I’m living in a country that has a lack of professionals in IT. You may think that’s a free ticket to best jobs around, but there are fundamental problems in valuing a candidate’s long term value.
The office is very nice. There’s a couch next to the obvious table soccer that dominates the room. In the corner sits it a huge TV with a Nintendo 64 hooked up to it. I recognize that nobody uses any of those things. I am guided by my personal HR officer to the coffee machine. It is 9 in the morning and of the 300 people working here a huge crowd has gathered in front of it like in front of an altar. They seem to worship the black gold it produces. It offers 15 different sorts of blend, the most popular being a double lungo. I decide that I also want one and get it served in a custom-made cup.
I’m at the headquarters of one of Austria’s largest IT companies. They are known for a cloud service that serves hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. Preparing for my appointment today was a lot of work. I had a look on what they did in the last couple years. I spent 3 days producing meaningful PowerPoint slides and digging deep into their software. After all, I came here with the intention to work for this company. My HR officer is constantly repeating on how nice it is that I made all the 250km long trip to visit them. Also, she doesn’t get tired of pointing out how innovative and open-minded everyone here is thanks to the freebies they offer. Free fruit shakes on Wednesdays, everyone!
We do the obvious small talk about the weather, about the city the company is located an and about the new office they’re building just further down the street. It’s just minutes past 10 a.m. but in fact I’m already tired from getting up so early and driving 3+ hours. But there’s more. A sense of excitement blooms inside me as I get more nervous. I’m here to win this. For my appointment today I had to prepare three presentations. One is about the company’s product and the experiences I’ve had with it when enrolling for a trial period. Another one is about a thing I did in my career that makes me proud. And finally one is about a publication I made. It took me 3 days to prepare everything and I feel positive. I feel motivated. I feel like they’re gonna see the best thing they’ve ever seen before. And I want this job really bad.
I am guided to the meeting room. My first test is to connect my laptop (a Surface Book 2) to the projector. My HR officer tells me that many people own a Surface Book at the company too. Still, there’s no way to hook it up to the screen, as they don’t have any adapters at hand. We end up using a Zoom session. Just as I am about to finish setup, my 2 potential new colleagues appear. They introduce themselves. Mr. P. is one of three Corporate Product Officers. Mr. K. is one of 40 Product Managers and reports to P. I’m aiming to become a Product Manager, too. We don’t fuss around too much and dig right into the session.
I start off by presenting them their own product. I tell them that I like the efforts and incentives they put during the on-boarding process. I tell them that I like the easy and config-free way everything works with. I go into details about technologies I assume they use. I tell them what the UI/UX reminds me of and that professionals in the field will find themselves at home. I basically do a review in front of them, while walking them through the stuff they made. Eventually I turn into telling them what I’d like to see improved on the overall experience. I tell them that while there’s a huge effort that went into making everything shine, there’s so much complexity and feature creep that nobody will find their way easily. I tell them a goal-based approach would be nice. During all this 10 Minute monologue Mr. P doesn’t even bother to look at the screen, or my face. He’s reading my LinedIn Profile that lies in hardcopy in front of him. He seems uninterested by what I’m saying. Mr. K. looks at me and nods. He says nothing. After i finish my walkthrough, hey ask me several questions about my experiences with the app. In the end they decide it was only scratching the surface of what their product can do and not a full review. Thanks, captain obvious.
You clearly need to spend more time with the product to figure out what it can do for you. We intended it to be like that.
Mr. P., on why it’s fine to be confused in the beginning
We move on to the next part. Although my HR officer wrote me beforehand that I should present everything in English, we switch to German. I open up the slides and the first question circles around the fact that they are in English. Both of them listen while I present them Caserocket. I tell them how I made everything in that software myself from scratch. I tell them about the tremendous amount of time it saves so many people who work with it every day. I tell them that I have ambitions to make it even better. I answer technical questions, questions about GDPR and how I make money from a product used by NGOs. I ensure them that I plan to keep it as a mere hobby and not to grow it to a million Euro business.
At this point I already got a bit angry and demotivated. Mr. P. didn’t bother to give me his attention for even just a blink of a second. Mr. K. didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about. I am a 13-year IT veteran. I did countless presentations in my life. I lectured at Universities. And I worked in product management for a majority of my professional career. I know how to talk with customers and with colleagues alike. I know how to be persuasive and what a customer-focused approach to product development is. Somehow I start to get the feeling that my future colleagues don’t see that.
We’re developing a product here. It’s crucial to listen to the market and to the customers.
Mr. K., emphasizing another time how product development is important
Moving on to part 3. A publication of mine. I created a PowerPoint presentation about a blog post I once wrote. It’s the most recent work of mine and I’m really proud of it. I’m pointing out the fact that not only I described the functionality in the blog post, but also collaborated on the feature as part of the product management team. Mr. P. wants me to open the blog. He reads it. Minutes of silence pass, before he complements me on my language skills and overall writing. Finally he reacted!
We round it up. I spent the bigger part of 2 hours talking about me, my projects, my work, and my ambitions. I’m exhausted. It’s lunchtime now, and I’m hungry. My two potential new colleagues thank me for my effort. I ask them for direct feedback and they congratulate me on my PowerPoint design (home made, of course). They point out on my presentation skills. Eventually they tell me that there’s yet another candidate and that they like to take their time deciding.
We end with some small-talk, they guide me out of the door, I am leaving. We pass the entrance area again. The majority of people is sitting here and having lunch, cooked by a chef in the company kitchen. Everybody seems to enjoy their time here. “I’d like to work here”, I think, before leaving through the backdoor. I have a weird feeling in my gut that I won’t be returning.
Two days later I receive a call. It’s my personal HR officer. She thanks me again for coming over and hopes that I had as much fun as they did. Because now she needs to to tell me that, while my overall impression was pleasant, they are not 100% sure about me. She reminds me that they only hire if they are 120% sure. I can hear in her voice that she’s not used to these kinds of talks and immediately get disappointed. She continues to explain why they decided against me. But she struggles to find any valid reasons. I can’t blame her, as she didn’t take the time to attend my little show. From the documents she may have reviewed she knows that there’s nothing I could have done wrong. Eventually she comes up with me being not customer-centric enough.
I am back at my current full-time job now. I risked it all for a good feeling, a good mood, and some motivation. I abandoned my safe haven and decided to play sick for one day in order to become something better. In the end, some personal and highly subjective feelings decided within 2 hours whether I’m going to make a career in that company or not. I find it interesting that in times of desperate needs for the IT market there is place for those minor aspects in a person’s abilities.
And I’ve had enough of it. This is all bullshit. What essentially they wanted me to do was playing to be someone I am clearly not. They decided against me because of my mood on a random day. And they decided I was not the man for the job because I didn’t become their friend immediately. Fuck me then, I’ll do it myself!
