Job Market Stories & Experiences

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….

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.