Monday, February 13, 2006

Job searching

Life is a weird place. No one values hands on skill.


I recently had an interview with a staffing company for an IT consultant/ analyst position. The interview was going good. We where having a great conversation about what I have done and where I have worked. It was one of the best interviews I have ever gone through.


At about the end of the interview he said that I need to take a test on Windows 2000 and Windows XP, Operating Systems. I was a little taken aback. A surprise test. I was like okay lets do it, not to show a reservations about it. He said that there is a curve. Just take you time and let me know when you are done.


I went to go take this test. It found it to rather frustrating at times with its all of the above answers. I knew the correct answer of what works all the time on the commands but didn’t know the back up answers. Let me give you an example.


One question was "How do you bring up task manager.”The answers where 1) CTRL+ALT+ DELETE 2)CTRL+SHIFT+ESCAPE 3)A way through control panel 4)
All of the above.


I answered 1, because of two reasons. I wasn’t sure of 3 because I have never had to go through that way, and I know that 1 will always get you to where you need to be for if.


I got the question wrong


There were many of these questions. When it was all said and done I got a 36% of XP and 56% on 2000. They were both 10% under the average. I was like It was just a test and I nailed the advanced portions on the test. The interviewer said yes but the people he was going to give my application to wanted intermediate level employees.


So now I talk to my friends who he got jobs for all had lower scores that I had. Now I am not sure why the recruiter said that to me. If this was actual requirement then how did my friends get jobs the place he was recruiting for? So I am snubbed again.


When will the world get off of their test = performance rationale. This is one of things that I think are holding us back in today’s society.