I once sat on an interview panel. Each interviewer would briefly summarise the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate and a decision would be made by consensus.
However, for one candidate, the first interviewer simply said 'No'.
'OK David. Thank you. John, anything to add to that ?'
John: 'Absolutely no.'
And that was the end of that.
Doug Burns tells of an unusual company with an unusual interviewing technique that reminded me of some interviewing anecdotes.
After one year in IT, I had money in my pocket, no more studies and I was keen, enthusiastic and motivated. Consequently, I was invited on the 'milk round' to interview prospective graduates in Scotland. Flying in an aeroplane, staying in a posh hotel, eating food, drinking beer and not having to pay for any of it motivated me even more.
So I painted a glowing picture of our company to everyone I met. Even people I wasn't interviewing like the hotel receptionist. I couldn't wait to tell the nervous undergraduates, in their ill fitting suits, about the summer barbecue with as much free food and alcohol as you could consume with transport laid on. Nor could I wait to tell them about the Christmas dinner dance at a top notch London hotel with partners invited, a high quality 5 course meal, cabaret, disco, and, again, as much free alcohol as you wanted.
A year later, I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar Scottish face turn up for his induction after his successful application. He was also pleased, enthusiastic and motivated. Well he was. Until, two weeks later, I had to break the news that this years summer barbecue was cancelled due to 'budgetary constraints'. With the aid of counselling, he managed to get over that bombshell until, three months later, I had to break the tragic news that the Christmas dinner dance was also cancelled due to 'adverse market conditions and poor company performance in Q3/Q4'.
A couple of messages to the kind person who accidentally took my Palm Vx from the safety of its docking cradle. Clearly, like me, you can resist everything but temptation.
You can also have the mains charger, cradle, spare stylus and a screen protector. I may even have the original box and instructions somewhere. This will help to increase the resale value on eBay. Just look under Brightside, N and give me a call. You will find that I am a very understanding, forgiving type.
Thank you. I had a nagging suspicion for a while that the Palm was just a glorified address book. In fact, I didn't even notice its absence for a hour or so. Hopefully, my Palm will find more synchronisations and love in his new home.
Thank you. I now have a wealth of commercial and open source software packages to evaluate and high tech gadgets to consider to help fill this gaping void in my life.
Finally, a proposition for you. If you send out Xmas cards to everyone in 'Personal' and 'Family', signing the cards 'Happy Christmas. All the best for 2007. Love from Norman & family' and send them by 2nd class post by 10th December, we shall call it quits and I shall take the matter no further.
Two years ago, my hard disk failed. Completely. This was excellent news as my computer ran a lot faster after a clean installation of Windows XP but bad news because I lost email, names and addresses, documents etc.
One thing on my to-do list was to investigate offline storage to backup key data files to avoid a repetition. And, yes, this 'Next Action' had been on the to-do list for two years.
So now I am using the freeware edition of SyncBack to synchronise folders between my two PC's at home and backup key files to my FTP site. The FTP site is constrained to 30 MB but should be adequate for now. Large files (photos) are burned to CD.
As I now use Thunderbird (not Outlook Express), my email folders are simple, plain old fashioned text files that can be imported into any (normal) email client anywhere.
SyncBack is really intuitive software, fast, well documented and highly recommended.