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Get ready for a thrilling ride with Carla Jenkins, a powerhouse who’s conquered both government and private sectors! Join us on today’s podcast as she spills the beans on the nail-biting reality of the hiring environment that’s got everyone on edge. Don’t miss this heart-pounding discussion!
Carla Jenkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlarjenkins/
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Alternate Titles For The Algorithm:
The Jobpocalypse: Surviving the Employment Wasteland
The Hiring Hunger Games: A Battle for Job Survival
Unemployment Unleashed: Stories from the Trenches
The Great Job Desert: Searching for Oasis in the Workforce
Job Market Mayhem: Tales of Terrifying Turmoil
The Interview Inferno: Hot-Seat Stories that Sizzle
Job Climate Jaws: Will You Be the Next Victim?
Scary Job Chronicles: The Employment Twilight Zone
The Perfect Storm: Navigating the Chaotic Job Market
Interview Nightmares: Face Your Fears in the Hot Seat
The Bermuda Triangle of Employment: Lost in the Job Crisis
Job Market Zombies: Resurrecting Careers in a Dying World
Employment Exorcism: Banishing the Job Market Demons
The Workforce Tsunami: Tales of Drowning in the Job Flood
Unleashing the Kraken: Confronting the Job Market Monster
Show Notes
[00:00:01.000]
Speaker 2: Hey, you all. This is your host, Elyse Robinson with Nobody Wants to Work No podcast. I hope these stories will inspire you to switch careers. I was an auditor in my past life and now I’m in tech and let’s get to it.
[00:00:20.200]
Speaker 1: We are Switch into Tech. Tech resources to accelerate your career in information technology. Monthly classes on tech topics. We are off for free or discounted exam vouches, scholarships, free Udemy courses, free events, free boot camps, and more. You can find us at www.switchinto tech.
[00:00:42.760]
Speaker 2: Org. Hey, you all. This is Elyse Robinson with Nobody Wants to Work their Podcast. Today we have Karla and she’s going to tell us about her interview horror story. I’m excited to have her because we chat off and on every now and then. But go ahead, Karla, introduction.
[00:01:03.750]
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for interviewing me and having me on. My name is Karla R. Jenkins. I am a certified in IT, cloud computing and project management. I have 15 years of experience in both the public and private sector. I started out in IT, actually in high school through programming. Then I got into SaaS, which is Statistical Analysis Software in graduate school. I leveraged that skill set to work eight years with the federal government. I received my project management professional certification and transitioned to the private sector, where I am currently. I do a lot of work in education technology, so I help people get certifications, but I also do a lot of cloud computing and cloud migration. Thank you for having me on here.
[00:01:51.930]
Speaker 2: Definitely. I didn’t know you was an ex fed. I’m an ex fed too.
[00:01:57.740]
Speaker 1: Yeah.
[00:01:58.340]
Speaker 2: Go ahead and I mean, let’s get right on it, too. Tell us about the horror story.
[00:02:03.320]
Speaker 1: Sure. One of the interview horror stories I had was I was interviewing at a cloud company, and I went through all of the interviews. The first round, I talked to the person, made it to the second round, did my presentation, went to the third round with the hiring manager, went to the third round. I was supposed to get interview prep.
[00:02:30.120]
Speaker 2: And.
[00:02:30.480]
Speaker 1: I didn’t get interview prep, so I didn’t do well on the final leg. I also didn’t know why I got two people of the five people interview in round three that were nowhere connected to what I would be potentially doing or that division of the company. I didn’t get the position, but the HR person had the goal to tell me he didn’t schedule my interview prep because he just started there, but I needed a six month cool down period. I was like, What? I was amazed that that happened simply because it was his fault and he tried to throw it on me. That was just amazing. Then I have a second one with a different cloud provider and I was going for a product manager position. They got in contact with me. I interviewed for the position, and it was very different than the other providers. They had me do things that weren’t specifically related to the interview. I had to do these different types of brain teasers, which didn’t make sense to me on why I would be doing it because it was irrelevant to the job. I remember I had to do something that was drone related or something, but I wasn’t dealing with drones, artificial intelligence, or any of that.
[00:03:58.230]
Speaker 1: I was actually doing product manager position for the particular cloud. They came back and said that, Once again, it’s always this cool down period that I need this. I was like, I’m not going to do this anymore. Then another opportunity presented itself the public sector because I have federal background. I also work as an economist, and that on Office of Personal Management, which is the federal government’s HR, says that economist is the mission critical job. That means that’s one of the most important jobs that the government is sourcing for. I work in the federal government as an actual economist, so I interview for them. The person comes back, the recruiter comes back and tells me that the person who was going for the cloud public sector job said that he didn’t think I was a good fit. I was like, Okay, even though the federal government said I was a great fit, and that’s exactly what they’re looking for. Those are three of my interview horror stories here that I have just in just with cloud. They always want to say they can’t find anybody, which is untrue. They always say that you need to be prepared.
[00:05:19.620]
Speaker 1: They always say you need to read the job description and everything. But here we are in three different instances. It was either they weren’t prepared for HR, or they give you stuff that was irrelevant, or they just say, Okay, well, we don’t need you, which was weird because they’re working with the government.
[00:05:43.150]
Speaker 2: Definitely. I interviewed at Microsoft for a product manager position, and he had me basically design a thermostat. And mind you, at that point, I had been gone out of the US for almost six years. I was like, I totally remember what a thermostat looks like. People don’t understand that having central heating and air is a luxury. And in most countries, you don’t have that. So there’s no thermostat. If you have AC, you might have something on the wall that’s just an AC that blows out in one room. It’s supposed to cool your whole house or apartment. And I was like, I don’t remember even what a thermostat looks like. And when I came back to the state, I controlled everything from my phone, so I really wasn’t fooling with a thermostat anyways. Of course, I failed because I’m like, all the things, you’re going to give me one where I’m like, I don’t even have experience with it. I haven’t had any recent experience with it. I’m like, I’ve been gone so long, I don’t remember what a thermostat even, shoot, does. So I get you on a product manager one. And yeah, they’ll lie and say there’s shortages and they need these positions and stuff.
[00:07:12.620]
Speaker 2: But we are here floating in the wind, so they must not need people that bad.
[00:07:20.580]
Speaker 2: I’ll have to do my own another interview. Well, I didn’t even get an interview, but I’ll save that one for another day. You probably see my post on it. But that one was really crazy because.
[00:07:33.820]
Speaker 1: I’m the only.
[00:07:35.410]
Speaker 2: Person on this Earth that could fit it. That was the crazy part. I was like, legit, the only person. They still were like, no.
[00:07:47.530]
Speaker 1: Because they have in mind who and what they want to hire. I have some more. Speaking of what you just said, how about this? I had situations where I would apply for a position, the applicant tracking system would kick it out. Then I got a phone call later today about the position. I was like, Oh, well, I was like, Thank you very much. I forwarded the client email and everything. I had another situation where I was interviewing for a cloud admin position. The description said cloud admin. I get in the interview and they were like, Can you do cloud engineer? I was like, Well, those are two different positions. He asked me to describe them. I was like, Well, cloud administrator is identity access management. It’s mostly regarding high availability. You want to make sure people have permission to deal with these privileges. Cloud engineering is mostly with the network, making sure that everything is up. Also, not just high availability, but also fault tolerance and can give a redundancy in case, say, an availability zone or a region fails. It was just weird that they think that they’ll try to put… I’m noticing they’re trying to put two things together a lot of times for these positions, and they sometimes don’t overlap, and they expect you to be able to do that because an administrator skill set is different than the cloud engineer skill set, too.
[00:09:20.020]
Speaker 1: I had an interview like that. Then another interview that I had for a position was when I interviewed for… I actually interviewed for another cloud. Went through the interview, had a panel interview. Immediately, I actually had the cloud certification. It’s not one of the big ones, but I managed to get one of the certifications in that I talked to the person, they ghosted me. Then it was like months later, they came back and it was like, Oh, well, we have a new record. We’ve been thinking about you and everything. No, they didn’t. They probably hired that other person fired and then wouldn’t have rolled back to you and think that you’re still available for those opportunities. I never really go back to that because this is the thing. People don’t understand it. It’s not just cloud. What it is is this. If you didn’t get accepted for the position, they come back for the same thing, they most likely have something in HR for you saying, Okay, this person wasn’t good enough for this job. If you accept the position and it may go left for something, then they already have a file on you saying, Well, you weren’t considered based on this, and that’s also what they’re going for.
[00:10:38.880]
Speaker 1: That’s something that people also need to watch out and look for also.
[00:10:45.200]
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never thought about that. Because my whole thing is if you were good because… Let me back it up. There was a Twitter post the other day that I was going through, and they were like, Culture Fit or Skills, which one would you rather hire for? It was a couple of hundred responses and most of them were saying Culture Fit, and they can train for skills. My thing is, if you pass the Culture Fit, why would you just let that person go? You should try to find them something else in the company. But these companies just waste their time and waste your time. They could have found another position for you if you were this so called Culture Fit or whatever. That’s one thing I don’t understand. I will say that supposedly that was how Microsoft kicked it to me was that if this wasn’t the right one, they would find another one for me. But I can’t say that there’s been other companies that have ever kicked it to me that way. I’ve talked to all of them. Every company, probably all of the Fortune 500 at this point. So yeah, no, it’s crazy to.
[00:12:05.880]
Speaker 1: Me that.
[00:12:06.370]
Speaker 2: Leave you out there.
[00:12:08.960]
Speaker 1: Right. It definitely is a cultural thing. And I could definitively say that. And I’m glad you brought this up because I learned actually through Microsoft when the pandemic first started in 2020, and they were doing the monthly cloud skills challenges, and you finish the learning and you get a free all purpose voucher, that’s when I learned I had the background to do the math background to do artificial intelligence machine learning. I got my AI 100, then I got the AI 100. I’m a certified artificial intelligence engineer. I know for a fact that when they do stuff or keywords, they are only looking for a specific group of people or specific stuff. What I always do is I look at the makeup of people when they have all their employees on LinkedIn, I do look at that because you want to know where they’re putting people and what their backgrounds are. I never forget it was a leading artificial intelligence, machine learning. It was Silicon Valley and everything. I never forget that I just got my AI 100. The new one is AI 102. I got that in June of 2021. No lie, within I applied for this position.
[00:13:44.100]
Speaker 1: A week later, some recruiter reached out to me and it was Silicon Valley thing. It did prove to me that they are looking for certain people, certain backgrounds, certain things. Even though people are talking about non tech and the Scrum master and the project manager and in the delivery and the designer and all that. If you don’t have that hard math background or computer science, science technology engineer, mathematics, I think that’s really what they were looking for. I think that that’s what they’re really looking for, for cultural fit and everything. They should just come out and say, Okay, we’re going back to the original IT, the original science, technology, and engineering, because they put out there that they were going to take on more positions, more people from different walks of life. Then you turn around and that wasn’t the case. But I had that happen to me, too, where you’re getting invites from places and people just based on what your background is. Don’t sleep on LinkedIn. They do go and look at it. They go and find the connections and everything.
[00:15:01.180]
Speaker 2: Yeah. See, the thing is, skills is one thing and culture is another. I think I don’t fit because regardless of being a woman and race, I have an accounting background. Therefore, I’m very comfortable in front of people doing presentations and doing things like this. And then people are just sitting there in the interview and they’re just I call them a bump on a log and it’s like, Well, I know I’m not getting this because I’m animated, smiley. Even when I was at Microsoft and stuff, my mentor was a computer science… No, he was a math major and stuff. And so I’d be like, Good morning. And he’d be like, Oh, my God. But I can do tech stuff, too. I have the tech brain. I love math. I love chemistry and physics and stuff like that. So it’s very rough for me because I’m perfectly capable of sitting in the corner programming for hours on end. I create my own stuff. But being in these positions, like, hell no. I just got an interview earlier and they were just sitting there like, okay.
[00:16:40.330]
Speaker 1: I don’t want you bad ones. I noticed that when I started working as an economist, I had all those people just like that. They were all very analytical people. I realized that I had to improve my communication skills significantly because I didn’t want to be those people who were insanely brilliant but didn’t know how to hold a conversation, didn’t know how to communicate with non tech people. You have to be able to do that. When you do, they’ll put in the job interview that you need to have soft skills, you need to communicate, you need to do all that. But then we get there, all of those people, they just stick behind their code and all of that other stuff, but not necessarily being able to carry a conversation and talk to people outside of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
[00:17:30.630]
Speaker 2: Definitely. That’s what I’m finding. I’m like, do I stick with it? Do I just go do something else? Go back to accounting, audit, risk? What do I do? Because I’m in a master’s program for data science because I’ve always loved math. I love programming, statistics. Audit is heavy statistics, but I’m just like, am I wasting my time? Because I’m going on these on these interviews and stuff and give my math and data science. And I’m just like, am I wasting my time? Because I don’t fit the mold. So like I’m saying, regardless of being a woman or race, it’s like, okay, I’ve always been very forward and animated. I like to smile. I don’t sit there like a bump on a log. I do things like this, presentations and stuff, and they’re like, what do we do with you? So yeah, I don’t know. But I don’t know, maybe the feds will take me back.
[00:18:41.310]
Speaker 1: Have you thought about doing something like QuickBooks or any type of accounting, sales?
[00:18:50.270]
Speaker 2: I hate accounting. I hate accounting. Okay.
[00:18:53.710]
Speaker 1: So have you thought about doing anything like Power BI? Well, Power BI is Microsoft. Anything like… What type of data science? You want to do Python? You want to do R?
[00:19:04.870]
Speaker 2: I.
[00:19:05.150]
Speaker 1: Don’t.
[00:19:06.100]
Speaker 2: Know. I don’t know if this is classified as machine learning, but I built a Twitter bot and a LinkedIn bot, and it basically scrapes data for me and helps with my business. Those are the type of things I want to do, like analyzing statistics and things like that. I don’t know. There’s a.
[00:19:29.050]
Speaker 1: Lot of positions, but you can also look at sports, the different sports. They’re big with statistics. Those are 32 teams you can go to. Nba, LeBron, the scoring record. They’re pumping out statistics daily with that.
[00:19:49.760]
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a video on my program where it was a lady and she worked for I think it was the NBA, literally the NBA and she did their statistics and data science for them and stuff.
[00:20:04.480]
Speaker 1: True. Yeah.
[00:20:06.770]
Speaker 2: Yeah. There’s lots of opportunity. It’s just…
[00:20:12.530]
Speaker 1: But those would be great because sports people like people who have personality. They actually call them personality. So you would fit in there because you would have the balance of the statistics with the math, the Major League baseball. Ncaa is doing that. They would need people right now as of this recording is February, so they would need people in statistical March Madness. They’re probably hiring for that. It’s a lot of, I think, sports because you have to be a personality. You have to be vibrant. That would be a great opportunity.
[00:20:46.590]
Speaker 2: For you. I have to say the lady that was in the video, I could tell she was one of those people.
[00:20:52.750]
Speaker 1: She had.
[00:20:54.190]
Speaker 2: To force it out. She was probably like, Oh, she probably had to mentally prepare for this for the interview because she was one of those people. But like I’m saying, of course, there’s lots of opportunity. I see the positions, it’s just am I going to be the culture fit? You know what I’m saying? Just like there’s tons of opportunity, supposedly in cloud, but yet there aren’t. What is it? Which is it? And to me, cloud is not even… Especially the stuff I was doing at Microsoft, it was consulting. So you had to be able to talk to people and have customer service and stuff like that. And it wasn’t… I don’t want to say it wasn’t technical because it was very technical, but it’s consulting, so therefore you have to have a certain type of personality for it. Some of my coworkers were those people, but some of them weren’t. There’s roles for that, but who hiring?
[00:22:05.760]
Speaker 1: For data science, what would be your perfect opportunity? I don’t know.
[00:22:14.480]
Speaker 2: You know what? I probably want to be on some classified secret stuff again. I really did enjoy that being an auditor and doing stuff like that. I got to do stuff that most people would never do. I really did enjoy that. But I don’t know if I want to do it on a military base again. That’s a whole different ball game.
[00:22:43.120]
Speaker 1: Well, instead of just accounting off, they have data integrity audits. They have all type of audits. So yeah, you would have a lot, especially when people are talking about data collection, privacy, and things like that. There’s a lot of auditing that would go regarding that. T hat’s very data specific and data intensive. But yeah, I like data too. It came out of my being in statistics and just going from statistics to data scientists. One of the things that I’ve been doing is because I started off in statistics and now I’m seeing so much of what you’re doing, whether it’s anomaly detection with threat intelligence, data, business. There’s so many fields that are based on statistics. I often feel like, okay, let’s just see what angle I want to go to within this field because one of the things is they have their own stuff, they have their own certifications and everything. The one thing I didn’t want to do is get all of these… When you know and you have the background for so much stuff, it would give the appearance of, Oh, she’s just doing this, this, this. But no, when you actually have the background, like I said earlier in the interview about artificial intelligence, I had the calculus 1, 2, 3 in linear algebra and calculus based that.
[00:24:10.190]
Speaker 1: When you have linear algebra and a lot of that was based on that classification, matrices and everything, then it’s like, okay, you have to just say, Okay, what direction do you want to put it? Because when you have the math background, it gets so fast. T hat’s very important because they’ll say that they want to have a journalist and train you and all that. But then when you get there, it’s something completely different. I feel that sometimes when it comes to the interview, they want to find things to disqualify you. T hat’s what they would want to do it on.
[00:24:47.500]
Speaker 2: You read about that. I don’t know because I’m sitting here like, should I keep at it? I don’t know. I applied for some audit positions. It was like, yeah, your audit experience is really old. I’m like, but I went to school for it. You just think it just disappeared out of my brain? Yes. you stuck in a rock and a hard place no matter what.
[00:25:18.280]
Speaker 1: I had something that I interviewed for.
[00:25:21.640]
Speaker 2: But.
[00:25:23.940]
Speaker 1: That’s important. It’s like, especially when something is specialized like accounting, everyone doesn’t get into accounting. That’s a specialized profession. Once you get in it, you know what you’re doing. It’s still generally acceptable accounting principle. That hasn’t changed in a long time. I was confused as to why she thought it was, when you probably still had to fit the 150 hours and you still had to do the gap. I know that and I’m not even an accountant.
[00:25:56.010]
Speaker 2: I know that. Exactly. T hat’s one thing I tell people. Matter of fact, there was a high school student and I talked to them. I talked to them for about two or three hours because they were like, They want to go to tech or accounting. And I was like, The one thing about audit is it hasn’t changed probably since the freaking beginning of time. One plus one is not equal to, controls is one thing, risk is another. Statistics and stuff like that. And the difference between that and tech is tech changes every second of every day. You’re constantly learning, so you have to figure out which one you think you’re going to be able to handle. But yeah, he was like, Yeah, your experience is old. And I’m like, Well, controls don’t change. Statistics don’t change. 1 plus 1 equals 2 doesn’t change. Like you said, the audit equation gap.
[00:26:58.350]
Speaker 1: It does change. doesn’t change. And then also, another thing is I had someone, so I was interviewing for a position in out of nowhere, and this was no one, once again, the job description is to match it, what they say, I don’t know where it was. Well, do you have this type of agile experience? So I was looking at that, no one doesn’t say it. I said, well, yeah, I have it. I had an inspired certification based on that was a year ago, but six months ago because I didn’t renew it. I could pay the money to renew it, but I gave them a copy of it. I did this, moved on to the interview. But that’s another thing regarding these job descriptions. You’ll submit it and rather than cancel it because the requirement changed, either they get the recruiter to ask you, do you have additional experience or something that isn’t on there? Or when you get to the interview, it’s completely different than what you applied for. I had that experience, too, which was like, so now it’s like, even if you do get the position, how do you know when you sit there on day one it won’t change again?
[00:28:17.550]
Speaker 2: It’s going to change.
[00:28:20.640]
Speaker 1: It’s.
[00:28:22.000]
Speaker 2: Going to change most definitely. I’ve had quite a few like that. Like, vmware got me like that because I’m like, I’ve never touched BMW before in my life. I understand the concept of it. But they had me sit through a whole interview and he was like, Yeah, but you don’t have BMW experience. I’m like, Well, why am I here? A whole hour gone. I talked to another guy and he was like, Well, you don’t have this experience. I have a technical grid on my resume. They list it there. He was like, Well, you can train on it. I typed in the technology. It’s a very specific technology. They were going like 50 jobs for it. I’m going to spend six weeks training on this and I still ain’t going to get the job, though. Make it make sense. They really got the pocket with this stuff.
[00:29:22.320]
Speaker 1: Right. Then they have the nerve that they asked for something that’s so specific. Also, what’s another thing? We got to go back to artificial intelligence. Now, they just started getting artificial intelligence certification about two, three years ago. Why did job description ask you for five to seven years? Now, you all know if you say five to seven years, you’re only looking for a specific group of people. I went back to that. They only want a specific group of people in that if they’re saying five to seven or something that the average person doesn’t have. That’s something I would say, too, is if it gets outlandish, like you need 7 to 10 years of cloud, then that means you’re only looking for a specific group of people. Because most people didn’t even know what cloud was until the pandemic when they had to work from home. That means that most people wouldn’t know what cloud computing was to begin with.
[00:30:28.650]
Speaker 2: You’re so right. I knew what it was before it did because I was doing my own consulting stuff, but I didn’t know what it was until 2016. So that wasn’t that long ago. That legit wasn’t that long ago. But yeah, just a note for people that are listening, if you see a job that says five to seven years experience in tech, or I don’t know if other industries do this because I haven’t seen it in audit. But go ahead and apply anyway. It’s just dumb. But my position at Microsoft, I think, said 12 years and I never touched Azure a day in my life before that. So yeah, like they say, culture fit. We can train you on the skills. But yeah, I don’t know what else to say other than I will say that in the past year, I’ve been on LinkedIn for a couple of years at this point. And in the past year, I’ve noticed that people are literally begging for jobs. And I’m like, what is the disconnect? I didn’t used to see stuff like that. People are like, I’ve been unemployed, 3 to 6 months, some people a year. I talked to a lady, she said 15 months.
[00:32:06.470]
Speaker 2: I’m just like, Oh, my God. What is the disconnect on this? But we can literally go down the list of reasons. Yeah.
[00:32:20.320]
Speaker 1: Actually, I had a situation like that. When I was working with a contract, I ended the contract and I was without a contract for a whole year and I was applying for positions and it forced me to shift what I was doing. What I will say is that… That’s another thing I want to bring up. When the pandemic first started in 2020, I was way more project management focused. Most of my certifications were in project management. I took the opportunity to get training, first workforce development training in cloud. I got two certifications in Amazon Web Services, the certified cloud practitioner solutions architect associate. Then I learned about Azure and I just started going in that direction because it was offering free opportunities and free labs too, which allowed me to upskill and reskill relatively quickly. Then it just snowballed into learning that Oracle Cloud had something free. Then I would get into these programs. But that’s something that I would recommend if you feel that you haven’t gotten opportunities for three to six months, see whether or not you have your current set of transferable skills and see how you can pivot to other industries that are growing.
[00:33:46.360]
Speaker 1: I feel that that’s very important because then you’ll get to meet a new group of people. I have a mentor and she works in the cloud industry. One of the things is the reason why I talk about transferable skills and meeting new people in the industry is because, say you want to work in IT, I had to go through my LinkedIn and see whether or not the people I interacted with were still at those companies. Remember, when they’re getting rid of 10,000, 12,000 people, some of the people you interacted with aren’t there anymore. You have to see whether or not they’re saying this ex Google, ex AWS, and in some cases it is that. That’s why I also say if you’re without a position, see if you have a current transitional skill set, transferable skill set to other industries which are growing because then you’ll meet new people, but you’ll also be meeting people who are working and potentially refer you.
[00:34:57.480]
Speaker 2: I didn’t done it all, so I can’t… I don’t even know what to recommend anymore. I’m like, Okay, well, I know this field needs it. Pretty much every field needs talent. You know what I’m saying? They need audit. Oh, my gosh. Everything is just freezing up. But I’m like, I don’t know what else to do at this point. What else is there? You check off health care and food and tech and good governments. I have.
[00:35:34.410]
Speaker 1: Noticed that the certified trainers, I am a member of a certified trainer group, Microsoft certified trainer group. I know none of them got the X. I was thinking, I was like, Well, if they still are servicing those contracts and they have to train some of those people, those people are still getting positions. They’re still training the current contract people that they’re doing in the certification because I had an interview for I was going to be a tPM, technical program manager for an education for cloud, and you were going to go on campus and you were going to work with the universities. Well, nobody who I know that’s far who are trainers, they got cut. That’s a potential opportunity. There’s still a lot of teaching opportunities out there because they still have people learning the software and using it. They need people to teach the software. I’m noticing that, too, that nobody who was a Microsoft tool find training. Nobody gives me a tool.
[00:36:43.830]
Speaker 2: I know nobody hit me up about a trainer position with my trainer certification. I’m just like, Okay. I’m like, I got this for nothing. Luckily, it was paid for. But I’m like, I applied to a couple positions. That’s good. Cricket. I don’t know. I don’t know. You know what? Here’s the story. I forget the company. I’m drawing a blank on the company. But the interviewer said that I scared him. I’m looking at his background. I’m like, You’re.
[00:37:29.140]
Speaker 1: Accomplished as hell.
[00:37:31.130]
Speaker 2: To me, I really ain’t did nothing. You know what I’m saying? Because if it wasn’t for the isms, I could probably be a whole lot farther than what I’m supposed to be. But he literally said he was scared of me. I’m like, scared of me for what? Your privilege is showing, but yeah. I don’t know if… Like it.
[00:38:06.960]
Speaker 1: Was frightening. That’s very weird to hear that. It was very weird.
[00:38:15.320]
Speaker 2: I’m like, I wish I could have recorded it, but I was just like, Oh, my gosh. What do you mean scared of me? He was like, Yeah, you’ve done all this stuff. And I’m like, To me, I’m really scared.
[00:38:24.910]
Speaker 1: And that was a man, too. Yeah, it was.
[00:38:27.180]
Speaker 2: A man. Yeah. i’m like, Maybe my resume scares people and stuff like that, but to me, I really haven’t done anything spectacular. You know what I’m saying? So I don’t know.
[00:38:49.030]
Speaker 1: But.
[00:38:52.760]
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know. Oh, another thing, somebody said that I jumped around a lot. I worked at the fed for six years and I probably would still be there if life circumstances didn’t happen. And if you’ve listened to me before and read my blog, then you would know what that circumstance is. But that happened. And so I moved to another country and I decided to stay and built a business. And COVID hit, came back, started working for Microsoft, and that didn’t work out. Now I’m doing something else. So I’m like, where do you see that I’ve been jumping around, man? Jumping around doing what? Oh, because I career switched. And this is one of the reasons why I wanted to do the podcast because people think that you’re supposed to stay in one job for your whole freaking life and never change and get your little ten cent raise. And if you get a raise and go on about your little happy Mary life.
[00:40:10.460]
Speaker 1: But also if you’re dealing with just the fact that you went from one country to another and you manage to be employable and acquire skills, that would be a great opportunity to hire, especially since most companies in the United States are multinational companies, so they have branches everywhere. So the fact that it was just a jumping around thing that was very weird to me, given the fact that.
[00:40:43.670]
Speaker 2: Most.
[00:40:44.230]
Speaker 1: People might not just move on to other positions, they move on for promotions, they move on to acquire skill sets. They’re not just going to sit there for 10 years. And then you have to ask yourself this, if somebody was in the exact same position for five to 10 years, does that mean… Oh, that.
[00:41:03.320]
Speaker 2: Would be a black mark too. It would be a black mark too. So you can’t win. Right.
[00:41:08.660]
Speaker 1: But then also it would symbolize that you really didn’t learn anything in that position. If you stay in the same position, how do you know that person’s current in the industry trend? They’re only current with their immediate job. That’s it. It’s not like they learned anything. They didn’t acquire any new skills. There’s nothing. They just passed their performance appraisal and that’s it. That doesn’t mean that they’re current with their own industry.
[00:41:38.080]
Speaker 2: Definitely. You can’t win on that either because, oh, you were at the same job for 15 years doing the same thing and got your 10 % raise every year. Why did you stay there? It’s like, well, you can’t jump around. So what do you want me to do? It’s like, like, look, I got interests. I like learning new things. Sometimes I pursue them permanently, sometimes I don’t. So it’s like, I don’t know. I nd finding a company that caters to that is terrible too, because it’s like, okay, well, sure. I don’t mind staying in the same position for two, maybe three years. And at that point, okay, I then learned the job and I’m about ready to go on to something else and do something else. And usually it’s not going to have something to do with what I was doing previously because for what? So g to give me something totally new to learn and skill up on and be satisfied with. But yeah, I think that’s another issue is that they don’t know what to do with me when it comes to that either. Because I’m like, Okay, well, I didn’t learn this. I want to go do something else.
[00:43:03.160]
Speaker 2: So that ain’t got nothing to do with the other stuff.
[00:43:06.880]
Speaker 1: But also they want you to stay. They should give you the professional career growth and the advancement opportunities to do that. And if you do want to go back to Mexico or anything and they have an opportunity for that, then they should encourage you. Okay, all you have to do is post out and go into that and work there and you can be able to do that. They have ex patriots or X packages to be in other countries, then that could have been encouraged. Then you could have just stayed in. You could have stayed, whether it’s Mexico or anywhere else, you can go there, live in that country, still work for the company, still be in the pipeline and everything. I think that’s something that a lot of companies aren’t encouraging, like ways to retain people or ways to train people who do like the company and potentially want to stay or want another opportunity in just a different division or a different region?
[00:44:05.140]
Speaker 2: No, that’s only for outsourcing, not you going somewhere else. That only works for people coming to the US. You don’t go anywhere. It only works for people coming to the US. No, they don’t. Because even when I was at Microsoft, I applied for a position in Spain because I speak Spanish, right? Denial. I reached out to the recruiter and everything. They were like, Yeah, we’ll chat. Nothing. Then I had reached out to a hiring manager in Mexico and stuff like that, but they were only hiring software engineers. I’m like, I don’t really care to be a software engineer. So yeah. Another thing is they wouldn’t tell me the salary. I’m like, Well, how do I know if I want to pursue this if you ain’t telling me what the money is? You know what I’m saying? So it’s a lot of stuff. And I don’t even understand how people get hired at this point because it’s like, okay, like I said, I need to know where the money is, what the conditions is, what I’ll be doing, and no one knows. I’m going to say the name, Nestlé. Nestle told me that they don’t give out salary.
[00:45:27.190]
Speaker 2: I’m like, but so I’m supposed to do these four interviews with you and you give me this and then I have to come up there? That’s what you’re saying? Right. That’s what’s going to happen. They act.
[00:45:43.800]
Speaker 1: Like glass door and levels FYI doesn’t exist. You can’t get salary from them. Also, another thing is I noticed something new. It’s relatively new that a recruiter would ask you, are you interested in a position without providing you at least a job description and or the salary range? Now, up until the final quarter of 2022, when I interacted with recruiters, they at least give you the job description. But I don’t know why they think it’s such a big imposition just to get a job description so you would know what job you’re talking about. Remember, you eat meat. I should at least know the job description and more importantly, why you feel I was a good candidate for this job. Whenever I would go on interviews, I would ask them, Okay, where did you find me? All of this. T hat was good so you can know where your traffic is coming from. But just the fact that they feel it’s a big deal of just providing a job description and you’re reaching out to us, that’s like an attitude thing. I can see why some of these HR people are getting cut because they think that they’re doing…
[00:47:01.440]
Speaker 1: No, seriously, if you believe that you just reach out to me and say, I have a job and you don’t have a job description or even the salary range, that was just weird. Yeah..
[00:47:17.370]
Speaker 2: I mean, I didn’t want to say it, but I’ve been thinking it. I’m like, I see why you are the first to go. But yeah, they’d be like, they say you’re supposed to do all these things, reach out to the recruiter and stuff like that. A lot of them, if they do respond, they’re rude. You know what I’m saying? Yes, I can tell you’re rude through some text. They don’t answer. You know what I’m saying? Or they’re giving you the run around. This is the other thing I don’t like. They reach out to you and then they don’t even respond back. How do you reach out to me and then don’t respond back?
[00:47:56.710]
Speaker 1: It.
[00:47:58.200]
Speaker 2: Was funny because it was a woman at Amazon. I wish I kept her name so I could see if she got laid off. But she said that she was going to help me find a position because these companies name their positions funny. And someone told me that these companies name their positions, these funny names, so other companies can’t poach you. And so I was looking for a sales engineer position, and Amazon doesn’t call their position sales engineers. I think they’re actually called cloud architects. And she said that she didn’t know. So I was like, Okay, well, if you don’t know, can you ask somebody? Because it’s like, this is your job. So I can know what I’m supposed to be applying to and whatever. And she was just like, I don’t know. So I hopped up on her post and I was like, Well, you told me you didn’t know. You’re offering handouts. You know what I’m saying? And I told her. I said, if I told somebody I didn’t know and then didn’t find the answer, I wouldn’t have a job very long, so how are you staying employed? She blocked me, of course.
[00:49:15.660]
Speaker 2: Me being a consultant, it’s like, okay, if I tell someone I don’t know, I’m going to be like, I get back to you, and then I’ll go find them. You know what I’m saying? How do you get off that I don’t know is just the answer, and you ain’t even going to find out and do your job. That’s some crazy stuff to me. I think.
[00:49:36.340]
Speaker 1: It all.
[00:49:36.890]
Speaker 2: The time. So you said it.
[00:49:44.500]
Speaker 1: Yeah. Then they don’t know. They don’t have the job description. But when you follow up, I don’t know you’re going to have to ask the hiring manager. That’s a problem when I feel that companies, yes, human resource may not be as technical, but they should have some type of summary experience of the area in which they’re in. Because just like outside the company, nobody knows if it’s your first day or first week on the job. They believe you’re the professional because you’re the official point of reference for contact they have. It’s the same with human resources. You are the official representative. You’re the first person that we see going into the job application process. And if you don’t know or you don’t just have a basic understanding of the area that you’ve been assigned, it doesn’t look very well. And I do feel that that’s why a lot of them were let go because they just kick it up the level. And so people were realizing these were the job descriptions, these people didn’t know this, this, and this. Now all of a sudden it’s, well, we can get rid of them. And that’s what was happening.
[00:51:04.830]
Speaker 1: And then they would have attitudes, too. And it was like, That wasn’t helpful. No, that.
[00:51:09.510]
Speaker 2: Ain’t the reason. The reason is they don’t do their job. You can literally interview, go through 10 rounds of interview and you never hear anything back. You know what I’m saying? And as an auditor, I would have cases. A lot of times I would have 20, 30 cases. I would have to keep track of which ones I touched. So every week, I would go back through the cases and see which ones that I need to follow up again. Hey, where’s the files? What’s going on? Every week. I’m just not understanding it. I don’t think they have 100 requisitions that they need to follow up on. So what is really the issue? I’m going to need you to get a spreadsheet. And the last time I did this was June whatever. And then follow up in the next week because I wouldn’t have a job if I didn’t do that. Even when I was a consultant, I would check in with my customer once a week and say, Hey, I don’t have an answer yet, but I’m just letting you know that we’re getting it. Right.
[00:52:18.670]
Speaker 1: I just don’t.
[00:52:21.600]
Speaker 2: Understand how they can just do that. That’s why they’re the first to go because I wouldn’t be able to do that in my job and still have one. That makes no sense. Okay, I get that people that didn’t have an interview and I still think that they should get a denial letter. Sure, they may fall through the crack, but someone that actually interviewed and they’re not getting any responses. Oh, no, you got to go because you got to go because you look bad as a company. You’re making me look bad. Right. And then.
[00:52:59.910]
Speaker 1: Also, I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but why is it if you don’t get the position, why are they sending these surveys out? I don’t know.
[00:53:12.860]
Speaker 2: Who thought of them. I was like, Look, this is.
[00:53:14.470]
Speaker 1: Not a good idea.
[00:53:15.480]
Speaker 2: Look, he asked me this question right here and it didn’t make any sense. I go ahead and tell them. I’m like, I don’t know what they do with them and stuff. But yeah, I didn’t got plenty of ones where I didn’t even interview. And I’m like, Marifay, I just got one from GitHub. I never interviewed at GitHub and got one. I’m like, I didn’t even apply for a position with you all. And I don’t know how long, but I got a survey. I told them in the end of the thing, too, I didn’t even interview. Why am I getting this?
[00:53:49.460]
Speaker 1: Yeah. That’s something that was weird. I wanted to bring us to you, you mentioned that. How do you get an interview and you didn’t get the job? What type of What type of feedback or intelligence, Garren, did you think you were going to get from that? Because people will most likely be unhappy that they didn’t get the position. So that’s something I wanted to bring up, too. I don’t know.
[00:54:14.620]
Speaker 2: Because I get them and I don’t even interview. So I can’t answer that. I’m like, why am I getting this? But yeah, yeah, we can go on all day long, you know what I’m saying about the experiences and stuff like that. But I don’t rightly know. I’m working for a Mexican company at this point, but it’s like, I might want to go back to the feds at this point because it’s really insane because I always work for the government. Even my parents work for the government, and so that’s all I pretty much knew. And so being private industry, it’s like, okay, you have to negotiate. And they do rounds of interviews and they do interviews that have nothing to do with the job. e really need it because I was not used to that with the feds because the feds, they’ll give you a job and you don’t even interview for it. Because I hadn’t done it before. And it’s funny because there was this guy, he inbox me and I think he was doing six interviews or something like that. And I told him that was crazy. And so he inbox me. He was like, but what interview process would you do?
[00:55:42.540]
Speaker 2: And I said, The government seems to hire people just fine off a 30 minute interview. They don’t do rounds and they ask relevant questions. So those people end up staying till they die. You see those people at 90 years old still working there. So I’m not understanding these rounds in private industry. But there was one recently that I saw it was for a developer advocate position. I was like, okay, well, it was like 32 hours weeks or something like that. So I guess that would be what, four eight hours days. And it was remote. And I was like, Okay, I’ll apply for it. And then I looked at the job bulletin, I mean, the application, and it was like the interview. They literally were asking you interview questions and they wanted responses. So I’m like, this is the whole interview because if this was the feds, I would write out my KSAs, which they actually tell you.
[00:56:50.200]
Speaker 1: Right, knowledge, skills, and abilities.
[00:56:52.160]
Speaker 2: I would write out my KSAs and you might get chose off of that. Right. And then they were like, Yeah, then you interview four and a half hours with I think it was like four or five different people. I’m like, four and a half hours and I’m not being paid? It’s crazy. Really crazy. I mean, maybe they’ll find somebody. I hope they don’t because the whole process. It’s so crazy. I guess they’re banking on their benefits being a draw because I was like, 32 hours. I’m like, shoot, that’s Gucci. I can’t call it.
[00:57:42.820]
Speaker 1: Sorry, you all.
[00:57:43.690]
Speaker 2: My eyes was kicking my butt. This weather is flip flopping. But yeah, I mean, if you ain’t got nothing to say, we can cut it.
[00:57:55.640]
Speaker 1: I just hope that for 2023 and beyond, that the interviewing aligns with the job description and that it gets easier and it’s not more rounds but less because I don’t think that anyone should have to jump through as many hoops. I remember you would have one interview, two max, and that would be it. You could potentially know whether or not that was a good hire or not. Also a lot of very specific things used, like you mentioned, culture in the beginning of things that aren’t necessarily necessary to the job. They’re just in there to disqualify people. Then they’ll say they can’t find people. I hope that that goes away also in 2023. Right.
[00:58:57.140]
Speaker 2: But when they said they’re hiring for culture fit over skills, because when I hired people, I’m hiring for skills. I don’t really care about no culture fit. It’s like, can you produce me money? You know what I’m saying? I don’t really care about culture fit, especially now since a lot of these jobs are remote anyways, what do I need a culture fit for? You know what I’m saying? That’s my whole other thing is culture fit or what, and I don’t see you every day. But I mean, that’s just a cop out. It’s really just a cop out. That’s basically what it is. But I also wanted to touch on these cloud interviews, last thing. And these questions that are being thrown out at you when cloud is a physical thing, you know what I’m saying? That you maneuver, you’re on the computer. And so for you to throw questions at me, it’s really crazy to me when there could possibly be a power shell or bash command, or I can use the interface because when I was at Microsoft, I really used the interface. It was all power shell. I might be able to give you the power shell command, but that may not be the answer that you wanted.
[01:00:19.520]
Speaker 2: You know what I’m saying? Exactly.
[01:00:22.200]
Speaker 1: I think that’s important, too. My thing on.
[01:00:25.220]
Speaker 2: These cloud interviews is that maybe instead of throwing questions out at people, they should be maybe a hands on test. But that would cost them money because the cloud cost money, don’t it? Yeah. It ain’t like code where they got all this stuff. But I don’t know because that’s another reason why I’m like, cloud, because you’re throwing questions out at me and I’m just like, well, I need to actually physically look at it and see if that might be the answer that I want to use. So it’s really crazy to me. But I don’t know, I guess somebody passing it, not me though.
[01:01:11.990]
Speaker 1: I had a couple of those interviews too, where what was on the description, it wasn’t really what they were doing. They asked me, I never forget, I had an interview and I thought, I’ll be doing cloud. I said, Okay, well, I was an API person. I wasn’t building and maintaining API. Then I went in there and they was just like, API? I was thinking, That’s the wrong interview. Now, granted, they put me back and allow me to interview for something else. But that was weird for me because I was like, No, where was I creating API? It doesn’t say anything on my resume for that. And that was the interview I got in. Also, what I would recommend is what they say the specific language because PowerShell and bash is different than the command line interface or the third party that you can use the code on the command line. So if you have more uniform of what was required or what you were asking for, that would also be very helpful too, because I know PowerShell more than anything else simply because I came out of SaaS, which is Statistical Analysis Software, and PowerShell has a lot of portability.
[01:02:27.840]
Speaker 1: But if you want people to do something else, then you need to also write that down also, which is very important.
[01:02:38.220]
Speaker 2: No, definitely. I’m not understanding why you would throw questions at me when the cloud ain’t no questions being thrown out at nobody. Like I’m saying, you own the computer for dangle ing it. That really threw me for a loop because I interviewed at a prestigious investment firm for a cloud engineer position, and that’s when I made the decision that I wouldn’t pursue cloud engineer positions no more because I’m just like, I have to see it. You know what I’m saying? You can’t just throw questions out at me. I have to literally see it and play with it. So I don’t know. And like you were saying, the other thing is I may not have touched that service. I think Azure has 156 services, and so I may not have touched that service. Meanwhile, you’re on this service. So cloud don’t really mean anything when you say the cloud.
[01:03:48.820]
Speaker 1: That’s important. I’ll give you an example. I actually had an interview like that. This is AWS. There’s a service called CloudF ront, and CloudF ront is content delivery network. You know the man was asking me about light cell. Light cell?
[01:04:11.820]
Speaker 2: That’s funny because I actually use light cell for my podcast. But he was.
[01:04:22.940]
Speaker 1: Talking about light cell. I knew exactly what he was talking about, but cell will cost more. It’s a very specific use case for one thing, and you can also do it with CloudF ront and S3 bucket and keep your cost low. When you mentioned you may not know the service, I had to talk about that because I had an interview specifically like that. There’s other ways of doing it. There’s also cheaper ways of doing it. But one of the things was I was like, oh, okay. Now, granted, I knew the service, but I wanted to add to that because that’s something that also happens because they have many services. I think AWS has over 200 services and they’re adding new services and they have stuff in preview and they expect you to learn all of those services that you’re talking about. You’d be like, I don’t really use that. That’s not my area that I’m working with. I had.
[01:05:33.270]
Speaker 2: Someone reach out to me for I think it was Power BI. Of course, Power BI is built on top of Azure. She was like, Oh, you work at Microsoft? I thought that you would know this. Ma’am, there’s all kinds of products at Microsoft. I mean, what? This is the stuff we talk about when it comes to recruiters, it’s like, Okay, well, you don’t even know the difference. But that’s funny about light cell because to me, light cell would just be like WordPress. That’s all it would ever do. Right. But I was.
[01:06:15.290]
Speaker 1: Like, Okay.
[01:06:17.300]
Speaker 2: But yeah, it’s just little stuff like that. And it’s like, Okay. I had went viral for a post where I was basically saying that, Okay, well, if I know the basic stuff services like Azure monitor, maybe SQL database, BLObs, those basic stuff, I should be able to pick up everything else that goes along with your specialized service because that’s the thing. You know these specialized things and it’s like, but where would I have learned this at? But here, no one else uses this special stack. And that’s really where the problem lies. But that goes back to the culture fit because if they really wanted you, they would let you learn, right? In theory. But yeah, I wanted to touch on that last little bit of, they want you to know all these things. And outside of that, people learn different ways because I’m a visual learner. So you throwing questions out at me, I’m like, bro, I got to touch it, see it. I don’t know even know what you’re talking about unless I’m staring at it. So yeah, I think that’s another problem is that they cater to one type of person. I had recently went on an interview and they actually had the questions on the screen and I’m like, oh, my gosh, I appreciate it.
[01:07:55.550]
Speaker 2: So yeah, like I said, we can go on forever. But yeah, we can wrap it up there unless you got something else. Yeah. Well, thank.
[01:08:07.600]
Speaker 1: You for the opportunity, Elyse. I really appreciate it. Let us know where.
[01:08:11.890]
Speaker 2: You can find us at, Carla. Sure. You can find.
[01:08:15.450]
Speaker 1: Me at carla rdjinkens. Com. My website, you can contact me by hitting me on the contact page. My universal social media handle is @carla rdjinkens. So thank you, Elyse, for the opportunity for the Nobody Wants to Work podcast. I greatly appreciate it. All right.
[01:08:31.260]
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Carla, for coming on. Definitely, we don’t chat as always. Hey. Hey. Hey. Thank you guys for watching. You can find us at Nobody Wants to Work the Old Podcast, Nobody. C hat website. We’re on Google podcast, Spotify, Apple podcast, and of course, YouTube. Sign up for the newsletter so you know when the new episodes come out, which is down below in the links. And yeah, until next time.
