Crazy job search stories: Goldman Sachs

I’m sure lots of people have had strange experiences while searching for and interviewing for jobs. People who do the recruiting and interviewing of job candidates often have funny stories to tell. Sometimes I wonder though, if other people looking for a job have had anything similar to mine.

 Once I went on an interview for a job as a college recruiter, with Goldman Sachs. This particular office was in lower Manhattan. The director of college recruiting was a guy named Mike Lowenthal. At the start of the interview he mused, “There’s mostly women working in college recruiting.” Hmm, maybe this gives me an edge, I thought. He didn’t ask me any questions though. He just rambled on for a couple of minutes about Goldman Sachs. Suddenly, he looked past me (his office was surrounded by windows).  He stood up, grabbed a stack of what look to be like tickets to a game or concert wrapped with elastic bands, and raced out the door. I turned around, but he had already fled down one of the hallways, disappearing from sight.

So I sat there for a few minutes, wondering what I should do. Wait until he comes back? Leave now? It started to dawn on me that I wasn’t going to get this job even if I stayed, so I was about to go when a girl named Kim walked in.

“Mike had to go, but I’ll finish the interview,” she said brightly. Then she proceeded to talk a little about the job. She didn’t ask me any questions, or ask if I had any questions about th position. She did talk at length about the bars in the area and how everyone in the department liked to go out for drinks after work.

After a few minutes she stood up and held out her hand. “It was nice to meet you,” she said.  For some reason I said thank you, nice to meet you too, instead of saying what I really felt, which was, why did you even bother to call me in….

I’ve thought that maybe they didn’t like the way I looked. If that’s the case, and I’m sure some interviewers consider that above all else (although they would never admit it), why not ask for a picture? A photograph with the resume on the back. It would save us all a lot of time and money. By looks, I mean beyond the blue suit/white shirt/red tie/polished shoes/clean shaven appearance.

Who knows. Maybe this isn’t as ridiculous as some others’ experiences. It feels like it was a waste of time and energy. On the other hand it’s given me something to write about, so maybe it wasn’t a total loss. Stay tuned for upcoming stories about job search…

A job interview at Montclair State University

Totally unprofessional interview process.

I was called to interview as an assistant director of cooperative education position; the search committee chairwoman, a biology professor, indicated in the e-mail that there were eight faculty members on the committee, so bring enough copies of your handout. She also said I would be meeting with the Dean of the school, after the interview with the search committee.

So I arrived the usual ten minutes early. Fifteen minutes after the scheduled start time, the secretary escorted me to a conference room down the hall. The committee chairwoman was there, and two other professors. The chairwoman said I would not be meeting with the Dean afterwards. Okay.

They asked me to give the presentation first, so I did that. The director of the career center arrived ten minutes later, after the interview had started. After I finished the presentation a couple of the faculty members asked me a question. The others just sat there in silence. The chair asked me if I had any questions, so I asked a few, and they gave their answers. I smiled and tried to engage with them, but these folks were clearly just going through the motions. Then they thanked me and I left.

I never heard back from them, not even an e-mail stating they had selected a final candidate. I found out months later they gave the job to someone who was already working in another office on campus. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. What’s wrong is wasting the time of the other candidates who had no chance of being hired.

The interview questions were just stock questions, nothing unexpected. They weren't very creative or imaginative questions.

Crazy Job Search/Interviewing Stories, Part VI: Montclair State University

<sup>I interviewed for a few jobs at Montclair State. One director I met with had this look of shock on her face when I said I didn't reveal my salary history, that to me salary is something to be negotiated after a job offer. Another committee I met with spoke among themselves for a while before even acknowledging I was there. A stress test perhaps? Or are they just morons who have no idea how to conduct a professional job interview? I guess I'll never know for sure, unless one of them reads this and responds. Wouldn't you try to engage the candidate and try to make them feel comfortable? I would. I would want to give a positive impression. Montclair State certainly did not.

Actually for another job at Montclair State the person who interviewed me, a guy named Chuck, actually called me back afterwards, and said, "I just wanted you to know that you interviewed well, even though we picked another person." I said, OK, who did you hire, just out of curiosity? There was no sound on the phone, for a second, then Chuck said, "We hired an African American woman who worked in the President's office." Oh. Well, nice to know I had a fair shot at the job!</sup>

Crazy Job Search/Interviewing Stories, Part V: Rutgers University

I know a lot of people out there who read this are just going to poo-poo my stories as sour grapes. But hey it's just my opinion; it's just that people seem to behave differently when they are hiring for an open job.

I interviewed at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ, for three different positions. One was in the graduate career center. That one wasn't too unusual. But another time I interviewed with the undergraduate career center; I met a woman named Lynne who was an assistant director. She could not have looked any more disinterested during our brief interview. It's like someone had dumped the task of interviewing on her and she resented it. So she asked me a couple of questions, I answered, trying to demonstrate some enthusiasm, trying to make some kind of connection with her. Then she asked me if I had any questions; I asked one, she made a quick reply, and then said, thanks for coming in. We left the conference room and walked back to her office. She opened the door, and I don't remember what I said exactly, something along the lines of thanks for meeting me, I'm really interested in the job, etc., smiling as I said it. What did she do? She frowns and slams the door in front of me! Look people, if you're not interested in a candidate, fine, but there's no need to be rude. At least act like a civilized human being.

Another time I interviewed for an assistant director of the student center job at Rutgers Newark. I went into the conference room and there was about ten college administrators sitting on both sides of a long table. They asked me to sit at the front. I did and promptly sank into a chair that was lower than the others. I guess they like looking down at people. Anyway only one person, the dean that I would have been reporting to, asked me any interview questions. The rest of them just sat there and stared at me. Eventually the security director help up a flyer and asked me what I would do if I some supposedly radical group consisting of black people came to campus for some type of student program. Then he picked up a flyer and growled that they were going to be there next week, and slammed the flyer down on the table. The black folks sitting at the table said nothing; didn't even look at him. I'm not sure what my answer was, but I'm pretty sure it was generic. I was interested in the job (for some unknown reason) so I didn't show any bias one way or another. Anyway the interview ended and I left. Never heard from them again, thankfully. I mean, who knows..was it all some sort of act to see how I would respond to people just staring at me? How I would respond to an angry security director? Maybe. Or maybe they're just a bunch of wackos who have no idea how to conduct a professional job interview. I don't know. I don't really care either...I'm just glad my own diploma isn't from Rutgers Newark!

Why are employers asking for workers' Facebook passwords?

Why are employers asking for workers' Facebook passwords? Why does anyone care? If people spent as much time on marriage as they do when going through the process of hiring an employee, the divorce rate in the United States would be zero.

First off, I have no sympathy for people who post revealing pictures online, join controversial causes, or write controversial material and sign their name to it, and then get upset when it's used against them in some way. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it - but why not just mark the pictures as private or friends-only on sites like Facebook, or use an anonymous name when writing a controversial blog? That is, if you're looking for a real job.  If you want to become a well-known pundit like Bill O'Reilly, then by all means publicize your views.  Or if you want attention like entertainers get, then make those pictures available for the world to see.  Just don't expect to get a regular job if you do.

That being said, I have no idea what looking at pictures on someone's Facebook page can tell you about how a potential employee will perform in a job. Will the people who do please come forward and explain this concept to me?  I'm willing to change my opinion, if you tell me what your reasons are, and they make sense.

Am I supposed to believe that the people making hiring decisions are perfect? They've never made mistakes, gotten drunk, or done something stupid or silly? Come on. It makes no difference if you don't have a picture of it - you still did it, so how can you judge someone else? Why not find out what someone can actually do on a job, instead of just guessing as to how they would perform based on their Facebook page?  What if you think their Facebook page is too boring? Does that knock them out as a candidate as well?

Funny how people get all flustered when it comes to hiring a new employee....but then, lots of people just jump into marriage or a relationship. If people spent as much time on relationships or potential relationships as they did when hiring a worker, the divorce rate in this country would be zero.

My crazy job search/interviewing stories, part IV: Baruch College, Union County College, Hudson County College, Ramapo College

I must have wrote good resumes; people take 15 seconds or less to view a resume and decide if they want to interview the person. I did get a number of interviews. Although at colleges, most positions go to a candidate who will fill a quota, or to someone's friend.

Anyway, it could be me, maybe it's just the way the interview process works for other people. They feel it's appropriate to turn every answer that a candidate gives into a negative, like when I interviewed at Baruch College. If I'm such as awful candidate, why did you even call me in for an interview? The guy asking the questions looked more like an actor than the director of an office. Tall, dark, and handsome. Too bad he didn't seem to know much about interviewing.

The negativity continued at Union County College; I left thinking, why would anyone want to work at this place, surrounded by these miserable people?

An interview at Hudson County College found me listening to some guy on a power trip brag about his knowledge, and lecture about what he needed in an employee. Asking interview questions? I guess he forgot about that part.

At Ramapo College I walked into the conference room where the interview was held. I was told to sit at the end of a very long conference table. Odd thing was, the five people on the search committee sat at the other end of the table. Maybe they had a bad experience with other candidates? Did their clothes smell? Did they have bad breath? Maybe the interviewers wanted to see how a candidate reacted by this seating situation? If that's the case, what kind of reaction were they looking for? What would be a positive reaction? What type of reaction would be construed as negative? Or was it that the people doing the interviewing were just morons? Hmm, I think that might be it...

Crazy Job Search/Interviewing Stories, Part III

I was pretty targeted in my job search, and knew how to write an eye-catching resume, so I did land a decent number of interviews. Some of the bizarre stuff that happens during the interviews though...I couldn't have made some of it up if I had tried. Previously I wrote about the dude at Goldman Sachs who abruptly ran out the door during the interview, and the woman with the greasy palm who shook my hand at Seton Hall University Law School.

I also had an interview once at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ. The first person I met with said, "If you get this job, you will not have very big shoes to fill." Hmm. That's good, I thought.  I did know the guy who held the job I had been applying for. I met him at a couple of conferences in years past and wasn't very impressed.

Anyway the first group interview went pretty well. One person said something odd, saying the student leaders were "seasoned." To me, a student leader is just someone who has attained a position of power. "seasoned" just isn't the word I would use to describe a college student who still has a lot to learn.

Then I met with two other people, a guy who talked about a business he had on the side from his college job, and the intramurals director who didn't look at me or ask me any questions. Weird. I tried to engage her but she just had this strange look on her face.

Later I met with a few upper level administrators and faculty members. Talk about goofballs. Two of the guys kept looking at each other while they talked in circles at me, never really asking me any direct questions. It seemed like they were totally unprepared and had never interviewed anyone in their life. Maybe they hadn't, who knows. A faculty member who slurred his speech, like he had been drinking, asked me a couple of odd questions. I politely answered, and asked my own questions, like it was a wonderful interview and I was glad to be there.  The chair of the search committee, a guy named Mark, was affable enough. Unfortunately he was only around at the start and end of the day.

I didn't get that job, and I heard that the person who did was only there for about a year. I guess they didn't pick the right person, unless it's okay to spend all that time searching for a worker who is going to be in a position for just a year. Seems like a big investment of everyone's time for something so short term. Why not just have two or three people interview the person over two or three hours? Who knows. American colleges are models of ineffective bureaucracies.

My crazy job search stories, part II

My last job search article discussed an incident that happened on an interview with a company in the private sector, Goldman Sachs. But I had some odd experiences while interviewing for jobs at colleges. (Oh, and “universities.” Excuse me for that major oversight).

Once I went to an interview at Seton Hall University Law School, and met with a committee of four people. So when I walked into the room each person introduced himself or herself and held out their hand. I smiled as I gave each person a firm handshake.

Unfortunately I grimaced when I clasped the last woman’s hand. Her hand was greasy. She must have just smeared it with some sort of hand lotion, before I entered the room. Now my hand was covered with whatever this oily slime was. Afterward I wondered if this was her, or the committee’s way of trying to trip up a candidate. A stress test of some sort? A clever way to see how someone would react to adversity? Perhaps it was a signal that if I got the job I would have to “grease palms” in order to get ahead in the organization?

Or maybe the woman was just a moron. Even with all their degrees some people who work in higher education are pretty strange.

They asked me a couple of questions, the asked me if I had any questions. I asked one and had a few more prepared but one guy with an unkempt beard (must have been a sleazy lawyer before landing his cushy job at the law school) abruptly thanked me for coming and stood up.

Needless to say I didn’t shake anyone’s hand as I left. I didn’t bother to send a thank you note either.  I decided I didn’t want the job. I guess some lawyers really are slimy, literally.

Donald Trump is right to not shake anyone’s hand. Smart man…

Why do bosses ask their workers to do this?

I’ve never understood why organizations ask their workers to do silly stuff that really has nothing to do with the kind of job a person can do, or has any relevance to the organization’s success.

 

Like expecting employees to attend various social events.  Why is this kind of thing so important?  Do you really need to feel liked by everyone in your organization?  Do you really think that camaraderie among people can be created? Not likely. If it’s going to happen it’s going to happen naturally. You can’t force it to happen. A better idea would be to have several events that might appeal to large group of people within your organization. Going to a basketball game, volunteering at some kind of activity, or having a day at an amusement park for people with kids are better than expecting people to hang out at the bar after work, or expecting people to donate money so you can “celebrate” every single person’s birthday at the office.

Along those lines, what’s the point of “team-building” exercises? You don’t need to know about an employee’s private life. You do need to know how to help an employee improve their performance on the job.  When hiring a new worker, you need to know if they can do the job in an efficient manner. Asking them what kind of an animal they would like to be isn’t going to help you to determine that.

A person’s private life is considered private because they don’t want the whole world to know about it. Getting to know someone too well can make me want to work with them less, not more. Team-building activities can make people too uncomfortable to work together, not work well as a “team.”  Discuss performance and results, not inner demons.

Another question is, why ask certain people to do someone else’s job?  John has a project to do but hasn’t finished it, so you ask Tom to do it since you know it will get done on time. That’s wrong. If you’re going to do that you better pay Tom a bonus.  Come one, deal with John and let Tom do his own work.

Maybe a lot of these concepts came to be because certain people in organizations didn’t have enough to do, and they felt like they needed to justify their salary. ….

Long-winded bosses, asking employees to evaluate themselves and their peers, and other American job nonsense

Ever have a boss who asks you to keep them on track, then when they start droning on about nothing at a meeting and then when you signal them to stop, they ignore you? I would think I’m not the only one.  I guess whatever the boss was saying (I don’t remember anything of what they were talking about) was just too critical for them to say, that they couldn’t stop talking. Some people just need to make themselves feel important, I suppose.

Can anyone tell me what the point is of having workers evaluate themselves? How silly. Someone who is doing an excellent job is going to wonder why you, as a boss, don’t already know that. Someone who is doing a lousy job isn’t going to give themselves a poor rating, obviously (or not obviously to people who think these things up). Instead of self-evaluations why not ask workers what the organization can do to help them improve their skills – which would benefit the organization as well as the employee.

Maybe worse are “peer” evaluations. It doesn’t matter if the evaluations are confidential or not, who wants to work with someone who is critical of them? That’s hardly the best way to develop a “team first” attitude among your workers.

Does anyone have any proof that the above concepts actually do produce positive results in an organization, and I’m wrong? Let’s see it…

My crazy job search stories: Part I, Goldman Sachs

I’m sure lots of people have had strange experiences while searching for and interviewing for jobs. People who do the recruiting and interviewing of job candidates often have funny stories to tell. Sometimes I wonder though, if other people looking for a job have had anything similar to mine.
Once I went on an interview for a job as a college recruiter, with Goldman Sachs. This particular office was in lower Manhattan. The director of college recruiting was a guy named Mike. At the start of the interview he mused, “There’s mostly women working in college recruiting.” Hmm, maybe this gives me an edge, I thought. He didn’t ask me any questions though. He just rambled on for a couple of minutes about Goldman Sachs. Suddenly, he looked past me (his office was surrounded by windows).  He stood up, grabbed a stack of what look to be like tickets to a game or concert wrapped with elastic bands, and raced out the door. I turned around, but he had already fled down one of the hallways, disappearing from sight.

So I sat there for a few minutes, wondering what I should do. Wait until he comes back? Leave now? It started to dawn on me that I wasn’t going to get this job even if I stayed, so I was about to go when a girl named Kim walked in.

“Mike had to go, but I’ll finish the interview,” she said brightly. Then she proceeded to talk a little about the job. She didn’t ask me any questions, or ask if I had any questions about th position. She did talk at length about the bars in the area and how everyone in the department liked to go out for drinks after work.

After a few minutes she stood up and held out her hand. “It was nice to meet you,” she said.  For some reason I said thank you, nice to meet you too, instead of saying what I really felt, which was, why did you even bother to call me in….

I’ve thought that maybe they didn’t like the way I looked. If that’s the case, and I’m sure some interviewers consider that above all else (although they would never admit it), why not ask for a picture? A photograph with the resume on the back. It would save us all a lot of time and money. By looks, I mean beyond the blue suit/white shirt/red tie/polished shoes/clean shaven appearance.

Who knows. Maybe this isn’t as ridiculous as some others’ experiences. It feels like it was a waste of time and energy. On the other hand it’s given me something to write about, so maybe it wasn’t a total loss. Stay tuned for upcoming stories about job search…