Friday, June 24, 2005
Most annoying interview ever
I was thinking about this last night, for some reason. This particular interview still just eats me up. I looked back to make sure I hadn't written about this before and didn't see it, so forgive me if I am repeating myself.
Let me preface this with some background. I started college in 1995 - it was there, probably the first week, that I first met the internet. As well as the www, gopher (sweet gopher), ftp, telnet, newsgroups, etc. Those first few months, my hallmates and I were on all the time, we would go hang out in labs (no ethernet in the dormrooms yet) for hours, looking people and information up online. Although it had been around some years before, those were still the early days of the www, and I was there to see it grow and change over the next 4 years of college... My dorm had ethernet starting in 1996, and my computer stayed on, online, all day and night from then on whether I was in front of it or not. While we had a library, I don't remember ever checking a book out in four years, though I did occasionally make copies of some for papers. Most research I did online. Probably because I am lazy. Nonetheless, I was online probably 3 hours a day mininum in college. (Sadly enough, it is 8 minimum now, but what is a knowledge worker to do?)
Alrighty. It was probably the fall of 1998 still, my senior year of college, and I was doing the interview rounds trying to get a job for after graduation. I had a second round interview at CSC, which involved going into the office, taking a test, and being interviewed by 2-3 people. So I was being interviewed by this one guy, I wish I could remember his name so I could publicly shame him. We were talking about this project I did in one of my accounting classes where we picked a company and did research on it and profiled it, reviewed financials and did analysis on its growth prospects. He asked me about where I got the information. Annual reports. Him: Where else? SEC filings Him: Where else? (etc.) I don't remember all the places now, but I went through probably 5 different sources of information. I couldn't come up with anything else at this point - there are only so many places. So he takes a notepad, writes something in big letters on it, underlines it, and shows it to me. Guess what this word of wisdom said? INTERNET At the time I was mostly flustered, and said something to the effect of, "But that is where I was looking at all that stuff." I was honestly just so shocked. And it still just eats me up what a ass this guy was, and how behind the curve. Looking back, it was probably a generational difference. But ack! - it still just eats me up. Anyway, they didn't offer me a job. Big loss.
Another funny interview/job thing that happened - Microstrategy sent me a rejection letter in a Word document via email. It had a virus. Braniacs.
