Well, that sucked
So, I'm back from the hen do (which was amazing fun times), but very croaky due to bronchitis of doom. I mentioned this to my recruitment chap, who was willing to delay one of the phone interviews to next week. Annoyingly, he then scheduled the other one for today because all the other candidates were being crammed in; I said fine, but I won't be very audible (or very well, or ready for an interview at all, or not resembling a pubescent boy crossed with a creaking gate).
The MD of the company was doing the interview- a company, I'll say this much, named after a mountain range in Italy that do specific weird fluid sciencey stuff for, er, scientists. I was kind of expecting a bit of a 'tell me about yourself/what you think our company does' and maybe a tech question or two, as happens on phone interviews.
Did I get that? Did I fuck.
He started off by more or less saying he wasn't going to bother considering me until the recruiter insisted I was bright and they should give me a shot. Then the mandatory 'interesting background' thing that always comes with having a degree in Classics (eh, I get this a lot, and it's usually a plus point). So I told him the tale of deciding to do the Napier degree, learning some HTML, getting into geekery. And this is what he then said:
'So, I see you've obviously gone into some...tech things. And you've done 'Geek Girl Dinners'? So you like pretending to be a geek in your spare time? *laughs*'
Me: 'Er, it's a worldwide organisation. We have dinners and speakers, and it's a chance for female geeks to network.'
Him: 'Riiiight.'
Utterly gobsmacked. Nevertheless, he ploughed on, with the concern that I didn't have enough science. Fair enough, I have standard Grade chemistry and that's it, but I played up the 'having to learn cryptography from scratch' for the last job. Because learning things is a Good Skill, right? Well, apparently he doesn't think my qualifications mean anything:
'So you have some see-sis at level A. Whatever they are.'
Me: 'You mean CSYS?'
Him: 'Yeah.'
Me: 'It's a Scottish qualification.'
Him: 'Riiiight.'
This is a pet bugbear of mine. *daubs self in woad* Now, even applying to study at Cambridge, for a place that prides itself on taking people of all countries and education systems, they had to write me a fucking letter asking what CSYS was. (Certificate of Sixth Year Studies, incidentally. Replaced by Advanced Higher, they're basically A-level equivalents sat in your last year of school.) SERIOUSLY ENGLAND, YOU'RE NOT A SPECIAL FUCKING SNOWFLAKE WITH YOUR DUMBED DOWN PIECE OF SHIT QUALIFICATIONS. Anyway, I mentioned my Standard Grade (sorry, GCSE equivalent) chemistry, but he didn't seem impressed, it was physics they needed.
Then another kick in the teeth.
'I mean, the worry I have is that obviously, we have a lot of people here who do tech things like you- C#, Python, C- but customers don't want to know, they work in physics, and I'd be worried you wouldn't be able to grasp their issue space'.
GRASP THEIR ISSUE SPACE. WHAT
HE ALSO SAID I COULDN'T GRASP THE PROBLEMSPACE. WHAT IS THIS
'And I think you'll find nobody uses software development with customers.'
Do scientists not program? Did I not have to use that kind of language with (tech) clients I've met before? Yes, you have to modify when you're, say, talking to sales or non-techs, but seriously? Also, for anyone who ever meets me, 'I think you'll find...' beginning a sentence, along with 'Well actually...' and 'Surely you must know...' will result in you being hoofed into next year in short order.
He then ended with more or less telling me he wasn't going to take it further, by saying the other people he'd interviewed contained a physics PhD and someone with 30 years of employment experience (yes, he mentioned my longest job was 2 years. THIS IS NORMAL IN IT. And I'm sorry I'm not 50 years old, but I'm working on it :D). He kept going on about how it was 'still a worry' that I didn't have GCSE physics (for fuck's sake, how long would it take a woman with a Cambridge Masters degree and a technical MSc to learn about motherfucking GCSE science?). So he signed off with 'I guess the recruitment guy will get back to you tomorrow or something.'
OR SOMETHING INDEED.
The whole impression I got was that I had been crammed on the end as an afterthought, and that I was wasting his time. Throughout the whole miserable 13 minutes, he was smarmy, arrogant sounding, laughing to himself, and just sounded plain nasty. And if that's the MD, well fuck that job right up the bahookie.
Also available at cryptogirl.dreamwidth.org :D
The MD of the company was doing the interview- a company, I'll say this much, named after a mountain range in Italy that do specific weird fluid sciencey stuff for, er, scientists. I was kind of expecting a bit of a 'tell me about yourself/what you think our company does' and maybe a tech question or two, as happens on phone interviews.
Did I get that? Did I fuck.
He started off by more or less saying he wasn't going to bother considering me until the recruiter insisted I was bright and they should give me a shot. Then the mandatory 'interesting background' thing that always comes with having a degree in Classics (eh, I get this a lot, and it's usually a plus point). So I told him the tale of deciding to do the Napier degree, learning some HTML, getting into geekery. And this is what he then said:
'So, I see you've obviously gone into some...tech things. And you've done 'Geek Girl Dinners'? So you like pretending to be a geek in your spare time? *laughs*'
Me: 'Er, it's a worldwide organisation. We have dinners and speakers, and it's a chance for female geeks to network.'
Him: 'Riiiight.'
Utterly gobsmacked. Nevertheless, he ploughed on, with the concern that I didn't have enough science. Fair enough, I have standard Grade chemistry and that's it, but I played up the 'having to learn cryptography from scratch' for the last job. Because learning things is a Good Skill, right? Well, apparently he doesn't think my qualifications mean anything:
'So you have some see-sis at level A. Whatever they are.'
Me: 'You mean CSYS?'
Him: 'Yeah.'
Me: 'It's a Scottish qualification.'
Him: 'Riiiight.'
This is a pet bugbear of mine. *daubs self in woad* Now, even applying to study at Cambridge, for a place that prides itself on taking people of all countries and education systems, they had to write me a fucking letter asking what CSYS was. (Certificate of Sixth Year Studies, incidentally. Replaced by Advanced Higher, they're basically A-level equivalents sat in your last year of school.) SERIOUSLY ENGLAND, YOU'RE NOT A SPECIAL FUCKING SNOWFLAKE WITH YOUR DUMBED DOWN PIECE OF SHIT QUALIFICATIONS. Anyway, I mentioned my Standard Grade (sorry, GCSE equivalent) chemistry, but he didn't seem impressed, it was physics they needed.
Then another kick in the teeth.
'I mean, the worry I have is that obviously, we have a lot of people here who do tech things like you- C#, Python, C- but customers don't want to know, they work in physics, and I'd be worried you wouldn't be able to grasp their issue space'.
GRASP THEIR ISSUE SPACE. WHAT
HE ALSO SAID I COULDN'T GRASP THE PROBLEMSPACE. WHAT IS THIS
'And I think you'll find nobody uses software development with customers.'
Do scientists not program? Did I not have to use that kind of language with (tech) clients I've met before? Yes, you have to modify when you're, say, talking to sales or non-techs, but seriously? Also, for anyone who ever meets me, 'I think you'll find...' beginning a sentence, along with 'Well actually...' and 'Surely you must know...' will result in you being hoofed into next year in short order.
He then ended with more or less telling me he wasn't going to take it further, by saying the other people he'd interviewed contained a physics PhD and someone with 30 years of employment experience (yes, he mentioned my longest job was 2 years. THIS IS NORMAL IN IT. And I'm sorry I'm not 50 years old, but I'm working on it :D). He kept going on about how it was 'still a worry' that I didn't have GCSE physics (for fuck's sake, how long would it take a woman with a Cambridge Masters degree and a technical MSc to learn about motherfucking GCSE science?). So he signed off with 'I guess the recruitment guy will get back to you tomorrow or something.'
OR SOMETHING INDEED.
The whole impression I got was that I had been crammed on the end as an afterthought, and that I was wasting his time. Throughout the whole miserable 13 minutes, he was smarmy, arrogant sounding, laughing to himself, and just sounded plain nasty. And if that's the MD, well fuck that job right up the bahookie.
Also available at cryptogirl.dreamwidth.org :D