving test covering material I hadn't seen or used in 15 years, and it was for a desktop support position. I saw absolutely nothing that the tests covered that were even remotely akin to the work I could reasonably expect to perform. I guess it made so much more sense to let some loving test determine whether I should get the opportunity to talk to someone rather than leave the decision on hiring me to someone actually interviewing me and getting a take on my technical skills. When I hit minute 30 and saw how much more material was left I stood up, put on my dress jacket and threw the test on the desk in front of the proctor and told him to have someone call me when they got serious about hiring an experienced IT professional. I still loving hate R&R, and that was 6 years ago.
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Dec 4, 2014 03:59
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Daylen Drazzi posted:Those math questions are loving ridiculous. Reynolds & Reynolds is notorious for pulling that kind of poo poo, and every time I receive an email from them asking me to apply I immediately send it to the trash. Those types of questions work both ways, assholes - it made me certain that I never wanted to work at that place. I worked at ReyRey in college and holy poo poo that test was stupid as gently caress. You dodged a bullet by not working there since they underpay ridiculously, practically zero upward mobility, and company morale is always low. The only benefit of that place was they were pretty flexible on hours if you were taking classes. Just check out the glassdoor entries on it and have a laugh George H.W. Cunt fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 04:07
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Colonial Air Force posted:Thank you. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but didn't something similar happen to you a few Christmases ago?
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Dec 4, 2014 04:30
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Even through a good friend of mine basically got me my current job, I still had to go through the same crap every FTE employee does. I didn't know it at the time, but the average user at my company can barely use a mouse and Windows. I sat down to the computer with the logic and pattern test, and the HR lady said 'you have 20 minutes to answer as many questions as possible. No one finishes it, so just do the best you can.' She comes back with a minute or so to go and is shocked that I am just sitting there waiting patiently. She looks at the score and I got over 95% right and she said they had never seen someone finish it, let alone get that high of a score.  Had I not been umemployed and desperately needing a job, I would have told them to take the tests and shove them. I have since stopped progression on a number of opportunities because they required personality, logic, or other homework assessment tests. As a senior level engineer, I am above taking bullshit tests, and if you need validation of my test taking skills, I'll show you my two Big 10 degrees.
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Dec 4, 2014 04:38
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syg posted:On the topic of LinkedIn, do you guys bother filling out the summary? I feel like its definitely worthwhile but seems like it might give my employer the wrong impression. I'm not actually looking I just like networking with recruiters and having a presence so if something were to go badly in the future I could hit the ground running. Until you fill out your profile completely, you're heavily penalized in search results on LinkedIn. So if you actually want recruiters to find you, it's worth it. There's a good How To Do LinkedIn thread in BFC if you're interested. When you look at your own profile, there's a Profile Strength meter in the sidebar. You want it to say "All-Star". Adding a photo is another thing people often miss that counts toward this. Disclaimer: This was the case a year or two ago, I haven't kept up on whether it's still accurate.
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Dec 4, 2014 04:54
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Colonial Air Force posted:Just in time for Christmas! Heh, I got fired on Christmas Eve once because the company paid for Christmas Party went on very late on a Thursday, and I was extremely hungover on Friday, and overslept. Why put it on a bloody Thursday, then? It's a trap! Ah, youthful exuberance. HalloKitty fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 10:32
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Tab8715 posted:I honestly wouldn't be too concerned about not finishing or not knowing everything in skill assessments. If it's through a big technical company it's probably designed to break you. I applied to a government agency that had me do these cognitive skills and behavioral assessments online. It was a lot of pattern recognition and spatial relations, which I could see being a good way of screening someone working in certain crytanalysis or computer science fields, but seemed kind of odd for a network engineer position. They did end up contacting me for an interview, but I wound up turning them down because I'd already accepted my current job.
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