Job Market Stories & Experiences

I almost forgot how it is to pass a job interview in Canada. My last interview was almost two years ago and yesterday I went to my first one after all this amount of time.

The job, one that I can do it in almost no time, maybe three or four weeks of work. Done the same job before, very easy to do it again. The expected dead line for the whole project six months. First part of the interview went OK. And… here he come, the guy that doesn’t know too much, but he is the best what the company has, the person who is afraid if someone better than him will get in job in the company, all the others will find out that he is close to a fraud. And what is this guy strategy? A easy one, ask questions with the answer known only by him, or whatever answer is good, but from his perspective the only good answer is the one in his mind. In his defense: I can say that this is a very good strategy for someone in his boots, if the guy is better than him, he can say the guy didn’t have the right answers, and to fail him. If the guy is lower than him, he always can say “This guy is perfect for the job, he gave the perfect answers”. The results, I failed to pass an interview that I should have passed in no time. And I knew I will fail it from the second question so I had my perverse fun.

Now, this is what is happening in a lot of Canadian companies, you get a person in your company, that doesn’t know too much, but he can catch attention, he has charm and he can trick the others to think that he is very good (almost every Canadian company has one or even a few of this kind). The guy will get high in the company hierarchy and soon he can decide whom to hire. Now the thing is propagating, he will hire only people that knows less than him - because he doesn’t want competition, normal and in the human nature. The company products will lose in functionality, performance, … in a few years, the company will start loosing good people, and later will start loosing money.

What can be done about this not to happen? In Canada, nothing, is the way the things are working there. In other places, I haven’t seen it, and I think that is because the way of thinking there is different.