RE: Case study for interviewing Oracle DBA

Rachel Carmichael wrote:

>Unfortunately, to avoid the overquoting, I'm gonna have to snip out
>amost everything... here goes

And I thought I was being a good boy by not quoting all of the posts I
was responding to!  :-)  More response below:


>On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 15:55:21 -0800, Joel Garry
<joelgarry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >wrote:
>> rachel carmichael wrote:
>> 

>> The criteria are important in the sense of "you must meet them to get
>> your foot in the door," but not in the sense of "do they make sense."
>> I've seen some criteria that are just plain wrong.  Criteria that
reject
>> those who would do best in the job are bad criteria.  That is why it
is
>> best to simply skip the HR department and go directly to the hiring
>> manager.  That's what networking is all about.  That rare beast,
"good
>> headhunters" (as opposed to order clerks) do that too.
>> 


> Company mergers led to my being in a position of "you will be laid
>off some time in the near future". While talking with a friend of mine
>about it (he'd gone through the same thing with me at my prior
>company), he decided that recruiting me  would be a good thing for his
>current company. Okay, fair enough, we skipped the HR initial crap,
>saved the company money (no recruiter's fees). EXCEPT, HR still has to
>be in the process at some point, and now they are annoyed with both me
>and my friend because "we did this backwards". Do I start the
>interview with HR at a disadvantage? You bet. Will it hurt me? Still
>to be determined, we are still in the "trying to find a date that
>everyone can manage for the interview" stage.

Them being annoyed is silly.  There should be some way to turn this
lemon into lemonade, though.  For example, you (or more likely, your
friend or his mgr) might suggest an agenda for the meeting, putting into
a positive light that the meeting can be short and to the point (as they
don't have to bother with explaining what the company does and what they
are looking for); that at least one current employee already knows/feels
that you are a good fit so you don't have to play any games about that,
and so on.  The obvious landmine is that they probably have some pet
methodology for determining good fit and whether you are not an insane
child molester, keeping things warm and professional can hopefully sooth
the rumpled feathers, having trespassed on their domain.  You don't want
to get into a p*ing match with HR, plenty of time for that later :-)
Most companies have a policy about referrals, did your friend not follow
some rules?  If the rules arbitrarily make it more difficult for this
type of situation, they should be modified.  If your friend goofed, that
can be good, showing proper remorse and deferrence could go far towards
mollifying HR and letting them save face - HR then gets to be benevolent
towards you, secretly happy (or just plain in denial) about not having
to admit they were silly.


--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

Other related posts: