The Hiring Process

I got another call from a head hunting firm this afternoon. I've been getting this a lot lately since I've been actively applying (dunno how these people figure out you're in the look out for a new job... I think they have sources from internal HRs of other companies... can't really figure it out, but their sources are very good). And so she was basically, asking for my permission to forward my CV to their client. We did the usual phone interview and she asked me about some standard stuff and I asked some standard stuff. I said ok, and she said she will let me know how it goes.

I'm not really new to the hiring process. I don’t know how many interviews and technical/behavioral assessments I have had to go through in the past. I think I've almost heard and seem them all.. standard questions, techie questions, situational questions, odd questions that seek to catch you off guard, and those tiring behavioral ones.

I'm not really a big fan of psychological assessment exams anymore, but I know that I'm relatively familiar with them. I use to get a lot of kick in answering those types of exams and reading about how they are analyzed when I was a lot younger. I know it was a fucking boring hobby for a kid, but back then it seemed pretty cool to me. So now when I am subjected to these types of evaluations... I am always tempted to purposely sway it towards a "textbook" explanation that the evaluators will surely have... just for the heck of it.

One time, we were asked to draw a house, a person, and a tree on a blank piece of paper. Of course, I knew that this was supposed to be a way for them to evaluate our projection of unconscious material. The drawing itself is obviously not assessed on how good you can actually draw, but by the small nuances that you supposedly subconsciously project in your drawings, i.e. like how the branches of the trees are either extended upward or sideward, how the windows in the house are located, or in what dimension was the person drawn... Was it facing the side? Front view? Were the hands and fingers shown? clenched fists? etc... Of course, this is all bollocks to you and me, and I would strongly object to being profiled as a shy person because I drew the person with both hands in his pocket. But what really weirds me out with taking these exams today is... how effective can this really still be, when I know exactly how it will be evaluated? Come on.

Do I draw the house walls thinner so they can say that I may possibly have weakness in my ego? Or perhaps make it thicker and suggest that I may have problems in anxiety and a need to extend boundaries. Perhaps I should make the roof really detailed with a chimney stack complete with smoke coming out, and really go into details by adding asbestos bricks? Maybe they can see this as me having extra attention to detail, ideas and creativeness. Perhaps I should add some more windows and doors to represent my openness and willingness to interact with others? Maybe I should also include curtains to express that I am a private person?

Frankly, I don’t really remember all the details of what I drew. I did remember spending quite a lot of time looking over the other drawings and getting a kick with evaluating them. I also do remember that I never got that job. I think it may have been because of the fact that when I drew the person, I ran out of space and had to cut his legs from the knee. They probably saw it and said... scrap this guy, he doesn’t seem to have a sense of grounding and balance. Oh well!

Still, my worst experience to-date is when I applied to this IT company in Ortigas. They have been posting several openings in JobsDB for several weeks and I applied for the Project Manager position. After a few days, I get an email for an interview appointment. I go there to find out that there are around 50 people waiting in the reception area waiting for their turns to be interviewed. I did know that not all of these people could possibly be applying for the PM post. The company did have multiple function vacancies. Besides, a big majority of them didn’t look like PM material (they didnt look old enough). I did go in and went straight to the reception lady. I was of course expecting that management positions aren’t really subjected to the usual rank and file hiring process. Usually, you dont make management candidates wait for an appointment. If the appointment is at 9am, then it is expected that the interview will commence at 9am, regardless of the fact that you have more than 1 candidate scheduled for interview that morning. If you have 3 applicants, you schedule them 1 hour apart. If I found out that all 3 of us were asked to arrive at 9am and then wait for each other's turn, then I would be out of there in a minute. Rank and file usually follows a process that can be assessed as a group, and your application is mostly the call of the HR department so they can play with you as they wish. Management positions however are not really assessed by HR, but by executives. HR gets the standard data from you, but they arent really in a position to figure out if you'll do a good job of leading the development of a new software that will be shipped to clients in the US in 3 months time. I don't mean to be condescending about all this, I just mean that I've been there before... and I know what it feels like to wait for 2 hours while they interview 6 other people first. I am just happy now that because of the position, you get to expect certain standards in the way prospective employers treat you.

So I finally get to talk to the recruitment officer. She is obviously going to have a busy day, judging from all the people out here. She gives me a Personnel Information sheet and asks me to fill it up. I take it and walk away to look for a vacant seat... there are none. So I go through the form while standing in the middle of the lobby and I see questions that bother me. They were already asking for personal and financial information that was clearly unethical. I immediately thought... what kind of company asks for stuff like these before they hire a person? They had questions like how many children do you have, do you own a car, where do you live, are you renting or do you own your house, do you have any criminal record.. etc.

I mean some of them were so inappropriate that it would have been illegal to ask them in the US. In fact, the only approriate way of asking stuff like these is.. "Are there any reasons that would prevent you from fulfilling your job, should we hire you?"

What was really surprising to me was that this company is actually based in the US, and has now just recently opened a BPO arm here in Manila. They should've known better. In fact, at the bottom of the page, they even had printed fine letters that said "We are an equal opportunity company... etc. etc." Really?

I promptly asked the recruitment officer about these and complained why they would need this information for the application. The answer she gave me shocked me. She actually said they would be using that in their evaluation. I couldn't believe it. Point blank without hesitation, obviously believing that there's nothing wrong with what they are doing. Why in the world would you need to know if I have children? Why would you give a flying fuck about where I live? Why would all of these information factor into your evaluation of how fit I am for a particular job? Jesus Christ this is profiling to the very core! I gave her a piece of my mind and made sure I was well in range enough to be audible for everybody in the lobby... in short, I made a scene. I told her that because of that, I am withdrawing my application as I wouldn’t want to work for any company that practices unethical profiling. I grabbed my jacket and walked out. Fucking interview appointment made me cancel another meeting with a friend... I should have known better.

It's so sad because I have done my own evaluations before. I've interviewed a lot of people as potential team members and frankly, I've seen this in my own company as well. This happened several years ago... there was a time when I forwarded a good Senior Engineer candidate to our VP, and she turned her down in an instant when she found out that she was 2 months pregnant. Fucking sick! We argued about it for a few days since I couldn’t believe she would have that bias, being a married woman herself. What an insensitive prick! Don’t these things make you sick to your gut? It's so depressing to know that this is still happening in the corporate world. I eventually resigned from that company as soon as other unethical practices became very evident.

I hear they're not doing too good these days. Serves you right motherfuckers! What goes around, comes around.

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It's the big boss' birthday here at client site today. Every year, people here both employees and consultants alike have learned to look forward to this day. Not so much about anything else, but mainly because of the food. Like last year, everybody enjoyed a treat of excellent pasta galore. I particularly loved the beef stroganoff and the squid ink. After I had my fill of that, I looked for the spinach dip that they served last year. Apparently a lot of people were also looking for that, but they didn't have them today. That dip was absolutely the best tasting dip that I have ever had the pleasure of tasting in my entire life. It was really, really good. Too think that it wasn't even meat... Ha!

And so the whole afternoon was mostly spent carbo-loading. Pasta.. pasta.. and more pasta... and if you still wanted some more, there's potato salad at the end of the long catering table.