Microsoft sysadmin hired for fake NetWare skills keeps job despite twitchy trigger finger Roll up, roll up, for another instalment of Who, Me?, the weekly column in which El Reg tries to cure the very worst cases of Monday blues with fist-biting tales from readers of tech jobs gone wrong. This week, "Ricky" and his employer prove just how much some people hate the arduous recruitment process, to the extent that …
As a Netware guy I was asked to administer a Windows-only network...
Didn't even know what a domain controller was at that time...
But the boss figured that since I was working with Windows all day anyway Windows server wouldn't be too much of a problem to figure out...
With no Netware experience I was sent to a certain nuclear plant to perform Y2K checks on their servers. I explained the checks to the onsite guy who they allocated to babysit me until my security clearance came through and he showed me how to do them on the Netware servers which were labelled up primary, secondary and tertiary. Secondary and tertiary were critical but wouldn't cause a big stink if they failed - primary would result in a meltdown. Dec 31st 1999 I was searching for iodine pills and planning a route to a remote mine in Wales just in case.
Every single test I did (and there were hundreds) resulted in the same set of data. To save myself time I copied the first set and pasted them one for each server - only problem was there was a spelling mistake on one of the tests and they noticed it repeated for every platform I tested. It was a hard slog trying to convince them I'd actually done the tests and had to produce my original hand written results in full before they would believe me.
I was sent to a certain nuclear plant to perform Y2K checks on their servers...
I was part of the team that went to all the nuclear sites rolling out the new desktop computers.with 3 weeks before we were supposed to be hitting to road with truck loads of kit, manglement still had not worked out a plan of backing up everyone's local data. Originally it was to be backed up over the network to our own folders on the Novell network, but after half a dozen tests and lots of screaming from the server guys about the volume of traffic being sent up and down the country.
so a meeting was held to ask everyone on the team for ideas. the problem was the massive number of different computers with different hardware, the computers had to remain intact, so ripping hard drives out was out the question.
I came up with the idea of installing novell netware on desktop computers (you couldn't install netware on a laptop) then just plugging the client into it with a crossover cable, throw a floppy disk in with a bat file to search out and copy all files for supported packages, and then copying the data to the local server. plug in the new computer, run a different bat file to drag the data back on to the new computer. everyone was given a date to back up their own data for non supported software. in most cases it took lass than 20 minutes to transfer data over to the new machine....
roll-out went well and no nuclear sites went tits up....
Yeah, but Windows Server is really easy to administer. I taught myself (with the help of the internet). I'm a software developer, but I previously worked for a company that was so small that I had to do all the IT, in addition to my actual job. Novel Netware (which I actually did take classes on at one point) is a completely non-intuitive pile of trash which breaks if you look at it funny. It's no wonder that almost all organizations I'm aware of have dropped it.
I've had the agencies "selectively emphasising" skills problem - but both ways. As an techie with a bit of PM experience, I felt ideal for the role I'd had described to me, but when I rocked up to interview it very quickly became apparent that they were looking for a full-on, high powered PM and that the agency had basically lied to both parties. Fortunately it wasn't far from home so not that much time wasted on my side but I bet the agency got even more grief from the hiring firm than they did from me!
This is why I hate agencies. They are in it for the commission, nothing more.
Never mind agencies. It's happened to my CV when it's been my then-employer (as a permie) trying to contract me to its client.
Client asks about $foo at interview. I reply honestly I know nothing about $foo. "But your CV says ..." "I've no idea who edited that, but it wasn't me".
I was pushed into an interview by a well-known job agency whose name is something you might get growing on the side of a river (they've previously bought articles on here, and my comments then were censored because they are FAMOUS for being useless, especially for IT and medical staff).
What I thought was an IT position turned out to be:
- Phoning around Vauxhall car dealerships, asking if they needed anything from the main base.
Now... don't get me wrong, it wasn't Vauxhall's fault. The job was quite clearly specced but the agency had obviously struggled to fill the role and so they were deliberately obfuscating when it came to ringing up other people on their database (I was newly job-seeking at the time) and trying to shoehorn them into an interview "because it's last-minute" and they had nobody suitable.
So I ended up falling for their ruse (should've known *) and wound up in an interview where I'd been completely misled about the whole industry, let alone category of job I was interviewing for.
This all came out in the interview (obviously) with more than a glancing nod of "fecking job agency" between the people on the panel when the full story came out.
Long story short - they offered me the job. They said I was the best candidate by miles, presumably because I was honest about it and because I didn't let it worry me and still gave a good interview based on what I can provably do (i.e. pulling in customer service experience from my actual, real career). Even the guy from the agency who phoned me up sounded surprised.
P.S. I know feck-all about cars.
* My history with the company is thus: They did that to me. They did something similar to my brother (who sat through series of interviews before being informed that it was a FIELD technician role, and he doesn't drive and nobody had bothered to ask/tell him that - so he aced the IT part and then got blank stares when asked for his driving licence). My ex worked in a genetics lab and went to their healthcare agency, who do nothing more all day long than put people into healthcare jobs. She was asked "What's genetics?" and "Can I just put that down as nursing?"... so they wanted to shove a qualified Dr of genetics into a bedpan role...
I actually got an apology for not having a role suitable for me when I did something similar. I knew which skills I didn't have but the recruiter kept insisting I'd have a year to get up to speed which was a blatant lie. I didn't get to see what they did to my CV but I speculated aloud that they had misrepresented me as well.
I've had things like this happen to me more than once. I had a recruiter add HPUX experience I didn't have and many other skills. When the interviewer starts asking questions about a particular subject that you can't answer it can be quite embarrassing. On most occasions they've queried the CV and luckily I always take a copy of my CV with me to follow along with so I'm able to give them that to demonstrate that the recruiter had altered it without my permission but on one occasion they didn't say anything and when I didn't get the role I found out later it was because they believed I'd embellished my CV.
The moment I get a question (in a job interview) I can't relate to my CV, I ask for a copy of the version they have while they receive a copy of mine. More than one recruiter found himself (or herself) in serious problems this way. And the minor problem for that recruiter is my personal (but publicly available) black list.
This is why I always hate sending the agencies a word document, and much prefer a PDF. Of course they could do the same with a PDF, but they're unlikely to have the skillz.
So, while we're in "whinge about recruiters" mode, I got a first and second interview for a role that I didn't meet but was assured that the company had decided to split it (They wanted a full-time Oracle DBA who was also a full-time Linux sysadm. Frankly, I'd rather poke my eyes out than do Oracle DBA). Turned out the manager hadn't cleared this approach upstream. Wasted 2 days of annual leave. Why do I still fall for recruiters' flannel ??
As for the role - turns out (allegedly) that they took an Oracle DBA with a bit of Linux sysadm. Oh, and on another note, the recruiter still calls up with roles there. I tell them where to go.
This has happened too often to me. I chalk it up to the fact that the initial recruiter you speak to is just looking for anyone who even remotely matches the job description (shows he/she is bringing in people!) until you get moved up to the account manager, who really knows what is going on, and rejects you because of a certain skill the skill level of the first recruiter never told you about.
"dropping a huge NetWare manual on his desk ..."
Those were the days, when documentation existed and actually contained decent information. You could have three folders (paper variants) open at once, see the entire pages and still be working on a console ...
Sometimes I feel we've taken several steps backwards ...
As I say to people(1) when they ask why I google everything....
In The Good Old Days (tm) we had shelves and shelves full of manuals, with well-thumbed indices.
Google is the (allegedly) modern version of this.
I print stuff out for pen markup when the need demands it.
(1) i.e. my wife
I can remember in my first job we received a Dec VAXstation which was going to be used on a specific project for a customer. The thing arrived on a pallet containing a vast quantity of boxes (including one that just contained a sheet of paper saying "this box is empty" - shades of Douglas Adams), including enough manuals to fill 3 shelves of a cabinet.
About a month later the software engineer working on the project needed to know the system call to print a text message on the console. This ended up talking 4 us, and having to refer through 4 fully cross-referenced manuals before finally tracking down the system call.
Paper documentation is good, and I often still prefer it. But Dec used to take it just a tad too far in my opinion.
Paper documentation is good, and I often still prefer it. But Dec used to take it just a tad too far in my opinion.
In my first job one of my responsibilities was to update the DEC manuals every month*. One bookcase of VAX (which were referred to occasionally) and another with PDP manuals for a system that was never turned on.
*They were ring binders and packs of updates were sent out. I quickly developed the technique of always tearing the old versions out so they couldn't get mixed up with the revised ones. I then had to tear every one of the old ones through before I could bin it as otherwise the cleaners would return it to the desk (Civil Service rules).
Those VAX ringbinders had a non-standard three-hole configuration. Totally incompatible with your standard two or four hole-punch.
What was the thinking behind that?
Were they worried about counterfeiting? The useful recycling of old ringbinders? Engineers inserting their own notes?
The fact that I can't think of a good non-petty reason has niggled me for the past 25 years.
Do you mean non-standard for the US (three hole ring binders there) or standard US but used in the EU?
The US believes all the rest of the world is out of step, which is why printers still default to US Letter despite A4 being the commonest sheet size.
"In The Good Old Days (tm) we had shelves and shelves full of manuals, with well-thumbed indices."
In the Good Old Days I had a cabinet mounted on my desk partition with the OS & RDBMS manuals in it. I only needed to raise my arm to pick up any of them.
One day some Big Boss came to visit the call centre next door. (It was quite big - the support manager of the database company visited one day so I I gave him the tour and his jaw dropped when we went in there.) Big Boss made some comment about how great it was having everybody able to communicate with the low partitions. Next weekend all our partitions were lowered and my collection of manuals was "over there" beside the window. A few steps away is not the same as within arm's reach; those few steps and the time they take break concentration.
To cap it all there was a bit of a swap around and I also acquired a new team just behind me who, for some reason, had to have a dot-matrix printer on one of their desks.
Those were the days, when documentation existed and actually contained decent information. You could have three folders (paper variants) open at once, see the entire pages and still be working on a console ...
Where the **** did you work?
My overwhelming recollection of documentation in pre-google times was of the gap on the shelf where whatever-I-wanted should have been. Noone knew who had it, except that they'd long since left the company.
Online docs are a true liberation. Doubly so now we have desktops big enough to keep as many pages as we need open.
Quite some time ago, I had to interview a candidate for a software development role. His CV seemed to indicate all the right-ish sort of experience, so we asked him in for a chat. He arrived in a suit and tie, and, according to my work colleague, smelt of chip fat (!). He was more than a bit overweight, sweating and very nervous, so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and served up a few soft ball questions. His answers were invariably: "I'm sorry, I can't remember", even as the questions got progressively easier and easier. Needless to say, he didn't get the job. We suspected the recruitment agent had sent over his local pub landlord for a bit of a laugh.
Hmm... Sounds failure... I've had the miss fortune to work with a former pub landlord who somehow managed to blag his way into project management; his CV/LinkedInn (ha!) basically started 6 years ago (he's late 40s) and read like a job description with the phrase "I have completed to requirements / met agreed goals" next to each item... ( I guess the previous 20 odd years or pub management didn't fit the PM CV / LinkedIn listing?)
Not sure how he got in, but once in, he attached himself to the IT Dir and followed him role to role :-(
The thing I've learned these days is that whoever writes the matching algorithms that recruiters use should be sacked.
My pet hate is that despite never having done contracting (and most roles on my CV being in the 3-5 year duration bracket), I still get scalper emails offering contract posts. Most of them get ignored. However, occasionally I get a complete howler - only a couple of my "secondary skills" matched at best, completely the wrong location, etc...
I now have a copy-paste template for such howlers, which gets emailed back, the appropriate replacement bits blatantly copy-pasted from the scalper's own email (ie: their font etc), stating how concerned I am at how bad a mismatch the role is, that as a professional software developer I feel I have a duty to point out how their crap algorithm is costing them time and money, and they should have an audit immediately with a view to fixing it.
This also gets CC'ed to their company's generic info email as well.
Petty? Maybe.
Years ago I got approached by an agency wanting me to be the instructor on a Desktop Training course. The agent got quite shirty when I said I didn't do that. "Yes you do! It says so on your CV!" he said hotly, to which I pointed out I'd helped write a Ground Crew Training Simulator for BAe Military, part of which was a Desktop Trainer / Computer-based Training (CBT) package. Yep, you've guessed it, he'd searched for "desktop trainer".
The funniest part was that the recruiter was obviously really desperate, as his final question was "I don't suppose you'd like to have a go, would you?" :)
"as a professional software developer I feel I have a duty to point out how their crap algorithm is costing them time and money, and they should have an audit immediately with a view to fixing it."
If you did contract work you could offer, as a professional software developer, to fix it for them.
More likely, however, you'll find their algorithm is nothing more than a word search being run by people for whom the words are nothing more than squiggles on a screen, devoid of any meaning.
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