Soldato
DELETED_247769
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I think part of the issue is that the people who's day job is focussing on recruitment (recruiters and HR) understandably don't have the domain experience to come up with knowledge checks. The people that do, hiring managers and the like, are often really busy with other stuff and recruitment is just something they need to shoe-horn into their diary somehow. So there's a capacity imbalance in terms of formulating generic 'HRy' questions versus more technical/focussed questions.
True. I've had all sorts in that respect from 1 to 1 with HR type through to almost a panel of HR, line manager and specialisation manager (i.e. IT).
In that respect also interesting I don't think I've ever had an interview with a manager where they've been organised and working to a steady pace - it has either been rushing in disorganised and obviously distracted by other business/constantly interrupted or the other extreme of laid back and using the interview to sit back and burn as much time as possible.
The OP has described how about 95% of all PMs I have worked with come across. lol
I personally find PMs in and around IT roles the most overpaid bunch of people I have ever had the misfortune to work with. Obviously not all are incompetent, overpaid fools. It just seems that a large proportion are. I guess it is one of those professions that is something that can be blagged, since you are basically just getting other people to do the work, and can blag swagger/confidence and organisation. I have recruited for technical roles where it is much easier to see someone blagging it during the interview.
Having said all that... I once got a job which I was also shocked by, in that I felt under qualified for it. A year later I was being offered promotion. Sometimes you are your own hurdle as you value yourself too low and lack confidence until you try and have that real pressure. Some do really well under pressure. If I was OP I would try it and take it seriously. You are unlikely to embarrass yourself immediately and it would be good experience.
I personally find PMs in and around IT roles the most overpaid bunch of people I have ever had the misfortune to work with. Obviously not all are incompetent, overpaid fools. It just seems that a large proportion are. I guess it is one of those professions that is something that can be blagged, since you are basically just getting other people to do the work, and can blag swagger/confidence and organisation. I have recruited for technical roles where it is much easier to see someone blagging it during the interview.
Having said all that... I once got a job which I was also shocked by, in that I felt under qualified for it. A year later I was being offered promotion. Sometimes you are your own hurdle as you value yourself too low and lack confidence until you try and have that real pressure. Some do really well under pressure. If I was OP I would try it and take it seriously. You are unlikely to embarrass yourself immediately and it would be good experience.
I've generally found the opposite is the case re: the written tests etc... they tend to be at the earliest stage so they don't need to waste time interviewing people who've simply not got the skillset or aptitude they're after.
At a tech firm, I worked at they had a standard aptitude type test - again IQ style thing which they'd use to filter people, depending on role - they'd get everyone to sit it but wouldn't care so much if they were being recruited for reception - on the other hand, some junior guy (was only 18 or 19) hired in the US for an admin role did well on it and got put on the grad scheme instead.
One options market maker as a first-round had a bunch of us turn up and essentially sit something like an IQ test and a simple maths test but under time pressure - then the next couple of rounds were more tests too. Even in the interview, they'd be in the middle of talking to you then suddenly go "whats 37 * 243" and expect an answer back within around 15 seconds.
I've had a bank hand me a random one which wasn't an IQ/aptitude type one but was more of a general knowledge quiz type thing - a bit on SQL, a bit of coding (though could write in pseudo-code), some finance questions etc..
Other places where a role might have a lot of coding you might get say an online (remote) hacker rank type assessment as an initial screen then a take-home project, then if you pass you get invited in and have to solve some similar problems in house too (so waste of time for anyone to try to cheat the initial stages).
The big management consultancies are very big on tests too - they have some quite specific ones - a fried of mine went for a quant/data science role at one but they still require those hires to pass their business case tests, they got an employee to mentor him a bit as he didn't have a business/MBA type background - apparently the business school types, especially in the US, actually study for these sorts of interview tests for months.
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It has been by far the exception, so not many times, anywhere has done that - there may be some cases where it was the earliest stage and I've just forgotten as it has been awhile.
By far most jobs I've interviewed for and/or been accepted for don't seem to have done any checking of either my qualifications or references.
I guess that latter bit varies by industry and role, the testing at the end seems a bit backwards/badly thought out by those employers though - I mean at entry-level it just wouldn't be possible for some employers to assess as many candidates if they didn't have the testing upfront, you'd have to filter out more candidates via their cv or application alone. For experienced hires you're getting far fewer and usually pre-screened by a recruiter but still don't really want to waste too much time with the chancers either.
Soldato
This is why you should always have an X interview all candidates for another X role.
This was approx 2003-2006 so I might be getting things mixed up now. But IIRC it was usually short phone interview with either HR or the recruiter then on to a sit down interview with HR followed by a interview with the relevant department with a (usually multiple choice) written test at the end. Then sometimes a final interview (assumedly if it came down to 1 of a small number of good candidates).
Had a great one back then - applied for a position as part of a team doing a digitalisation update for TFL, 3 months after going through a whole process and team building exercises, with all the new people I'd supposedly be working with, with the recruitment agency which all seemed positive initially they got back to me saying it was all going ahead. Cue nothing for weeks while whatever manager was on holiday or working on another project blah, blah. Then it was "don't have the budget this financial year but definitely next year" blah blah - I'd already given up on the job long before that point anyhow. 2-3 years later when I was working a job 150 miles away got the phone call "great news we've got you a start date". I just LOL'd and put the phone down.
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PM here. You just have to throw yourself balls deep into the details. My project spec docs are 1600 pages with esoteric references to standards I've not heard of. I don't think anyone has but they certainly all pretend to.
I started a new role a few weeks ago and the first two weeks was tough. But it's starting to make sense now. Just hang in there.
I started a new role a few weeks ago and the first two weeks was tough. But it's starting to make sense now. Just hang in there.
We changed our recruitment process due to this. Standard HR pattern was Phone Interview, F2F Interview, Online test, F2F Interview 2. But we had quite a few candidates who we interviewed and then scored really quite bad on the test, so badly that it would be too risky to take them on. In fact we had such ridiculously low scores (4th percentile for someone who had previously worked several years at a Big 4 consultancy!?!) that I wondered if there was a bug in the system and asked HR to let me retake the test. Anyway point being it was a waste of time doing F2F interviews with people we realistically couldn't hire if they flunked the test. So I changed the order for my hires and requested they do the online test before the first F2F interview.
Associate
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- 20 Sep 2020
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Just be like Tom hanks in big, ‘ummm I don’t get it’
Makes sense.
My brother has been recruiting recently - they've had dozens of people who claim previous experience in the role but then can't even explain the basic principles but say stuff like "it would come back to me if I was doing the job". Also the recruitment agency forwarded my brother's old CV to his boss for the job he was conducting interviews for LOL along with a few edits he definitely hadn't done.
Ah yikes, some recruiters do sadly seem to do that. I like to send my CV in PDF format just in case as they mostly won't be able to edit it. Though generally they don't like that as even the more legit ones tend to want to remove stuff like contact details etc..
They've been pulling these stunts before GDPR existed though, I don't think I've ever put DOB on a CV, contact details being removed is more of a (legit) business reason than a legal one AFAIK. Its more the other stuff that is an issue, someone being sneaky and throwing in some keywords relating to the role or making other edits etc..
Yeah stuff like removing contact details has been going on forever and sort of legit.
In this case they'd got creative with editing his CV to better suit the role (which does happen) but had exaggerated his (as of then) credentials to look like he was qualified for the role which was at best misleading if not dishonest. (He has subsequently qualified for the role and moved on to the next level but that is beside the point).
In this case they'd got creative with editing his CV to better suit the role (which does happen) but had exaggerated his (as of then) credentials to look like he was qualified for the role which was at best misleading if not dishonest. (He has subsequently qualified for the role and moved on to the next level but that is beside the point).
Associate
Don't do this. Follow the sensible advice offered by many others in this thread. You won't regret it.
Permabanned
Recruiters generally reformat to their own branded template CV which their recruitment software will generate.