“Do you also not quite understand what it is that the two of us are doing here?”
“Are you going to ask me to submit a work sample that takes up a full two days of my time, then never answer any of my painfully cheery ‘just following up’ emails?”
“I know…I know there’s not a job here, now. I know there’s no job. That’s why this is informational, and not regular, of interviews. But will there be one. Do you think. Will there be one. Someday. For me. Will there be one for me?”
“I know you said you’re not hiring, but the job is still listed as open on your website, so I feel like – legally, you should have to hire me, since I still saw it? I’m not trying to cause trouble, I just – I saw it.”
“Are you going to pay for my coffee? I’ll pay for my coffee if I have to, but I would have ordered a different kind of coffee, not so fancy with the milk in, if it had been clear that you weren’t going to pay for my coffee. Do you pay for the coffee, or do I pay? You have the job. Can I just have the coffee?”
“You smell employed. Will you please just rub yourself against me until I smell like that too? For a minute. Just a real quick sec.”
“Will you tell me, please, where they are storing the jobs? I know you have them. I can see them. Tell me where, please?”
“If I write you a thank-you note like everyone says I’m supposed to, will you do anything other than laugh at how pathetic it makes me look and throw it in the trash?”
“Can you give me the names of at least three other people I can repeat…this…with?”
I…. may have just figured out some of my more mysterious work interactions.
Just. Don’t try and network with me. I’m apparently super bad at it.
And no. You may not rub up against me.
why is anything, indeed.
“Legally, you should have to hire me, since I saw it.”
LMAO. This is my thought process whenever I get to the second interview/callback/etc after applying for a job. You have to hire me. Like… legally. Because I have driven to two whole interviews now.
There’s something horrifying about how far the Interview Clothes and the transportation to and from interviews and the coffees you have to pay for yourself when we “meet for coffee to talk about the position” adds up when you embarked on the job-seeking process with the goal of getting money.
Always keep track of it for tax deductions!
You can DO that?
I mean, it’s been a couple years since I’ve been taxable, but you can DO that?
There are some restrictions (like it can only be for a job in a field you are currently in and not a new field), but yes you can! Especially for gas mileage. https://www.irs.gov/uac/Job-Search-Expenses-May-b…
Good to know, thank you!
damn! I don’t think it would have quite been enough to overpower just taking an individual deduction, but I was driving more than a state away for interviews two years ago! boo.
Multiple this a million times for applying to a faculty position while an adjunct, and having to pay for airfare (inevitably during holiday price spikes), a society membership fee, a conference fee, a hotel room, only to be looked down on for not having an affiliation with an institution that would reimburse you.
Have other disciplines figured out that skype exists? Skype exists. It is much nicer than sitting around a table in a crowded boozey hotel conference hall trying to make small talk with the six other people applying for the position.
/endacademiarant
I’ve done a bunch of interviews where they’ll literally just say ‘Come in and work for us for three hours, and we’ll put you in the running’.
Oh, I see you also applied for the last bakery position I was able to get an interview for, four years ago. Let us together work a half shift for free and then never hear back from them again, not even for them to say “no, you sucked, stay away from all bread and bread related products, we don’t care how much experience you have” despite being told you were great and should call back tomorrow to find out when you start.
The working interview, long may it rot.
I had an interview that was a solid three hour drive away a couple months ago, and all I got was a letter saying they’d decided not to hire anyone. What sort of world allows this sort of thing?
Especially if the job is in another state! “OK, but if I pay for a hotel room again, you have to employ me. You know that, right?”
And then a friend of mine has a job where she hires technicians and engineers and she was telling me about how they pay for the candidates’ flights and hotel rooms and how this one time she picked up the guy at the airport and drove him around looking at different apartment buildings and then took him out to lunch before the interview and then HE TURNED DOWN THE JOB OFFER.
“You smell employed. Will you please just rub yourself against me until I smell like that too? For a minute. Just a real quick sec.”
*Lays down on the floor*
*Tries not to cry*
*Cries a lot*
but I did see the job. It’s right there.
Oh man, I so want to post this on my partner’s wall but it might be just a smidge too close to home.
Saaaaaame here. If I get a text that’s just a series of crying faces, I’ll know he saw it already.
TOO REAL. Read this cringe-ingly through the gaps in my fingers but the realness just SHONE ON THROUGH.
*shudders of recognition*
Ouch.
Painful flashbacks to sitting in offices with people whose jobs had nothing in common with my career aspirations because a mutual friend thought it would be beneficial to my career search.
Old dude: We do [complicated oil stuff and make zillions of dollars]. You’re an engineer?
Me: Nope. Degree in poetry
Old dude: Huh. Well I had a historical novel self-published ten years ago. Maybe that’s why Barbara set us up?
Me: … I guess so?
She was trying to help but she literally just gave me a list of addresses and appointment dates and said show up on time. :(((
That might be the least helpful trying-to-help I’ve ever heard. 🙁
True to my employment history, and also to my search for housing. Just let me live in there. I can see it, that apartment plainly exists. I am outside but you should let me go in. And live there.
Works for stray cats.
I feel like I suffered through enough of this that I am willing to be rubbed upon. I will not enjoy it, but I only wish gainful employment to those that want it, and if this will help, then I shall do my duty.
Yeah if anyone wants an informational interview with a time strapped lawyer that will really just be “I buy you lunch at Cosi or a similar establishment and then run” hit me up. Or, you know, if you want actual job advice, I can provide that too, sometimes. Probably not jobs though! But I will definitely buy lunch.
yeah seriously, anyone in southern Ohio area want to talk about librarianship (specifically public librarianship) I’m around. I am not in a position to hire anyone, unfortunately. Oh and I forgot to add I will pay for your choice of lunch/ coffee at whatever reasonably priced location.
I should also add that my job getting strategy was applying to organizations that were filled with people so frazzled they would be happy to have literally any human body who could start right away for the love of god please.
I miss Cosi. No Cosi for hundreds of miles from me. Those bread samples…
I concur. I might not be willing to let myself be rubbed upon, but you can, like, pet my hair a little bit. If you ask first (as opposed to a former coworker who would just randomly start petting my hair when she came up from behind me WITH NO WARNING). I have been there, my friends, and I’m willing to help.
I did a couple of informational interviews with fresh-faced optimistic young people, who later handwrote me thank you notes, and I definitely kept them! I thought it was super charming. Should I try to be more jaded?
No! You are wonderful, and are what makes life bearable, I am talking only about GOING ON information interviews, not about BEING ASKED for them, carry on
oh god, this is actually way more responsibility than I signed up for, eeeep
Nope! If they’re charming, they must’ve been the good kind of thank you note. Meaning genuine.
But I hate having to write the obligatory thank you letter/email. I think some advice for job seekers is not the best, like, I bet some employers see the boiler plate language and find it insincere. Keep things short & sweet & honest. I mean you can tout up your skills or say you know a program better than you do (there’ll be time to learn it) but the bulk of the words should be genuinely how you feel. I think I messed up in an earlier round of applications with disingenuous words.
If you can’t (won’t) give me a job, can you put me in touch with your rich employed friends so I can have more of these awkward conversations?
And can they all be super condescending, too? Not like, purposeful condescension. The totally unintentional, somewhat flippant kind where they think they’re doling out pearls of wisdom and not just the first three items from every “how to get a job” list ever.
Oh, and absolutely everyone has to tell me their personal story: “Well, technically I got this job because I know someone. That’s really the only way to get a job; I know because that’s how I hire. I mean, I haven’t actually been unemployed for 15 years, BUT YOU’LL BE FIIIIIIIIIINE. “
And how could they possibly not be condescending? We are there under the pretense that they have wisdom to dispense that will open up the world of employment, but they don’t! There are no secrets!
We’re actually there because a “helpful” friend or parent set it up, neither of us knows how to say no, and I’m hoping you will fall in love with me and give me all the hidden jobs.
The truest of truths.
That friend/parent just wants to be helpful and saying “no” makes you look like you aren’t trying…
god I HATED this when I was looking for a job this summer. I don’t know how many times I was told “getting a job is 150% about who you know and nothing else, also if you apply through a website EVEN IF THAT IS WHAT THE APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS SAY you will be ignored, awkwardly googling the hiring manager and emailing them is The Only Way and that’s probably why you haven’t been hired yet! just a helpful hint!!!” guess who is currently procrastinating at a job she got with 0 networking and applied to via a website? THIS BITCH.
Man, I am long-term unemployed. I have formatted and re-formatted my resume and cover letter a frillion times. I have followed every single piece of job advice I’ve been given. I have talked to SO many people. I have applied thru so many websites. I have worked for no $. I have had to move multiple times for financial reasons, so I’ve even applied to jobs thru the addresses of friends/family hoping I could crash on their couch if I got work. And STILL nothing. There ain’t no damn secret. Either you get a job or you cry yourself to sleep at night. Everyone can take their advice built on absolutes and shove ’em.
I am so sorry. That is awful.
A co-worker of mine was hired at my work after long-term unemployment and he did a thing that I thought was clever but quite risky. If you are desperate and you think your resume is being dismissed out of hand due to your unemployment, perhaps it is something to consider?
What he did: On his resume, he said he was still employed at his last job. This was not true. He was called in for an interview, and during the interview he explained the situation and that he was actually unemployed (I don’t know if he came clean at the beginning or the end). Now, my work doesn’t discriminate against the unemployed and the hiring manager was understanding, so it wasn’t an impediment to him getting hired. The potential pay-off of this strategy is that it could get you an interview you might never have gotten, and it’s a lot harder to turn someone down face to face than it is to dismiss their resume early on. And if you make a great impression and the interviewer is understanding, you might get hired! The risk, of course, is that you might wreck an opportunity if the employer does think that the lie is a big deal and decides not to hire you because of it.
If other Toasties think this is a terrible idea please speak up, I just wanted to throw it out there since it did work out for my co-worker.
Ask A Manager actually just dealt with someone who did this today, and that person got their offer pulled (and they had only said they were still at a job they left 3 months ago) and she was like, “yeah that’s what happens when you lie.” It can be a big deal and can fuck up something that would have worked out.
Hmmm, I just checked that out. It is a slightly different situation since the guy never told them and they found out via background check, which looks very very bad. I could see it working out differently if you fess up at the interview but of course you just never know. That said, this is an approach I might try if I were submitting tons of resumes with no response, and thought that employers were dismissing me due to lack of employment.
I”m not sure how confessing a lie makes it an ok thing to do. I’d be leery of someone who put false information on a resume, no matter what the context or how I found out about it.
I haven’t done that. But, if a job doesn’t ask me to specify the pay at my last job, then I don’t advertise that it was unpaid. And my supervisor there is letting me continue to list myself as a “consultant” (they do email me questions once in a blue moon) even though I haven’t lived in that state since…2 states ago. Of course, if I got to a stage in hiring where I HAD to elaborate, then I would say it was unpaid. But I can’t remember the last time I got that far.
Oh god yes. I have stopped talking to any friends/family about the rejection pile because it’s just too sore. And so some of them take it upon themselves to suggest that I apply for more (they assume if they haven’t been hearing about it, it hasn’t been happening).
I’ll join you crying ourselves to sleep
I have gotten almost all of my jobs through applying to ads without networking with the exception of one summer job where it wasn’t actually advertised anywhere so I got it because I was one of two people who both heard about it and applied.
Ha! Me too. I got my current job by applying to an ad though the website.
The interview for it started off all weird, though. The HR lady was really surprised that I was not a man.
I’d be living under a bridge in a box if the only way to get a job was through networking. Being quite shy, I absolutely suck at networking. The thought of setting up informational interviews just freaks me right out.
I don’t even know what an informational interview is – thank God, from the sounds of it – but “you smell employed” made me literally laugh out loud.
I always appreciate a handwritten thank-you note from prospective employees. Emailed thank-you notes, not so much. Of course, I still insist on two spaces after a period, so I am old and cranky.
Die hard two-spacer here! So I appreciate your sentiments!
I used to be a diehard twospacer but my last job involved laying out and doing lots of ‘find and replace’ for double spaces and I will never get those hours back. Never. So now double spaces make me twitchy af.
My dad worked his entire career for the Department of Labor. As such, it gave him lots of (very well-deserved) cred in terms of Jobs: how to get them, how to keep them. And. He is OBSESSED with thank-you notes. I’ve been in my career for 13 years now, and he still sends me emails, reminding me to follow up with a thank you card. DADS.
DADS for real.
When I was leaving a job after 2+ years there, my manager (whom I adored & became friends with), showed me the thank you note that I sent him post-interview with a Miles Davis stamp–he kept it in a drawer in his desk. And he said that it was really the Miles Davis stamp that really set me over the top in the candidates stack. So, I’m going with dad in the pro-stationary camp.
Are you in the US? I come from a country where thank you notes are not A Thing (at least not in personal life; I haven’t been much in the job market yet, for Reasons) and this always leaves me scratching my head.
“I don’t actually want to talk to you but your friend/colleague/acquaintance, but that’s not polite so yes please tell me about your career and your advice that I will honestly never follow.”
Not an informational interview, but timely: I did a phone-screen with a potential candidate yesterday and sat in awe as he explained to me in detail how terrible his previous companies were and (unasked!) volunteered that he lost his last job because he was not willing to learn new technologies. By the time he answered a question about a gap in his resume by unironically telling me that he had decided to spend more time with his family, I was sketching out a bingo card of interview don’ts for myself. (I won.)
I seriously hope no one on The Toast needs this advice, but just in case: During a job interview, speak about previous employers with the utmost tact and avoid saying anything that could be considered remotely negative unless it’s 100% necessary. Do not volunteer information about leaving a job involuntarily unless you really, really think it’s going to help and have carefully rehearsed what you’re saying about it with a friend. If you really did take some time off to spend time with your family, try not to phrase it the same way politicians do when fleeing from a scandal, and try to somehow spin something you did that in time into something relevant to the job. It will make us all feel better. And if any of this is a surprise to you, hie thee to Ask A Manger and read the archives.
software development job
not willing to learn new technologies
I know, know, know that there are talented people out there in need of jobs. And yet, the resumes that land on my desk are generally … not those ones.
(Or, to be fair, sometimes the resumes on my desk are people who are quite talented and just missing the particular things I need. Those are the ones that make me sad rather than dismayed.)
(And goodness, I did not see the gif until I clicked back to edit my reply in a fit of guilt, that is utter perfection.)
Hey my roommate is a programmer looking for a dev position, she is talented and needs a job!
I was once interviewing candidates for a job that was essentially to be my minion in overseeing peer review for a journal. Guy came in who looked absolutely perfect on paper; proceeded to inform me and my (male) boss in great detail about how every (female) superior he’d had in every previous job was a total bitch. After he left:
My boss: Well, he knows a lot about publishing.
Me: Yeeeaaah ….
[long pause]
My boss: Doesn’t seem to work well with women, though.
Me: Uh, no.
He did not get the job.
(The person who did get it was a woman I had worked with before, and I knew that not only was she highly competent, but her work style and mine are marvelously complementary. I work well with persnickety detail people, who catch the minutiae while I do the overall concept, where to go from here, how do we organize the system, etc. stuff.)
Also, unless it’s, like, your name or your town or the last company you worked for or something, be very careful about correcting your interviewer’s pronunciation.
That tip sounds like it has a story behind it.
Only a boring one (variations on the way native English speakers stress the syllables of a particular historical figure’s name. A bit like crossAUNT/cwah-SONG for croissant.) The poor dude did it reflexively while I was talking and may not even have realized he was doing it. Nevertheless, a “Really?” crossed my mind.
I mean, he was a perfectly decent fellow, reasonably qualified for the job and all that; if there had not been a stronger candidate this certainly wouldn’t have stopped him from getting the job. It just sort of soured me on him. (Job involves a lot of customer service-type stuff with correlated expectations that you won’t correct people to their faces, or at least that you’ll do it so subtly they think it was their idea.)
I put in notice at my super awful and abusive job after three weeks of trying to power through, and the thought of being unemployed after next week fills me with existential dread. I will never get a job again.
You will, though. <3
I am an Old and was 27 years in the same job when I got laid off and got a new job with people I gee-darned LOVE. https://sp.yimg.com/xj/th?id=OIP.Mc3ed06f99a95326…
I have never had an Informational Interview but just the thought of going through all that torture without even the potential reward of a job is making me break out in hives.
And I am job hunting right now (uuuuuuuggggghhhhhhh) so I’m relating to all of this real hard.
But will there be one. Do you think. Will there be one. Someday. For me. Will there be one for me?
Last fall I had a kick-ass interview (an interview-interview, I mean) with an org that was trying to staff multiple vacancies of the same job. They all but told me I was hired. Then: radio silence for 8 weeks, followed by an email from their HR saying CONGRATULATIONS! you are in a ~pool of qualified candidates~
I wrote back to ask whether this meant all the vacancies (that the hiring committee explicitly told me existed!) had been filled. HR said “lol what vacancies?”
Ugh. I have been there, too, with a few large library systems. “Oh, you thought this was a job opening? Actually, we are just collecting qualified candidates for the future, when there MIGHT be vacancies. And if there aren’t any by next year, you will have to do this all over again!”
Why would a business do that if they didn’t have significant ongoing hiring needs? Sounds like a huge waste of time and money, although it does give employment to the HR people that are constantly updating the pool I guess?
I had this happen when I was a grad student interviewing for a TA position. I got home from the interview and the rejection letter was waiting for me. When I called back that same afternoon to ask about it, the professor who led the interview cheerfully said, “Oh, we just like to know who’s out there.” Fuck that, man.
THAT IS THE WORST. Flames…FLAMES onthesideofmy FACE
There might be an actual reason though. My company had been looking pretty aggressively for people to fill two open slots in our department, and had a candidate pretty close to accepted….
And then we lost a million-dollar client, so money got real tight real quick. Those positions evaporated, but we can’t actually tell anyone that (against company policy to hint that there are financial issues) so yeah, if pressed people act more like “Job? What job? There were never any jobs here”
oh the flashbacks! i graduated into the recession AND the year the kindle wiped out half the imprints in publishing. lots of fun sitting in offices watching people nervously pack up their belongings in those ream of paper boxes. suuuuuuch good times, unconvincingly cheery asking about the best way to “break in.” distinctly remember some executive (who is in my burn book) looking at my resume saying, “Huh, poetry. That was useless.”
I have been told by hiring people to lie about my degrees. I have been told to remove my highest degree so I don’t seem “too smart.” Eff that. Eff all of that.
I remember emailing my Dad all excited while I was in college because I had had an informational interview and the woman brought up the possibility of my doing some work on spec.
TINY SELF, THAT WAS SHITTY. DON’T BE PROUD OF IT. DAD LOVES YOU ANYWAY THOUGH.
I was un- and underemployed from 2010 until mid-2013 and excuse my while I hug my job. I don’t care if digital content isn’t corporeal, I’m hugging it.
I would rather microwave squares of egg, one after another*, than job search. It is so fucked how demeaning and humiliating job searching is.
*my current job
Well this sure is an unwelcome flashback to the summer after I graduated from law school.
On an encouraging note (maybe?), one of those informational interview people actually emailed me over a year later and I ended up working for her for a while.
An informational interview 15 years ago (with someone who I reached out to after he actually chose to hire someone else for a position) turned into a great mentorship and has now evolved into an incredible job opportunity for me. Think of it as the chance to make a good impression on someone who you can build a long-term relationship with; it really does happen!
As one currently looking for work that can pay the rent after years of working for the nonprofit sector, this hits a bit too close to home. I’m not even sure what the employed smell like anymore. Is it cinnamon?
No, it’s coffee, printer toner, and regret over aborted writing careers.
Oh hey, we were unemployed at the same time! Man, 2009-10 were shitty times. Let’s never do those times again.
I used to wonder why informational interviews were seen as so awful, and then eventually I realized that my understanding of the phrase “informational interview” was “a conversation where you learn more about a field you’re interested in” and everyone else’s understanding of “informational interview” was “an interview where you try to get a job but have to pretend that you are not trying to get a job,” so now I feel horribly naive that I ever thought an informational interview was actually just about, you know, information.
I am so sorry to everyone who has had terrible experiences with informational interviews! It is a truly awkward thing to do.
(Do people want success stories or would that be depressing? I’ll put it in a reply so people can decide.)
I contacted a few alums from my law school who worked in the area I’d be moving to and who had said, through our careers office, that they were willing to talk to people, and said–truthfully–that I didn’t know anything about this area (that I was moving to for family reasons), and would they be willing to chat with me and maybe give me any suggestions for places that did my kind of law that I hadn’t come across?
I had at least two of those conversations, and they were genuinely helpful for their stated purpose and I was grateful, especially since I didn’t have other expectations of them. But at the end of one, the person I was talking to said, you know, I think we have a position open . . . ? And I said, yes, I’d sent in a resume a while ago but I hadn’t heard anything. And he said, let me touch base with the person who’s hiring for that. And two interviews later, I had the job.
I always struggled with what the heck to write on my thank you notes…so I ended up getting a bunch of blank cards and doing relevant illustrations on the front. OH, WE TLAKED ABOUT CORGIS (FOR SOME REASON), your thank you card now has an adorable corgi drawn on the front. Bam. My interviewers certainly remembered me even if I wasn’t hired. (And I was relieved when those who did hire me turned out to have kept their cards.)
That tip sounds like it has a story behind it.
Only a boring one (variations on the way native English speakers stress the syllables of a particular historical figure's name. A bit like crossAUNT/cwah-SONG for croissant.) The poor dude did it reflexively while I was talking and may not even have realized he was doing it. Nevertheless, a "Really?" crossed my mind.
I mean, he was a perfectly decent fellow, reasonably qualified for the job and all that; if there had not been a stronger candidate this certainly wouldn't have stopped him from getting the job. It just sort of soured me on him. (Job involves a lot of customer service-type stuff with correlated expectations that you won't correct people to their faces, or at least that you'll do it so subtly they think it was their idea.)
I am happily employed, also through just "applying to the website" because it was close enough to my field and it went well. But my husband! He's in retail and detests it and would desperately love to break away into research analysis work (since basically what else does humanities grad school prepare you for?) and it has all been "you need to know somebody. get out and know more people." and uggghhhh. We live in the DC area, there are a billionty places that supposedly may need someone, and it just all ends up so close and yet so far.
since basically what else does humanities grad school prepare you for?
right? I'm not sure to what extent my strategy worked versus to what extent I just got lucky (probably mostly luck tbh), but I did a lot of looking on indeed.com because I was interested in nonprofits, and that's where I ended up finding my job. Good luck :/