job interviews

So I've had 5 job interviews in the last couple of weeks.

The first was with a small training consultancy company based just outside Guildford.  This proved to be a gigantic waste of my time.  And I don't just mean it wasn't the job for me, but they had me undertake all sorts of exercises and hoop-jumping crap.  These used up around two weekend's worth of my time.  When I eventually got to the interview they made it very plain that my "personality type" wouldn't fit.

I should perhaps explain they had me to do a Meyers-Briggs test.  These are mostly bullshit, but it does give some broad indicators - in particular, for me, they show I'm an introvert, which I am.  So at the interview she basically said that they have meetings where, in essence, they lose control and only the loudest people are heard.

Now obviously I wouldn't enjoy that anyway, but why ever would I want to work for a company that can't control meetings?  Especially a company that's supposedly doing management consulting for other companies.  I phoned the agent that had contacted me and withdrew as I was walking to my car.  I'd actually wanted to pull out as soon as the Myers Briggs test had been mentioned, but she encouraged me to stick with it.

The second interview was with a big defence company.  And it hadn't really been a good idea from the start, if I'm honest.  Unfortunately, the recruitment person did not appear to be entirely competent (you'll notice a bit of theme with this) - the initial job spec she sent me had the job down as being based in Guildford, with occasional days in London.

However, it turns out the job is entirely based in London with no time in Guildford at all!  She also booked the interview for me for 4:30PM, but booked it with them for 4PM, so when I turned up they thought I was half an hour late!  I'm guessing she booked the extra half hour so that they could prep, but didn't communicate properly with either of us - particularly since one of the interviewers had to go by 5PM, so they left half way through.

To some extent, this was all beside the point - I went to the interview seeking to be convinced that it was a good enough job for me to put aside my desire not to work in London, and I was not convinced.  I actually closely monitored the journey time in particular, and if I was to take the job I would be spending 4 hours each day commuting.  The problem is this line - it's a very slow service (1 hour 10 mins) and only has two trains an hour - and I could move, but it's always going to be horribly busy commuter trains.

Since the interview I've heard jack shit, despite chasing.  As noted, I'm not really interested anyway, but it's just another example of how badly all these recruitment people behave.  I had thought maybe it was just the agencies, but this was an actual employee of the company, and she's acted just as poorly.

The third interview was bordering on a farce.

It was with a company that is quite big and well known for one thing, but this was for a different, much smaller, division.  It's quite engineering focused; however, I have to confess I'm not sure it is really that interesting to me.  Not that I really had the chance to investigate - the agency they were using was shocking: terrible communication and the agent didn't seem to have any common sense.

To give you an example, she fixed up the interview but only told me the location/gave me directions on the day of the interview.  Now to be fair, the interviewer messed things about no end - it went from a face-to-face meeting to a telephone interview, back to a face-to-face, then moved from daytime to evening - but the agent did not help matters.  I didn't even know it was this particular other division until a good way into the process.

The interview itself was also a bit of a mess - because it was in the evening and I had to go up the motorway I basically rushed there and that put me in a bit of a manic frame of mind, particularly as I'd had a coffee quite late in the day and it had been a busy day at work.  I rabbited on like I was on speed :/

On this one I've also heard jack shit - hmm, one of those patterns, perhaps?

I'll continue this later, I think - the other two interviews were after a gap anyway.