You stay in Greece right? The economic climate isn't good, and whichever job you get, there is a high chance you might lose it next year when the Grecian economy implodes due to national debt.

I suggest that you pick up some books on financial management and source for freelance work, and at least get a passive income in either insurance agent sales or trading. Then to shore it up more, get more technical knowledge to supplement to autoCAD and MATLAB, and build up a stable programming foundation in Java and/or C++. You might want to ask around the older techies in our forum (Vexx, Seijisensei, GHDPro) to see which are the more common languages used for IT operations in the various companies around the world.

Most of those tech skills are easy to build up if you use them to design a portfolio for potential employers - I think a technical portfolio is more practical than just a degree itself; I am building a stock and investment portfolio this December after I raise enough money for my capital.

Well I think for new hires they don't expect you to know everything. Furthermore, when you know one graphics package (autoCAD) and one maths package (MATLAB), it's not so difficult to learn the rest. The programming thing is obviously more tricky. But I'd say you'd have a very good chance at any engineering position, provided it's entry level, and entry level engineering jobs are quite plentiful.

The one job sector where there's no shortage of jobs is Engineering. Provided you have a degree, there's no shortage of positions. Of course a lot of students go through the degree and are sick of it by the end.

Another thing to bear in mind is that a lot of the engineering openings may require you to move. For instance certain areas like Australia and Canada have major shortages, while others not so much.

I'd say you're more likely to get cash (and substantial amounts at that) working in Engineering then Finances. Though there's no harm in maintaining an investment portfolio as well...

Depends on the employer during bad economic times or market stagnation like now. Most employers now look for people with work experience instead of degrees because they didn't want to waste time training newbies on the job, they would prefer people who are just as good.

Oh yes, when going to interviews, answer the questions with your heart and mind. Don't follow all those "prebuilt answers" given by HR consultants, I had a friend who works as an interviewer who says that he won't hesitate to drop candidates' resumes into the bin if they give more than 25% worth of prebuilt answers - simply shows that they are shirkers because most of those answers are designed to avoid sensitive issues from being discussed.

It is a problem payroll wise though, but having a job is better than having none. Another sector which has alot of openings is security consultancy, but that would mean you have to be ex-armed forces or ex-police, and they usually take in people with Special Forces or QRF (Rangers, domestic CT like SWAT or YAMAM) background.

But I wouldn't suggest to go into security though. Most of those ex-army or ex-police who are released due to age, then joined have some form of work illness - a state of OCD which makes them unusually sharp-minded and sharp-eyed as compared to a normal person on the streets; they can see alot of things about people and premises most normal people couldn't.

Stick to Engineering. I wish I did engineering instead of Econs and Finances, but since I am working towards financial freedom so I can do whatever I want, a portfolio is worth much more than a degree to me. :heh:

And a portfolio of previous works is always better - I wish I kept a file of it when I was doing freelance in the early days of the Internet revolution (2000-2004).

Job Interviews
 

So, in a few hours I'll be going to a cocktail reception to meet some potential candidates that my firm is interviewing for our recruiting process tomorrow morning (yes, they'll be going through a series of interviews at 9AM on Saturday morning, I will attempt to not be hung-over while interviewing them).

So this made me think about starting a thread about "Interviews" both from the perspective of the person doing the "Interviewing" and the "Interviewees"

This isn't my first time interviewing candidates, and it definitely won't be the last. I'm waiting for a "book" of resumes to come in and am prepping some questions to ask these guys. These are the guys at the top 5% of their class and all young and eager -- ..and likely a mirror image of one another.

So, things I'll be looking for, but often times find it difficult to evaluate:
1) Technical Knowledge
2) Record of Achievement / Leadership
3) Social Fit (whether I would strangle them if we were working together for 18 hours a day 6-7 days a week and it was crunch-time at 3AM)
4) Raw Intellect

Your job is quite an interesting contrast from my own. While I'm not in charge of hiring, I do get to look over all the resumes and...well, basically, anyone who displays a high amount of technical knowledge, leadership qualities, or college education, gets theirs immediately filed away in the "NO" folder because we'd have to pay them too much.

Granted, it's a small business and the entry level positions we hire for don't really require a vast amount of knowledge, but, well, I'll just say there tend to be common patterns amongst personalities of people who have or haven't done certain things and we have employees who I'd say have a less than stellar work ethic.

It really isn't all that interesting. Perhaps it's me being jaded and all, but I find most work outside of rocket science, isn't "rocket science" -- it's all about embedded knowledge and experience. (PS: My firm hired a guy who worked at NASA for awhile.. he was literally a rocket scientist. He got bored quickly and left.)

I'm going to be interviewing probably ~10-12 candidates tomorrow morning (bright and early..) and they'll each be going through maybe 8-10 interviews one after another. We call it "Super Saturday" and it's more like a marathon than a sprint. This is the "second round" of interviews for them after the initial screen.

What I find challenging is -- these guys may as well come out of a cookie cutter most of the time -- everyone has great grades, been prepped by their university career centres, read the interview guides, etc.. It's a struggle to get a clue as to how they really are as a person, how they would be to work with and to see whether there's any unique qualities about them that makes them "more" than the other candidates..

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day (please don't look so shocked. Yes, I do have friends outside of AnimeSuki) and he was telling me he went for an interview some time ago. He handed the interviewer his resume, who looked at it only briefly, and then proceeded to shoot the breeze for the next hour or so talking about anything and everything.

He got the job (I forget what it was for). I guess the interviewer was looking for someone who knew how to talk to people.

Endless "Super Saturday" Soul

Did I just misread it or is each of them going through 8-10 interviews on a single day? This seems to be overkill in my oppinion.

I mean, if I had to go through more than 2 interviews at a company that wants to potentially hire me, I would certainly think twice to actually start working there.

A company with such overblown processes might be ineffective in other management areas too. And usually I don't like my work to be more concerned with processes than getting actual work done.

2 interviews should be sufficient to get at least a good idea about their soft skills. Regarding technical knowledge and raw Intellect one might as well trust their graduation results.

I suppose the best of them receive contracts with a probation period clause. But what I would like to know; Are they going to be hired as professionals or put under the companies umbrella as trainees to be further qualified for their later work (by means of vocational training/on-the-job training/higher education)?

^ They're going through 8-10 interviews of 30-minutes each on a Saturday morning (thus, "Super Saturday"). They've already made it past 2 first round interviews that were 1-1.5 hours long at this point already. These are candidates that have been selected from across the country.

I'll be the first to admit there's a bit of an endurance challenge in this structure. I'm not 100% sure I like it, but it's common in my industry.

One of the favorite interviewer questions is, where do you see yourself in 5 years?
If you want to catch them off-guard, be funny or friendly, it works a lot of the time.

Just for the record I am currently job hunting myself.

Being realistic and time wise is the best answer for this. If one is applying as a secretary then sees herself as a manager in five years... drop her!!!!:heh:

Job searching as well, but I've never even been to an interview (for a job, I've been to other things), and it scares me quite a bit. Mostly because I'm never comfortable in such situations, though I've learned to just relax, sit in a good pose, smile and keep "normal" eye contact.

Beyond that, my biggest problem is due to my brain and inability to make small talk. I've always been a "slow" person. If someone asks me a question that requires a somewhat thought-out answer... it can take me a few minutes to say something. Usually filled with "Uhm" and "Ahs". Imagine this through my school life and you see the problem. Extremely annoying and embarrassing. Questions like the above "After 5 years..." is a death sentence.

Random drop of thoughts, but I find the thread interesting so.

I will be going to an interview in 3 hours time straight out of a midnight shift. Being in the freelance line where everyone is trying to undercut you, it becomes a potential tug of war when it comes to the topic of salary.

I suck at small talk too. Unless it is about market forecast or technology. So far no interviewer has dared to ask me about politics.

Also job searching. Ah, post-college fun.

Not exactly a social butterfly, and gets hives every time someone say "networking" without the slightest hint of sarcasm, but what are you gonna do to make it in corporate America?

Well aside from saying shove it and go off to write romance novels while chilling out in Antigua.

So how do people like to answer this standard question? And, say, willx, if you ask this question, what do you expect out of the candidates and what do you hope to learn about them?

As I said above.. I expect an answer that is realistic and time bounded...

The 5 years question is a pretty simple question. Just tell them your life plan. Heck I can tell you my 10 year plan right now.

That works in entry level interviews for technical careers where one should be expected to have an understanding of the possibilities of development, skills that needed growing, and various paths to take. However, some interviewers ask this while interviewing for what basically are temporary positions. In such cases, I still don't think it's a very good idea to say "not here."

So what then?

Not many people have that lol.

No, I should change that: many people have plans. You'd be lucky if 1 in 10 actually follows through.

That is why you always have contingencies....a life plan should be made up of a few thousand smaller ones, so a 5 year plan should have like.......20-30 contingencies?

There are also alternatives to be taken into account; I have experience working in a few industries and have no medical problems other than dyslexia, which I don't disclose because the local employers treat it synonymously as low-IQ. Essentially, I can work anywhere so long it doesn't require a specialist license.

And there is also the art of faking facial expressions and eye movements, as well as mirroring postures or adapting them; it works more effectively here I guess because the HR of big companies tend not to be very smart and fresh out of uni.

I don't know if this will impress me or scares me... You're unpredictable.....:heh:

There is one rule when dealing with people for me, be honest, but be economical with the truth. Sometimes, appearing the idiot who blabs to much can lull people into a sense of security that they can cheat you - that is when they expose their flaws in their moral character.

More often than not, it is easy to read people's flaws from their responses to your apparent silliness. Those who join in and extrapolate or be tsundere about it tend to be the real honest and open-hearted ones, those who silently agree and nod are the dangerous ones, while those who act professional tend to be the submissive ones with chinks in their armour that are easily found.

Note that some people are fantastic actors, so the above may not work everytime. The professional part, IMO, tend to work most of the time - hence I have little or no respect for people who act and follow professional guidelines for the sake of "being professional", they aren't finding any way to improve on themselves or the system they work on.

This is an excellent system to look for wonderful people to hang out with; fantastic people discuss ideas, pragmatic people discuss events, average people discuss people. I like to hang out with people who have wild ideas or like to discuss the dynamics of events, but they tend to be rarer these days because most people I meet like to talk about others behind their backs.