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

Now, that I already had my first interview in two years, I would like to share with you some guidelines in How to pass a job interview in Canada.

1. First of all, you have to convince the interviewer that that job is the job you dreamed of from when you was in your mother womb. It doesn’t really matter how you think and who is the real you, you have to convince the person in front of you that the truth is: You envision that job from small ages, and it is what you dreamed of all your life.

2. Lie, lie, lie. In all my experience (and I have a lot) with Canadians interviewers, they don’t like to hear the truth, no way, you have to lie and to be a good actor, play drama, play comedy, play the role of your life if you want to get the job. If you are a person that like saying the truth, or don’t know how to be a good actor, than search for jobs in other places (US is a very good start, Europe, is not bad also), but don’t try in Canada, even you are the best of the best in your field the chances to get a job there are minimal.

Once, I was able to get a HR book in my hands, I was amazed to see in that book that they were told to lie to the candidates. What you can expect from a person that is saying lies, only untrustworthy things.

3. And here comes the next advice to follow, DON’T try to show that you are better than your interviewer, it doesn’t work that way in Canada, if you are better than him/her one day you can take his/hers job, and that is no good for that person. No you have to be lower than him and to stay there. Don’t be a smart ass, that will not give you a job in Canada. The only chance to get a job if you are smarter than the person is interviewing you, is: or that person will be retired in one-two years, or if the product is so screwed up that only a miracle will save it, and they are expecting that you will be the miracle.

4. The HR interview, that is the nicest part, to be able to pass it buy a book about interviews and learn it by heart, when you get to the interview only say the exact answers from that book. The HR person doesn’t need to find about you and to see if you can fit in the collective, no in Canada they need to know if you can learn a book by heart and if you can repeat it word by word. If you don’t have a good memory, forget about a job in Canada, it will not happen, go in US, where the HR questions are humane and you don’t need to learn anything by heart, or go somewhere else, where HR is made by peoples with feelings, not machines.

5. There are others, but first I am waiting for your comments….

You wonder if there is any difference between the big and the small sweatshops. Yes, there are a lot of them.

First of all in the majority of the big sweatshops the employee is only a number, a head count if you may. It doesn’t matter if you are one of the few best in the world or one lazy SB, you are a number for them, if the company is making good profit and the shareholders are happy, you can stay there doing nothing, if the specter of the recession is near, it also doesn’t matter how good you are you will be let off only because they have to show numbers to the  same shareholders. there is no mercy or no remorse even if you generated revenue of billions of dollars, no way Jose, you will be let go.

On the second hand, a big company - when is no recession have some advantages: good perks, good benefits, chances of growing with the company.  Sometimes can be a good workplace, sometimes not. And to illustrate this:

It is a big, huge company in this world, a company that is well known, the bad thing about it - the internal policies… instead of promoting competition between different teams or between its employees and the outside world, it is demanding competition between members of the same team. And why is that, because all the employees know that it doesn’t matter what, the one with the worst accomplishments in a team will be layoff in February. You will say is a smart thing, this way the members of the team will figure out new products, better ones. Yes, but the human nature doesn’t work this way. The result of this kind of treatment headed towards your employees lead to total anarchy team members will not share that part of the project, or will delay in sharing it to others (normally, because the one delaying it will finish the job in time for the dead line and the other will not have enough time), will give false leads to the other team members, will… oh will do whatever it takes for him/her to have very good results and the others worst than his/hers.

This is an example of what happen in big companies, and I am sure you figured out what happen with that kind of company: less income, products that doesn’t work in the parameters, not too much innovation, and so, and so. The company is still there because it doesn’t have competition or the competition is weak, but in the future, I am predicting (if the weak competition will do a better job in treating its employees) that this company will lose first place and will go quick in second or even lower.

There are other examples about big companies that are sweatshops and are treating bad their employees, but about them in other posts.

The small company: it can be a hell or it can be family, I worked in quite a few ones where I was feeling like it was family, helping each other, also helping the company to make good money, great places to work even sometimes the workday was 16 hours or you had to work weekend, but when the work was finished all we got together had fun, days off - wonderful time.

On the other hand you can get in one that will be the hell on earth, the president that wants to know about every work minute, the manager that will always stay behind you and asking if you finished the job 5 minutes after he assigned to you and even if he/she knows that the job will take more than one month. The same CEO that will cont the hour when you got in, the minutes spent at the restroom, the minutes when you left heading home and so on. That is a hell, if you get in such kind of company, don’t hesitate live it as fast as you can, it is the best option that you have.

Admin

The question that maybe you will ask is: “Why Job Market Stories?” or “What’s all the fuss?”

It is nothing, and all - in the present world where the companies (yes the big sweatshops)  belive that an employee worth nothing and that employee is good if is very cheap and is producing at least 100 times the money that he/she gets, I decided that we THE EMPLOYEES should have a place where we can tell our stories, good or bad, about these employers.

This site is not only about criticizing the employers, it is also to let others know about the good ones, ones that worth working for them. Also, this site is about finding solutions how to get out from the job market and head to a early retirement or to be your own boss.

That is why I invite you to join me here or on the discussion board and tell the world about the sweatshops and about how the things are working inside the sweetshop.

Have a nice experience on this site, enjoy your day.

Admin