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Screening Candidates Based On Criterias Such As 2.1 Degree


easy2012

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HOLA441

It isn't a glib 30 minute presentation - it is me sitting there asking stupid questions about it, asking about the application of whatever it is they are talking about (why is it important, how might one make money out of it) . It is a key skill: can you impart the knowledge that you have in a non-patronising, helpful and engaging manner? When you get a good 'un, it is very clear.

Depends on the job, I have met plenty of quiet introverted programmers who are rubbish in the type of interviews you mention but nevertheless produce good high quality work, and conversely I have met plenty of slick silver tongued types who are useless.

Also playing devils advocate, if having a 1st or Phd is such a good thing how is it that Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle were all started by drop outs?

...and of course there's Britain's own Alan Sugar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sugar

"Early life

Sugar was born in Hackney, east London.[7] He is the youngest of four children of Fay (1907–1994)[8][9] and Nathan (1907–1987)[9] Sugar. His father was a tailor in the East End garment industry.[10]

When Sugar was a child, his family lived in a council flat. Because of his profuse, curly hair, he was nicknamed "Mopsy".[11] He attended Northwold Primary School and then Brooke House Secondary School in Upper Clapton, Hackney, and made extra money by boiling and selling beetroot from a stall.[11] In The Apprentice (2009), Sugar revealed "I was in the Jewish Lads Brigade, Stamford Hill Division, Trainee Bugler, but it didn't make me sell computers!" After leaving school at 16,[12] he worked briefly for the civil service as a statistician at the Ministry of Education. He started selling car aerials and electrical goods out of a van he had bought with his savings of £100."

"Sugar now has an estimated fortune of £770m (US$1.14 billion),[3] and was ranked 89th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2011"

"Intelligence" I find can be paraphrased in most peoples minds as "has a good memory and can regurgitate facts at will" coupled with "sounds convincing and can present well", well, all well and good for a salesman but these same people can be pretty useless in jobs requiring intuitive leaps and creativity, or just the plain old ability to generate cash and successful businesses

It's the person that's important and what they can achieve, and not the bit of paper they may (or may not) have.

"Never memorize what you can look up in books." - Albert Einstein

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HOLA442

It is a filter. Our graduate recruitment programme is flooded with literally 10s of thousands of applications. If we considered each one carefully, we'd spend all our time reading CVs and very little earning money. You have to have a way of cutting it down to a manageable pile - so imposing a filter of 2.1 or better is as good as any. Speaking as someone who got a 2.2, you might as well filter on "A-M" in the bin, but people would get pissed off.

Anyone who has been to a half decent university and got a 2.1 has the raw intellect/application to do the job. What I do at interview is get them to explain what they have done. I give them 30 minutes to speak about a subject they know inside out: I don't give a monkey's what the subject is, I want them to explain it to me and impart some of the passion that prompted them to study said subject for several years. If I walk out of the interview having learned something, and been enthused about the subject, they tend to get an offer. At the end of the day these guys need to impart leadership to their teams, encourage people to work bloody hard and inspire clients to buy "us". If they cannot do this for a subject that they have studied for several years, this is not the job for them.

I am often amazed at difference in quality of degree...and the results of this simple test. You can get firsts from top end Russell Group who fall flat on their faces. PhDs are often awful at it. Some of the most unlikely candidates do very well.

I agree with the others - you are basically selecting for presentational/social skills. If that's what you need then fair enough. You'll probably miss the next Einstein though.

I have interviewed technical people for jobs. You sometimes need to draw them out. Some of the best candidates will claim to have very little of the subject. I have been in the surreal situation of sitting opposite a candidate who claimed no knowledge at all, looking at his CV which said he'd worked on a project requiring world class skills and saying, "Well how did you solve problem X in project Y?" At which point he revealed an incredible depth of knowledge while all the time thinking he didn't know much about the subject.

The guy didn't interview well. But we hired him, and he did groundbreaking work for a few years until another organisation poached him.

My take is that as an interviewer it's not your job to sit back and let candidates try to impress you. It is your job to find out the true nature and skills of the candidate regardless of whether they "perform" well or not.

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HOLA443

It isn't a glib 30 minute presentation - it is me sitting there asking stupid questions about it, asking about the application of whatever it is they are talking about (why is it important, how might one make money out of it) . It is a key skill: can you impart the knowledge that you have in a non-patronising, helpful and engaging manner? When you get a good 'un, it is very clear.

Interesting.

Our technical interviews also have this aspect (20 minute presentation + questions on the subject of the candidates choice) but for us it is only about communication, not technical ability.

The real technical interview starts when we say something like: 'so then, tell me how you'd make a Fischer-Tropsch catalyst'. Knowing full well it's an almost impossible question for an entry-level candidate to know. The good candidates tend to start their answer with a question. That makes me smile.

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HOLA444

The trouble I have had with the "Tell me all about it" interview, is that the first thing the interviewee has to decide is just how much of what he says will be understood by the interviewer, and whether the lack of understanding by the latter will lead to the conclusion that it is bullsh1t. There's also a slight fear that if you come over as too knowledgeable, you won't get the job because of your bosses's fear of being overshadowed. If you have in-depth knowledge of any field, trying to mentally form a concise synopsis which is understandable to your audience, on the hoof, is pretty difficult. Many tech people don't have the skills for that, whilst being perfectly competent in their field and able to produce excellent presentations, given preparation time.

There are interviews which are no more than brain-picking sessions to see how the competition achieved certain results. Neatest form of industrial espionage.

I have been in an interview which lasted five minutes, during which time I and the interviewer argued over how to measure a particular parameter, and it was the only question asked IIRC. It suddenly came to an end with the question "When can you start?". I sat there slack jawed and asked why, to which he said I was the first candidate to even know what he was talking about, let alone argue the point.

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HOLA445

I have been in an interview which lasted five minutes, during which time I and the interviewer argued over how to measure a particular parameter, and it was the only question asked IIRC. It suddenly came to an end with the question "When can you start?". I sat there slack jawed and asked why, to which he said I was the first candidate to even know what he was talking about, let alone argue the point.

Love it.

What parameter were you trying to measure? I'm intrigued.

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HOLA446

Here is the problem:

(I am not suggesting this is your advert)

I guess people this qualified are supposed to work for the love of it and not the money, or whatever. In the UK generally, and Cambridge especially I would guess, up to £35k for those kind of qualifications and experience is a pittance. Is it any wonder science grads end up in front of Bloomberg terminals?

I barely know what any of the biological stuff is, but I would expect to earn more with just the perl and unix skills in some kind of server admin role, and that isn't even my speciality... We simply do not value our scientific people enough.

I completely agree with what you are saying. Other half's uncle once compared working in science to going into the clergy.

However, given that supposedly the graduate roles are all snowed under with applicants according to other peoples anecdotes would it hurt grads to look outside the milk round? It appears Indians (and Greeks) can.

For those of you not paying attention here, the scientific data deluge is getting the attention of money. Google ventures just dropped $15M into a company in this space http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/dnanexus-gets-15-million-from-google-ventures-announces-cloud-storage-deal/10707

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HOLA447

I have interviewed technical people for jobs. You sometimes need to draw them out. Some of the best candidates will claim to have very little of the subject. I have been in the surreal situation of sitting opposite a candidate who claimed no knowledge at all, looking at his CV which said he'd worked on a project requiring world class skills and saying, "Well how did you solve problem X in project Y?" At which point he revealed an incredible depth of knowledge while all the time thinking he didn't know much about the subject.

I'm fairly sure this is Dunning Krueger. The more you know about a subject the worse your impression of your own skills.

I just failed to get a job because I said my statistics were pretty average. I know this because I've spent the last three years dealing with some pretty complex stats and thought I was talking to someone similar. I think the recruiter took it differently.

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