Re: Early bird misses job?

[Arthur Comings <atc -at- CORTE-MADERA -dot- GEOQUEST -dot- SLB -dot- COM>]

> ** I think statistics say that the last person interviewed very often
>    gets the job.  (Fully 50% of the time, I read, but I'm not sure I believe
>    that figure.)  I don't know whether that's because...


I still get my resume in as early as possible, but I've got to say that
for my present job, even though I drove my letter to the post office
nearest the place on a Sunday, I was one of the last people called --
if not the last.

By that time, though, they had discovered how bad everyone was doing
with the test question they made applicants respond to before a group.
The existing tech writer decided to tell me what the question was, so I
was prepared, and aced the interview.

Don't be too hard on me for my dishonesty, though. When it was time to
hire a replacement for the guy who had hired me, I told all of the
candidates up front what the question would be. And no one -- no one --
followed  the instructions (name a crisis in your professional career
and how you dealt with it to everyon's satisfaction).  Everyone just
rambled around, mostly as if we had said "Tell us your life story --
we've got plenty of time."


As long as I'm telling war stories,  when the interviewing committee
discussed my candidacy later,  the one thing that someone expressed
reservations about was the fact that, when they had told me that there
were several thousand pages of documentation to revise, I had opined
that that was a big job.  Some of the other candidates had said "no
problem," which impressed one of the interviewers more than my reply.
But only one.




Arthur