Chinese student fails job interview because of iPhone An incensed university student in China’s Jilin province has taken to the web to vent his frustration at being rejected during a job interview after his interviewer spotted that he owned an iPhone. The unlucky fourth year student, surnamed Gao, attended the interview at the tail end of November in Changchun city, only to be …
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"In the UK, owning an iPhone doesn't mean your wealthy. Every chav pikey and their dog has one."
I believe that the Chav Choice is generally still the Rioter's favourite, the Blackberry, with free-with-a-packet-of-crisps 'Droids equally attractive. It's more the fashionistas and Essex crowd who'd head for the iPhone.
Nope, it's definitely an iPhone (possibly an older model just to have the brand, most probably just nicked). Those higher up in the chav hierarchy will be identifiable by their trademark behaviour of talking or texting on said iDevice while badly and obnoxiously driving around in a second hand Audi.
Same here in denmark, the bums have them. It seems only in the US that the nominally poverty stricken suffer from unfulfilled lust after iPhones and feel the need the vent their spleens on forums like these. The idea that there is any status/street credibility attached to iPhone ownership is so bizarre and detached from reality that it beggars belief. But I guess envy is envy and like the poor, will be with us forever.
Whipping out your iStuff for everyone to drool over is sooo 2010...
Whipping out your mobile during an interview is sooo... stupid.
Your mind must be completely involved in the interview, and your phone is either on silent - and silient<>vibrate - (GASP!) or turned-off (double-GASP!). Even if you sit for an hour in the waiting room, your phone is invisible.
HR dept list of interview questions
got a Facebook profile?
got a Windows 8/Android/iOS smartphone? (delete as applicable)
what's your twitter handle?
are you on LinkedIn?
etc
etc
etc
Answering No to any of the above will disqualify you from being offering a job.
I would only be able to answer Yes to one of the above so I guess I'm unemployable. Well I am getting my bus pass next week so it really does not matter to me but to some it does.
Postscript
At one recent interview I had the HR droid concentrated for 30 minutes on why I didn't stay on at school and get 'A' Levels when I left at 15, did an apprenticeship and then went to Uni. This was all 40+ years ago so it is hardly relevant to what I can and can't do today. I later found out that this was a standard tactic used to get rid of people they clearly didn't want to employ. Sad, very sad. Just reinforces my view that getting a job is a lottery.
Hmmm. Can I patent 'Getting a job via the Lottery?' $$$$$$$$$ Yay.
I feel your pain. An HR droid for my own employer (which is far and away big enough to know better) once confided that our active recruitment is almost exclusively via LinkedIn.
Like you, I don't do Facebook (other than via a locked down profile with as close as I can manage, zero data in it) and I certainly don'tdo LinkedIn.
They have also taken up with a corporate internal Social media type product to "improve internal communication" - which is actually at about as valuable as asking a bloke at the pub.
Droids do as droids do, it seems
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"But I am puzzled at to why the kid would pull out any electronic aids at an interview other than to make an impression. That gesture by itself is suspect in exactly the ways detailed by the interviewer."
Let me suggest a perfectly innocent reason: maybe it went off during the interview, and he wanted to silence it. Benefit of the doubt, yes?
In that case he still deserves not to get the job because he didn't have the presence of mind to mute his phone before going into the interview. If on the other hand they explicitly asked, 'what kind of phone do you have' and he answered honestly then it's probably their loss and not his.
Let's go back to the first paragraph...
"An incensed university student in China’s Jilin province has taken to the web to vent his frustration at being rejected during a job interview after his interviewer spotted that he owned an iPhone.
The unlucky fourth year student, surnamed Gao, attended the interview at the tail end of November in Changchun city, only to be told just a few minutes in that the unnamed firm was “not looking for students with iPhones”."
The interviewer "spotted" the iPhone. Most likely the interviewee had the phone in his trouser pocket and shape of the iPhone whatever kind was quite prolific showing through. Nowhere did it say that the interviewee left it off silent. Anyway, any doofus owning an iPhone who can't figure out the silent switch doesnt deserve a job. But, it is more than what you get on your fandroid equivalent where you need to press 5,000,000 option buttons to turn the damn thing to silent or turning it off that takes a lifetime.
In China, an iPhone is a multiple of the average monthly wage, not a (chunky) fraction of it.
Perhaps a better analogy (though still a hugely inadequate way of trying to understand this story) would be: would you in the UK hire a graduate driving a brand new BMW hatchback? It would raise an eyebrow... make you ask "what's the story here?"
" it is more than what you get on your fandroid equivalent where you need to press 5,000,000 option buttons to turn the damn thing to silent"
Really ? It's on the lock-screen on mine (o.k. I'm running Gingerbread I've no idea about later versions but I'd be surprised if they moved it particularly deep).
Me! If I am still on call at my current employer and am being paid to be on call, then my phone stays on. Next time, it might be THEM making an urgent support call where downtime ticks at €100 a second. But I admit, I generally scedule my interviews when my backup is on call, so the odds are low. It has happened once in 25 years.
Some interviewrs might use a ruse such as,"Please provide us two relatives' names and phone numbers, two who are not already supplied, now", in which case he would likely be pressed to expose the phone.
Moral: take two or 3 phones, cheapy, a mid level, and an upscale or non-pretentous type of phone and then only expose one according to the environment. Be sure to preload each with contacts so the deception is likely to succeed. Or,bring NO phones, and just whip out a pocket-sized note pad... A spiral, flip pad, that is. Be mindful to only expose a practical, not expensive pen...
"But I am puzzled at to why the kid would pull out any electronic aids at an interview other than to make an impression."
Maybe you keep notes and/or contact information (like a reference's phone number) on it, or use it to send a copy of a resume. Better, surely, than whipping out a bulky rolodex.
Most people I know keep their iPhone in their pocket. I keep mine on a holstered belt clip. When wearing a suit in an interview, the jacket covers the phone. I'd have it on silent so it wouldn't ring and wouldn't pull out a phone in an interview (whether it is an iPhone or not). So other than an idiot pulling his phone out during an interview, the other possibility is that they asked him what brand of cell phone he has and upon telling them, they made a value judgement on him based on his phone choice. Personally, I find this sort of tactic suspect, as personal questions that have nothing to do with the job, are questions I'm not going to answer in an interview with a stranger. "I'm going to decline answering any personal questions in this interview. We've only just met and that isn't long enough of me knowing you for us to discuss any personal business of mine. I'll gladly discuss my skills, experience, and anything related to this job". If they don't like it, don't hire me and I won't work for you. Also, any questions asked about social networking (including Linked In) will be answered with- "I have no interest in social networking whatsoever. Anyone I want or need to talk to, can e-mail or text me. That's as far as I will go". And that's that.
I'll be honest I can in some ways agree with the employer. There are people I went to uni with who had everything paid for by mummy and daddy, they did nothing during class, cheated on tests and coursework and now nobody will hrie them.
But at the same time making the jump to "he has an iPhone mummy and daddy must've bought it for him" is a bit harsh, who knows? He could have worked his fingers to the bone in a factory making iPhones and snuck one out, or saved up enough to buy one which would probably make him an even better employee.
"''Students who have iPhones don’t work. Everything you have was bought by your parents. You haven’t bought anything by working yourself. You are wealthy and can’t stand the stress. Working at our company is tough. It calls for someone who can take the pain and suffering.'"
Or possibly the iPhone owner should consider this job rejection a blessing in disguise.
that iPhone's are everywhere here; on the bus, on the street, in taxis. Maybe there is a stigma against the latest model. But there are many fakes indistinguishable from the original (on the outside).
Is it wrong to penalize a person for the phone he/she is carrying? No, of course not! Never...
...
...
...
...unless it's a Windows phone :P
Actually I kind of had it with the Apple vs Samsung cat fight. Guess Nokia is in the ring now too...
"Is it wrong to penalize a person for the phone he/she is carrying?"
well, that depends *how* they carry it: since the recruiter knew right from the beginning that the guy had an iPhone, the bloke probably put his phone very ostensibly (and proudly) on the table looking like : "ha, there, see how cool I am !" ... and that's probably the *real* reason - looking like a fanboï - rather than the phone itself. Had he done the same with an SIII, the sentence would have been the same.
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