Friday, January 21, 2011

Attack of the IdhaSoft Clones!

Yesterday I got swarmed by no less than three recruiters from IdhaSoft who were fishing for the exact same position in Burlington, ON.

The drone with whom I talked first asked about salary expectations and quoted the lowest figure Workopolis permits (side-note: Workopolis does not allow to specify a number on the profile, just a range, i.e. 75K to 100K) and was very surprised that I was not willing to work for that.

Told her my hourly rate. Then I e-mailed her and the other two stooges asking them to talk among themselves and have only one contact me.

Today she called me to say that my Resume is "not being considered because of the hourly rate" and whether I would like to downbid myself. I told her I cannot help her client and hung up.

This is annoying. Maybe I should have a phone filter the way I implemented my e-mail filter.

-ulianov

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Financial Company Contract

Like never before I had an interview yesterday w/ a financial company, got an offer thereafter and today I signed the contract.

There are is a gotcha: it pays 23% less than what I make for Embedded Linux contracts.

However it's a 10-minute commute from home and requires no straining of neurons. And it's darn close to my marina ;)

-ulianov

Monday, January 17, 2011

Interview with VB Equipment Maker in Toronto

Went to an interview with a video broadcast equipment maker in Toronto/North York.

This company had all their ducks in a row:
1. were prepared to discuss salary from the get-go so I do not waste time;
2. did a phone pre-screening where they asked the right questions;
3. were nice and paid attention to my hourly preferences [traffic in Toronto can be hell at certain times of the day];
4. in the panel interview they asked technical questions and made it quite interesting; also they discussed what they were doing at the company.

Their only faux-pas was an interview with a fairly green HR person who asked me 'behavioural' questions from a sheet of paper and then [creepily] was jotting down my answers.

Now I tried to restrain my answers as not to spook her -- if she has experience only from reading books it could be easy for me to trip a dumb no-go checklist.

In my not so humble opinion and experience a seasoned HR person will discuss freely, assess the person in front of her and take notes after the end of the interview.

-ulianov