Slashdot Mirror
Your Experiences with Recruiters?
companyAdvocate asks "I work in a small, high end IT consultancy. We are currently on a large recruitment drive and our targets are very ambitious. We are looking into alternative, original and cost-effective ways of hiring talented people. Google's billboard ad comes to mind. As we are a consultancy, we need good communicators as well as techies and raising the company profile may be an added bonus. What is the Slashdot community's experience with alternative recruitment methods? Were you hired in an exciting or interesting way? How do you make even rejected candidates leave with a positive impression?"
You have the right idea tapping into this site as a resource pool, but perhaps you should look for talent here as well? Give everyone a job who scores 5/5 on this Slashdot thread. Start with me, and work your way down the list. I will provide a resume and credentials upon request.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
How do you make even rejected candidates leave with a positive impression?
Two weeks pay would be nice.
In a company where I was recruited, they had an IQ test and a programming test (SQL + general algorithms).
The project manager (who was a senior programmer) was the one who interviewed me.
This was very personalized, and the whole recruitment process made me feel appreciated and worthy. This isn't something many companies give.
If you're looking to hire good Computer Science people, make all your emails plaintext. For more fancy formatting, use HTML forms and PDF. Many companies do not realize that UNIX sysadmin applications should not be Word attachments.
ok, here's a list based on my experience with them during interviews and career fairs - and feedback from people i know.
;)
:)
Intel - they give noctoriously hard questions, with 3 rounds of interviews. but there were simple interviews where they only asked about course projects and not too much textbook material in too much depth. in the latter case, there was only 1 interview round before the candidate was hired.
Xilinx - phone screen - basic textbook material. onsite: presentation. multiple full day interviews based on in depth textbook material. the onsite was probably 20 times more difficult. Interviews were disorganized. They had a list of questions that they go through and some of them were repeated from one interviewer to the next. This was in the valley and some of the people seemed to have attitude and ego problems, and didn't like to listen to your answer when are multiple solutions to the interview question. The group looked like zombies, probably from all the overtime shifts.
Analog Devices - the campus onsite interviews are a complete waste of time. they're basically for PR purposes whether they're planning on hiring or not for the year. Questions they ask are generally simple, but I hear onsite interviews are always challenging. Recruiters at the career fairs are always excellent and informative. Company slide presentations are always disorganized - but we were engineering students - who really cares anyway
Teradyne - Campus onsite interviews are usually given by aluminus of the university. I have a theory that their company is sending these folks for interviewing is because these are the ones that have nothing else better to do at work - i.e., they can afford to send the non productive ones for these events... At the career fair, almost all of the recruiters think you don't know anything about the field and go through the whole process explaning everything. Perhaps it's their strategy - holding up a queue at their booth so it looks like they're generating a lot of popularity and interest! Some of them don't even know what they're talking about after working there for a couple of years.
NVidia - this one's the worst. They used to show up at the career fair and flat out refused people's CV right at the spot if their GPA is below 3.5. They would ask up front and basically tell you to buzz off if you "don't have what it takes". I know of someone who worked there as an intern and he basically had to go through their insane work hours. Oh, what happens to the ones that get past that absurd GPA screening? They sit you down at the back of the booth, and basically ask you technical problems which would take up to over an hour.
Synopsys - Very reasonable interviews. They ask really good questions and are not there to find out what you don't know, but what you do, and to really see what you're capable of. They're interested in seeing your thought process and would give you slight nudges in the right direction to see whether you catch on.
Anyway, my current job was found through monster. I had my interview, signed the offer and began work just within 9 day of submitting my application online. I'll not name the company here, but interview process was very reasonable, (see Synopsys - very similar). Very humane people and you had a sense of the great people you would be working with if hired. After graduating, it took me 3 months of job search before I found the job.
Amazing work environment - but that'll be for another time and a different story
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