December 6, 2006

A Tale of Two Recruiters

I had two interviews today for two different development positions, set up by two different recruiters.

The first one really liked my attitude, felt I had a strong grasp on the SDLC, but then started asking me lots of questions related to Java. I said, "Java? I thought this was a C# position." He said it was a Java position. I pulled out my printout describing the position and he pulled out my resume. Every reference on my resume that said C# had been changed to read Java...but the job opening I had in my hand said C#. After a curt phonecall from both of us, both of us terminated our relationship with the recruiter.

The second one really liked my attitude, but was wondering what games experience brought to "the real world." I asked him how many data records his office processed in an average day, and he estimated 2 million. So I told him that I come from an industry where we process that many records thirty times a second on consumer-level hardware; that the user can and often does change and distort that information; that we have intelligent agents acting on the data in real-time and interacting with the user; and we do all of that with the user experience in mind.

I have a follow-up interview on Monday.

2 comments:

Sarkie said...

The first part happened to my father when he went for a position, it was all set up. He drove 200+ miles to the job interview, within 10 minutes, the company realised my father wasn't qualified for the job, and my father realised that the job was not what he had agreed to.

They should at least work, and changing your resume to read Java, Coffee is disgusting.

Good Luck with the second interview.

Unknown said...

Heh... So many people in the industry think that their experience is "special"- and that you have to have worked in that field or one like it to be "relevant". I encounter it all the time. I like your answer- and I wish you the best of luck on that second interview.