Declined interview after accepting

Bassmansam

Bassmansam

Bassmansam

Soldato
Joined
22 Nov 2007
Posts
4,235
Hi All

Feel a bit crappy this morning. I had an interview for an MIS analyst job via teams last week which went well and was scheduled to have a second in person interview today at 10am.

On Friday i got a call from the recruiter with an update saying that the hiring manager would be sending me an excel based task to complete over the weekend. I had a busy weekend planned so i was bit worried about what this was task was. I received an email with the task at 11pm on Friday, it was only on Sunday that I got a chance to sit down and have a go at it(out all day Sat).

Theres a bit more to to it than in my example so i managed to get about 60% done then I just couldn't figure out the rest(see sheet). Last night i was trying to figure it out but no joy and i went to bed frustrated. I woke up at about 2am after a few hours sleep just trying to think of solutions, I then started to think this just isn't worth it, it is 1.5k less pay than my current job, the only reason I was interested is because its closer to home so my mind was made up at that point. I sent an email this morning saying I was no longer interested. The recruiter called and said he was dissapointed ect which I can understand, I told him that I felt i coudln't give a good account of myself because I didnt complete the task fully + lack of sleep I just thought it would be a disaster.

I would say I have intermediate excel skills. I know how VLOOKUPS, some formulas like IF, SUMIFS, RIGHT , LEFT , MONTH to name a few.
The task involved reconciling two sheet, one with predicted earnings and one with the earnings received so far. I've uploaded a simplified version of the sheet. I've described what I got stuck with on the sheet itself.

I took today as annual leave aswell and told my boss i was going for a filling, i don't know whats worse, the feeling of failing this or the thought of having a filling. Excel file below if anyone wants to help out.



https://easyupload.io/nz6wm9
 
dLockers said:
:cry::cry:

Are you genuinely asking us to complete your interview assignment?
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Well not entirely, I'm asking if theres formula i could have used or is it something a bit more advanced like VBA. Not that it matters now as i'm obviously not getting the job, but i'd like to know what i should have done. You know, like when some one asks for help on stackover flow or in our own programming subforum here.
 
GhostWKD said:
Intrigued so took a very quick look, a nested if statement would do the job (albeit not sure if theres a cleaner way maybe). It's a solution of how you'd append on the £1k at the end also; essentially if that month is > course finish then 0, if it's = course finish month then monthly payment plus £1k, if it's < course finish then monthly payment
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Yeah i guess thats it but the column headings don't have a date in them thats why thought maybe vba has to be used so you can have assign a date to those columns if that makes sense.
 
Martynt74 said:
You'd have 2 options

1- Insert a row above with a date which corresponds to the column heading. This way the same formula can just be dragged along
2- Adjust the formula in each column so the one in the August column would say "31/08/21", then the formula in the September column would say "30/09/21"
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Thank you, I think I would have probably opted for option 1. I think i just panicked near the end of the evening as it was getting late and then started wondering if this is something they wanted done in VBA or just using normal formulas. Onwards and upwards..

@GhostWKD thanks also
 
The recruiter just called me and said the other candidate also had trouble with the task and cancelled his/her interview. He then asked if i would still be interested if an alternate task could be given. I gotta admit after realising what the solution is I feel pretty embarrassed but I probably would accept another go as it is so much closer to home as opposed to my current 90min commute each 3x a week.
 
I may be wring but i think part of the problem is they advertised this role as 20-25k. Is that normal for a job where they expect you to know vlookup , if , nested formulas and vba?

I have worked in a couple of university student records roles and we pretty much only used vlookup and in that job i was on 26k. Even my current MI role is 26.5 and i wasn’t expected to know any of the stuff listed above as they have taught me a lot of formulas i didn’t know and SQL.
 
I have pretty much managed to complete the original task now thanks to the suggestions in here but i wanted to ask what you guys think about circular references.

I was having trouble getting a formula to work until google told me i could turn a setting on that allowed these and now the formula works but why isn’t it on by default? The formula hust checks if the monthly payments + plus money received in the prev year don’t go over the total cost of the course.
 
Interview has been rescheduled for Friday morning. This time it is in their office that is about 2 miles from my house, their main office is near London Bridge.

I am the only candidate so its only mine to lose now. 4 days a week wfh as-well so that would be great. It is a bizarre situation though to be given a second chance, they must have really liked me from the first interview.
 
@Diddums i have certainly learnt a lot about nested formulas over the past couple of days, i do enjoy this kind of challenge if it can take a while to get my head around it. I’ll have a better idea after the interview, if i have a bad feeling like comparable to the situation you mentioned i can always reject it.

cheers
 
dowie said:
Yeah but they made him aware of it before then, it's not like the 11pm e-mail was out of the blue.

Just because the e-mail arrives 11pm doesn't mean you need to start on it then - he knew it was going to be sent for him for that weekend already, so long as he has it in time to be able to work on it on Saturday/Sunday then why is that a problem? Doesn't matter if it arrived 3am Saturday morning (the manager got home and realised he'd forgotten to send it perhaps) as long as he has it available to him that weekend.



What sort of roles were you going for?
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The interview date was confirmed last Friday and i was told at about 5:30 that day that there would be a task to do, I was already on my way out at the time of the call to inform me of this. My boss had a look at the task today and gave me some pointers so I think I'm on the right track now. Going to wake up early and finish it off(interview is at 10am).
 
dowie said:
Yup, exactly, so it didn't come out of the blue via an e-mail at 11pm (which is what people seemed to be taking issue with), you were called (presumably by the recruiter right?) and really should have just pushed back and said you weren't free to do a take-home exercise that weekend.
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Well i could have pushed back and they could have said fine we'll go with x other person. I don't know tbh, this is the first job I have gone for thats had a recruiter involve. I will keep that in mind for future apps though, cheers.
 
***update***
I got the job. They said my presentation had gone into a lot of detail and were impressed ect. No more 90 minute commutes to London for me thank god. Also i have gained the title of analyst instead of admin which is a nice bonus.
 
dowie said:
Congrats! :) Did you ask them to raise the offer a bit so you’re not taking a pay cut?
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I did ask but it was a no unfortunately. But when i weigh it up i'll only have to travel into London once a week or other office 2 miles from home. I'll be saving a fair bit of money and plus the travel time.
 
EVH said:
Don't worry... I was rejected for a job after passing 5 interviews, because the organisation wanted to change the job spec at the last moment and I didn't qualify.

I argued that I fully met their original requirements and it was unprofessional to change it this late in to the game. The organisation insisted on advertising at a £5k higher salary (to attract a candidate with that level of qual), so I told the recruitment agency that approached me that I was ****** off. After about 3 weeks of radio silence I had a call to get offered the same job... weird :p

Anyway, congratulations. To be honest with you... if I knew I was the only candidate at that salary I'd have pushed for that extra £1.5k... are they really going to quibble over paying you an extra £29 a week gross pay?
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That is ridiculous, glad you got offered the job in the end!

They wouldn't budge on the salary but when i think about not having do a door to door commute of 90mins 3x a week that is enough for me!
 
Starting the job on Monday, looking forward to it. Today by courier i received a HP laptop with bag, samsung 22” screen and a motorola g50.

Feel much more valued as an employee already, my last job i used my own pc, installed teams/ 8x8 voip software for calls on my personal phone. Oh and we used remote server so when there were more than 20 people using it, it got reallt laggy. Assuming this laptop will have a vpn but will have to wait for them to call me on monday with the password to find out.
 
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