Having the unenviable experience of being out of work for a long time, I very much sympathize with this 29 yo Millennial. His name was kept confidential so I cannot contact him. If you read this, please drop me a line. It seems he did everything right, schoolwise, but society has failed him. Who is to blame for such systemic problems in finding gainful and meaningful employment?
I am currently working as an IT recruiter, a difficult and low paying job, where success is few and far between. Still, I get to help some people some of the time. Oddly, I find this one of the benefits of the job. I can also shed light on some of the quirkiness of the job search that others might not tell a candidate.
This question has repeatedly come up during face to face interviewers of one specific company here in Toronto, Canada. It is supposed to test programming logic. You may judge for yourself its effectiveness. Trick interview questions such as these are controversial. Do such questions really show IT intelligence and talent or are they used as a chance method to eliminate candidates? One web site, CareerCup.com has a collected a database of such interview questions.
Q: There are three covered boxes that are all mislabeled: one contains “apples”, one contains “oranges”, one contains “mixed”. You cannot see the contents of these boxes. You may stick your hand into one box at a time and take out a fruit. How do you correctly relabel the boxes?
After two months of recruiting for permanent and contract IT developers for a specific company, this experience has shown the psychological resilience and toughness of IT contractors. No matter the rejection and abuse they get from companies, this does not faze them. Life merely carries on. Need it be this way?
This morning I was submitting candidates to this company for interviews. The company was asking us for convenient interview times. But by noon the news turned grim: all contractor positions were filled. Anyone looking for a contract that was not already interviewed was being offered permanent positions only. The abruptness was a bit shocking to me, as it looked like there was a lack of planning.
New am I as an IT recruiter. Sure, I have interviewed and hired for my own development team, but this new job has me reading hundreds of resumes a week. Here are some observations about reading resumes and talking to job candidates: 1. Canadians do not have as much education as candidates from the USSR and China, 2. I have no idea of the authenticity of many Indian post secondary schools, 3. There is more to life than money, 4. Why post your resume up to a job board when I cannot even contact you?
Eye opening was my new job as an IT recruiter here in Toronto, Canada. As a North American born and Canadian raised and educated, I knew something was askew. Reading hundreds of resumes per week I wondered why it took so long for me to find work, though it is not exactly in my job stream. Why where there so many newly immigrated foreigners out of work? Why where there so many second generation immigrants, fluent in English and Canadian educated, having such a difficult time finding work, in our ethnically diverse Toronto?
Some interview questions are simply very puzzling to me. They beg the question “Why do they ask them”, and what is there to be gained. Interviews are stressful events, and to ask a candidate seemingly idiotic questions that prove seeming little about their innate talents can be worse than pointless. These questions may show that the interviewing company treats their employees irresponsibly.
A case in point the question above: What is the next in the sequence SSS SCC C SC? This IT interview question is said to be from Google Corp. You can google for the answer, as I did. I found the solution here.
