Re: Employment Interview

[Nicholas Russon <nrusson -at- LAVASYS -dot- COM>]

Chris Hamilton wrote, in response to Andrew Plato:

> If, in eight years, I walk out with the experience I suspect I'll have
> and you
> don't consider me because I've been someplace ten years, you probably
> lose. I
> think you've made a pretty sweeping generalization.You might do better
> to look
> at a person's qualifications rather than reject them out of hand
> because that
> person's been in the same company for a decade.
>
To paraphrase an old saw, it's better to have several jobs in which you
learn and grow than to do the same year several times over. On my last
job, I did three years of growth and change, and then a year which just
repeated what I'd already done. At the end of the "repeat year", I was
working here instead...

When I look at a person's resume, there are things that I look for in
the general experience category (six months per job is too little,
unless it's been explicitly on contract assignments...six years per job
may be too much, unless there has clearly been progression and
development). I've hired people with no experience, and I've hired
people with longer track records than my own: what mattered to me was
that the person in question could either do the job or learn quickly how
to do it. I don't get too many chances to hire new employees: I'm less
likely to take chances on someone who is too flighty or too stodgy.

Let's face it: hiring a new employee _isn't_ scientific and you have to
take chances and make guesses. The better you guess, the better you can
guess (positive reinforcement).

Regards,
Nicholas
Nicholas Russon (nrusson -at- lavasys -dot- com)
Manager of Technical Documentation
LAVA Systems, Inc.

Visit my TH&B Railway home page:
http://www.interlog.com/~nrusson/thb/thb_home.html