Category Archives: Office

Dilbert comic strip for 11/24/2014 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

Dilbert comic strip for 11/24/2014 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive..

Cognitive Control

This wouldn’t work on me. But leave me in a room with a flask of sake, a laptop full of anime, and a box of Pocky, and, well…. you won’t like what you see, let’s put it that way…

‘He was a right c***’: Cash Converters win at reference letters

Funny – but wholly inappropriate for a reference letter. Since the manager’s signature is visible, I’m sure s/he will be having words with directors, who may in turn give him/her a reference of their own…

Honesty

Much as I would have liked to have done this in the past with some really difficult managerial staff, the only time I would do this if I didn’t care about getting a bad reference from my manager, or I wanted out of the job so bad, I didn’t care if I was fired.

Dilbert comic strip for 07/17/2014 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive..

Job Interviews

Something interesting I found out yesterday. I was clearing out some old junk on my laptop and I came across a recording of a phone job interview I had a long while ago. Curious, I listened to it, and cringed. I made so many mistakes on that interview I couldn’t believe it, but during the interview, I felt I did pretty well. Surprisingly, I got the offer. I was in that job for a few years before being made redundant.

So, point of the post. If you can, record your interview if it is a phone one, and you can refer back to it later like I did and learn from it. If you got an offer, you can see what helped push your image across. If you failed to get an offer, you can see if you can determine why you didn’t get it by listening as a third-person.

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Job Interview Questions You Should NOT Answer Or Ask | LinkedIn

LinkedIn never ceases to amaze with me the articles it has, especially about recruitment. Did you know some questions that may be asked in interviews are actually ILLEGAL in some parts of the world?

Looking at this list, I realised that I’ve been asked some of these questions before in some of my own interviews without realising they are not really relevant (or in some cases, legal).

Here are some commonly asked interview questions that are inappropriate and in fact illegal in many parts of the world:

  • Have you got children?

  • What is your age?

  • What is your citizen status?

  • What is your weight?

  • What is your financial status or credit rating?

  • Have you got any debts?

  • What is your family status?

  • Do you believe in God?

  • Where do you go to church?

  • Do you drink alcohol?

  • What do you do at the weekends?

  • What religious holidays do you observe?

  • What is your race?

  • Have you ever been arrested?

Job Interview Questions You Should NOT Answer Or Ask | LinkedIn.

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Irony or Hypocrisy?

A couple of months ago, I got hauled in front of one of the directors and given a formal written warning for both performance and going over the line in terms of access and what I was allowed to do.

A few months later, the company is offloaded with a high-priority (CEO-driven) project, onto which they put all their best and most-knowledgeable people (myself included). Now, one more than one occasion on this uber-high priority project, I’ve had to write things like scripts and conversion routines which are out of my jurisdiction, to which I previously got into trouble with, but they’ve been accepted for this project, presumably because they saved the company, and saved time. I also wasn’t supposed to touch a machine without being watched by a member of the tech team, but the same director that gave me the lashing and the verbal warning, asked me to come in on a weekend, work on one of these machines – and unsupervised, I might add.

So I get in trouble for using a machine, but then am asked to work on it without supervision?