Reply to post: What have I been missing?

What have I been missing?

A caveat to start with: not IT - my career started in engineering and evolved into QHSE consultancy and auditing (although all involved significant involvement in the application of acquired ICT skills).

I recall three interviews where I was being interviewed as part of a paring process (i.e. reduce the short leat to the number of vacancies). They were back in 1974 when I was about to graduate with my BSc and seeking my first job. One was with the MoD (a formal interview panel, limited allowable expenses - 2nd class rail and bus, but no taxi nor meals), one with a large engineering group (that involved team exercises over two days), and one with an engineering company with an enviable reputation (where i was met by my prospective manager, followed by an "informal" discussion with members of the department's management team). I turned down offers from the first two and accepted the third; it was the company I really wanted to work for and they even offered the best starting salary (which I treated as a bonus). I moved on after a few years but their enviable reputation was well deserved.

Since then, until retirement, all interviews (bar one) were by organisations who had approached me, and interviews were relatively relaxed. The "bar one" was an exploratory application I'd made, to investigate what they were offering, in case it was as good as it seemed to outsiders. The interview demonstrated several of the failings in the article: I had applied for a post as a contractor (per their vacancy advertisement), they started by thanking me for my staff application; they asked questions on situations that should never occur (and I told them so); the terms they offered were below my current earnings, and also required me to do some unpaid work for them (and at my expense) as a probationary period. Despite telling them what I thought, they still made their offer - that I happily turned down. Ironically, I later picked up a contract that involved auditing them on behalf of prospective customers - I don't hold grudges (though I I often take prior experience into account)!

I must have been lucky in being able to choose where I worked.