Interviews

Since I was laid off from my last job two years ago I have been interviewed dozens of times both in person and on the phone.  Hopefully this last interview was the last.  I know it was the best.  I have had some pretty bizarre interviews, I've had some competitive interviews and some confusing interviews.

Just for the record I have prepared and studied for all the interviews.  I looked up the companies I was interviewing with and memorizing their philosophies, pillars of success and direction.  I have looked up the key players and gathered as much information as I could.  I burned up phone minutes and pretty much brought the Internet to it's knees (not literally).  I worked so hard at it that my wife and children thought they were a single parent household. 

During all this time I have heard questions that no reasonable man could answer.  For any techies out there one Linux guy interviewing me for an AIX position asked me: "If you were in a restricted root shell what five commands would you need to do your job?"  How do you answer that as real administrator?  I told him I would never be in that position as an AIX administrator, I don't know much about Linux but I doubt you could restrict root to five commands and if you you could and had chmod and chown you could make any command executable and owned by root.  Evidently that was not correct because based on that I didn't get the job.  I've had interviewers ask me if I were and animal or a tree what type would I be?  (I answered live to both questions by the way.)  Also not correct.  I've had a few interviewers get competitive as far as experience and knowledge go.  I went through the whole process with one company only to find out they hire only college graduates with degrees in computer science.  (They apologized because I was the best qualified candidate but I did not have the proper degree).

Finally there was an opportunity where I took advantage of a resource and my own experience.  I got a first person to person interview.  The interview with the hiring manager went very well.  It seemed to be more of a conversation than an interview.  We discussed my experience and to a degree my knowledge.  It was the most comfortable I have ever been in an interview.  The second interview was with that same manager and some of his team.  Again it was more of a conversation than an interview.  Almost a like a personality test than anything else.  If that's the case I think I nailed it.