Job Market Stories & Experiences

Canadian sweatshop, an amazing place to be interviewed. It happened to me hundreds of times. Went to an interview and they start speaking a total foreign language.

Have you done ACDMS? or FYML?..Have you used PMS (ouch)? Also, do you have experience in FFWM (this I will translate in French Fries With Milk, but the meaning is total different)?

These strange questions can go over and over for hours in some cases. And strange as it looks like they can understand each other, you are the only one that don’t. More strange if you go for an interview for the same kind of job but with a different company the acronyms will change. Instead of FFWM you will get POPD or GIGO (this is really Garbage In Garbage Out).

You can fail an interview because of PMS (power modulated sources), or because of HITGIFOMCB (how idiot the guy in front of me can be). If you ask them to translate the acronyms in something understandable you will get the “Thank you we will contact you … never”. Or they will look puzzled: “Oh, you don’t know this, so bad? You should have knew it”.

It is amazing but what I can’t understand is how a “smart” person, can think that an outsider will know all the letters and all the acronyms. I worked in a few different companies that have this culture, one of them had a “Acronym document” on the intranet. The document was 300 pages, and they expect YOU an outsider to know all the pages by heart.

This kind of interviews you can pass only if the interviewer is a person that can imagine itself in your boots. If he/she is a hard head you will fail it from the beginning because of YATSTUA.

PS. All the acronyms in this post have a meaning, if you like please, find the meaning of them