Magic Pot of Jobs

Ordinarily, I don’t really don’t interview walk-ins. For most of my time here at the MISF, I’ve been focusing on experienced interactive media people- developers, project managers, etc. If someone fantastic walked in, I’d stop to talk to them, but most people were politely encouraged to email a resume in and make an appointment. The fantastic ones usually had the sense to call ahead and make an appointment anyway.

My office has recently gone through some, shall we say, abrupt changes, and our specialty has changed to downmarket traditional IT positions- help desk and junior network administrators, mostly. So suddenly I don’t have any talent, and the talent I’m targeting are also the ones more likely to wander into a staffing agency to look for work. So I’ve been taking the walk-ins, and I had two yesterday.

The first one was a sharply-dressed gentleman in a black suit, holding a well-presented resume. He was well-spoken, personable, and knowledgeable about his field. We had a pleasant chat, and I made a few constructive suggestions for his resume- some additional information I’d like to see, etc. I asked him to take the suggestions and then email me the revised version, which he did within two hours of walking out my door.

Maybe, I said to myself, this new specialty won’t be so bad.

And then a few hours later, I got my second walk-in of the day. My partner handed me the resume wordlessly- it was folded in quarters and bent as though it had been in his coat pocket. It was half a page long with scant information about the person’s three previous jobs and two educational institutions. (Yes, three jobs and two education items, in half a page.) I noticed from what information actually WAS on the resume that the person had only recently arrived in the United States from overseas. Since resumes are kind of a cultural thing and I do need people, I decided to talk to him anyway.

It was like pulling teeth. He answered all my questions in one to two words, at times dismissively waving at the creased resume in front of me when I asked him about his experience, as if the answers to all my questions could be found on it. When I did finally succeed in getting a semi-complete sentence from him, I started coughing and gagging, because he had breath so foul it literally turned my stomach. I had to lean back and roll my chair away to get away from it. Even as I did it, I was mentally berating myself for not being a professional, but I was seriously fearing that I would be ill right there. Yes, I know, bad breath can be a health (and therefore ADA-relevant) issue, but it seemed pretty clear at this point that he wasn’t much of a communicator and not particularly qualified to do user support. I suggested some additional agencies that might be able to get him to work and wished him a good day.

The moral? I suppose it’s that you should always have a folder to put your resume in and a tin of Altoids in your pocket. And that it sucks to have to change your specialty unexpectedly.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Tales from the Field, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.