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Ben X

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Good interview questions:

How do you feel the interview went?

How many other candidates have you interviewed?

It's good to break the interview 4th wall, makes you stand out from the pack. If anything, it'll give you a pretty good idea whether or not you're going to get the job before you leave the room.

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It's good to break the interview 4th wall, makes you stand out from the pack.

 

 

But never look directly at the camera unless you have a really witty one liner ready. I've seen so many interviews tank because someone tried this and then flubbed the line.

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Well, with two rejections today, both for jobs I would really have liked, I can probably stop worrying about all that stuff I mentioned before on how to leave gracefully or whatever and just accept that I might be here a while longer.

I'm just bummed. One of the positions, I was really excited for - it would have meant a huge raise and a transition into the kind of engineering I'd prefer to be doing. It might still pan out later. They're a startup and I know multiple people there who want to bring me in within a few months, but they're not the ones with final say. I want to hope they'll come through but it would be really foolish to expect it to work out.

The other one, the recruiter called me the week after the interview to say they all thought I was really bright, but I didn't make enough eye contact and they were worried it might be an issue dealing with the creative side of the company, and I guess my answers to her questions about how I would work around that were not satisfying. Encountering hard truths about myself and areas for improvement is probably a good thing, ultimately, but it's sad and frustrating.

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The eye contact thing is frustrating. I got it from the last person I spoke to during a 6 hour interview, and that was really the only negative feedback I got, but they ended up passing.

On the plus side, its something that's relatively easy to work on (protip: look at their eyebrows instead).

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Yeah, at least that is helpful feedback that you can work on. I always have to force myself to smile, make eye contact with each interviewer, and not let my voice settle into a monotone. You really have to act like you're trying to be a good talk show guest.

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I've been pretty comfortable in my current job for a few weeks over 7 years now.  I haven't been for an interview since 2008 and I've only touched up my resume once since then.  I've noticed that a few jobs for which I am suitably qualified have recently been posted, so I'm thinking of giving them a go, if for no other reason than to (hopefully) improve my interview skills.  The interview that I gave for my current job was the best interview I've ever given, so I need to not rest on my laurels.  And if one of them works out to be an appropriate horizontal or upwards move, I'll seriously consider it.

 

I have a difficult time justifying a move though - I'm doing well here, but more importantly, my job is secure with a decent pension.  It'll take something significant for me to seriously consider leaving.

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I was offered a full time, permanent position today. I've been working for 30 hours a week on a temporary basis for a while.

I want expecting this offer for a few more weeks, so when I was asked, "Do you have an idea of what pay scale you have in mind?" I just had to answer, "I have no concept of what the answer to that should be." Here's hoping I don't get screwed over!

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Had a few flurries of putting in job applications with the largest one being in late June and early July.  By the middle of July I hadn't heard much of anything so I started to retool my resume.  But just last week I heard from half a dozen companies suddenly.  Most of these are pretty large companies and I realize it can take weeks and sometimes months for a response but it was genuinely odd considering that slightly older resume could have used some additional polish.

 

Finally had my first face to face interview with one of those companies today and while it went fine I also had some of my first red flags ever.  When I asked about career development and advancement I was told "the company is generally light on bodies" and "a career path isn't really a thing here."  The guy proceeded to begin to say that if he was hit by a car I would technically have a shot at his job but stopped himself and changed it to "hit the lottery" but later talked about work giving him ulcers.

 

Really strange and I don't know if it was this was because he doesn't interview many people, was being brutally honest, or just used to what seemed like a very relaxed work environment.  Very strange, anyone else ever experience anything similar ever?

 

Also had some strangeness in HR screening phone interviews last week but this post is long enough as is.

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I was offered a full time, permanent position today. I've been working for 30 hours a week on a temporary basis for a while.

I want expecting this offer for a few more weeks, so when I was asked, "Do you have an idea of what pay scale you have in mind?" I just had to answer, "I have no concept of what the answer to that should be." Here's hoping I don't get screwed over!

FWIW, although I'm terrible at following this advice myself, it's supposedly not a problem to ask for higher pay than they offer or than you think you might be worth, as long as it's not too egregious (which is why I fail because I don't know what's egregious). Worst they can do is say no. Never heard of anyone rescinding the original offer.

 

Although I am a games programmer so that'll be different probably.

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I was offered a full time, permanent position today. I've been working for 30 hours a week on a temporary basis for a while.

I want expecting this offer for a few more weeks, so when I was asked, "Do you have an idea of what pay scale you have in mind?" I just had to answer, "I have no concept of what the answer to that should be." Here's hoping I don't get screwed over!

 

I've had a couple of very successful people tell me never to make the first offer, let the company do that. I'm not sure if I would have used quite those words, but being coy about committing to a pay range was probably a good move.

 

Note: I have no personal experience with this advice, because every place I've worked has had pretty strict pay ranges for named positions, government style.

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I keep being approached and asked, "Have you thought about your salary yet?" so today I just looked up what the average salary is for the title I'll have and said, "This is the average, so that's probably a good place to start the conversation." Thankfully (or not thankfully?), I work at a place where salary information gets FOIAd every year, so there's a public, searchable database of salary information.

Is that a good thing to do??? How do I negotiate a salary???

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Man, I'm about to go job hunting for the first time in like 4 years so I'm going to be skimming the backlog of this thread. Already intimidated and I haven't even started.

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How do I negotiate a salary???

 

Give them a medium window of salary as your expectation and add "but I'm flexible". If the average is 30, say you're looking at 28-32 but you're willing to be flexible.

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I keep being approached and asked, "Have you thought about your salary yet?" so today I just looked up what the average salary is for the title I'll have and said, "This is the average, so that's probably a good place to start the conversation." Thankfully (or not thankfully?), I work at a place where salary information gets FOIAd every year, so there's a public, searchable database of salary information.

Is that a good thing to do??? How do I negotiate a salary???

 

That is good, and then you argue why you should be above the average...experience, astounding talent, physical intimidation, etc. Then either they agree (awesome) or come back with some other number and the process repeats. Everyone has that little voice in the back of their head saying "if you ask for too much they'll just fire you" but unless you inflexibly ask for something insane and/or are a jerk about it, that's not going to happen.

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Has anyone had success asking for a signing bonus?  I don't know what the chances are I'd get the go ahead but it sounds like another of those doesn't hurt to ask things.  

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I'm going to bring actual numbers into this, just so I know if I'm being reasonable or not. I'll spoiler it so I don't bother people who don't care.

 

I'm being hired into a position where I've made myself indispensable, and today was a co-worker's last day, so I have some leeway. The average income for my position is described here. Basically, 41.5k a year. Because I have two things in my favor, I'm thinking of asking for 48 a year, aiming for 45 a year after negotiation. Is this reasonable?

 

Anything in that range is more than I've ever made in my entire life, so I don't really care beyond... you know, I want to make sure I'm not being fucked over when I get a 6-8% raise in 6 months, and get a promised promotion to Admin Specialist, assuming that actually happens (I trust my boss enough to think it will).

 

I have never dealt with numbers like this before. I just want to know what is and is not reasonable for me to expect and ask for.

 

EDIT: Okay, neither of those incomes +6-8% approach the mean income for Admin Specialist. I might need to rethink my approach to this. This is the first time I looked up the salary for that position. Assuming I've already applied to the first position, how should I approach this?

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Make that part of the negotiations - eg I'll take 45K now on the understanding that when I get that promotion my raise will take me way up to the mean income for that role, or I'll take 50K now and not expect any more than a 6% raise when I get that promotion. This depends on the honour system and how much you trust your bosses/company, of course...

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For a state-run university, I would expect that a promotion would come with a whole new salary negotiation not directly related to the old negotiation.

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I got called to an interview for a PhD position I applied to (yay!). However, while it sounds like an awesome position, I'm not sure I'd want to accept it even if it were offered to me (because reasons). So, I'm applying for other stuff as well, but I don't expect to hear back from those until way after I would potentially get offered this first position. I know I'm getting ahead of myself here but it would be awful to turn down a position only to not get a different one, but at the same time the fear of that is a bad reason to accept the first position. This is probably par for the course when it comes to job hunting, but it's pre-emptively stressing me out nonetheless.

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Job application question: "What personal qualities will you bring to [organisation]? Why?"

 

"Why"? Why would I bring personal qualities? What?

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I got called to an interview for a PhD position I applied to (yay!). However, while it sounds like an awesome position, I'm not sure I'd want to accept it even if it were offered to me (because reasons). So, I'm applying for other stuff as well, but I don't expect to hear back from those until way after I would potentially get offered this first position. I know I'm getting ahead of myself here but it would be awful to turn down a position only to not get a different one, but at the same time the fear of that is a bad reason to accept the first position. This is probably par for the course when it comes to job hunting, but it's pre-emptively stressing me out nonetheless.

 

I'm legitimately curious to see how this panned out. Also, What the hell PhD position interviews in September?

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Job application question: "What personal qualities will you bring to [organisation]? Why?"

 

"Why"? Why would I bring personal qualities? What?

You have to bring your penchant for deep romance.

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