Not knowing how money works, yet running a business

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Yeah, if someone is being a cunt and saying that, sure. Most people have the good sense to be friendly during an interview and if they can’t manage that, I have no defense for them.

But you don’t even need this question to judge friendliness. The question is completely worthless and is very “dance monkey dance”. I asks the applicant to degrade themselves by lying to your face about some higher meaning for no useful information to the interviewer. As I said, there are way better questions to ask.

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What? Even if you work here an entire hour you won’t make that much.

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“The position offers monetary compensation in exchange for the adequate performance of tasks. I require monetary compensation and will therefore perform said tasks adequately.”

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Look at Mr Moneybags over here with a positive bank balance…

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I never ask why since it’s damned obvious, I don’t work for a charity either. I ask why this company. Get much better insight into candidates.

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I once was fed up and just sendt my CV for a while. Didn’t get a single contact. They need that honey around their mouth.

Flying Squid

I’m job hunting right now. I want to give whoever comes up with job advertisement text the finger.

Here’s text from one I saw recently: “Are you a visionary creative leader with a passion for social media and an eye for aesthetics?” Can you go fuck yourselves? I have a passion for doing my job properly and getting paid for it.

Flying Squid

That said, LinkedIn offers this easy apply thing where you just send them your CV and maybe answer a very quick question or two (i.e. “are you authorized to work in this country?”) and they don’t even give you the opportunity for a cover letter. I don’t know if it will get me a job, but it’s quite nice compared to all the other job sites.

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I dont find this question degrading because its so common and rote. It has a prescribed answer, like all the rest of the “top ten interview questions.”

They will get the same blank answer they expect to the blank question they asked and we can both smile and nod and pretend this interview isn’t just a basic skills test cloaked in a vibes check like all the rest.

Interviews are play acting from all parties involved. Its all pretend, done generally by people that arent really practiced at it, so there is no reason to take it personally.

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I can accept the song and dance interpretation of things, but contest that it isn’t degrading and ultimately either useless or arguably detrimental. To go as extreme as possible: slavery was once common and rote and that did not make it anything less than a dehumanizing crime against humanity. Being common does not make it OK. There are better options and holding on to things because that’s how it’s always been is a fallacy.

To follow up, and reveal my own biases, the song and dance is hard for many people who are neurodivergent (and presumably some subset of neurotypicals, but I can’t really speak from experience there). I’m a bad liar. It’s one thing to selectively pick facts and let people make assumptions (which I’m meh at at best, and need prep for and don’t enjoy doing) and another to openly make shit up on the fly (or have your bullshit prepared in advance). And for people such as myself that are bad at and uncomfortable with directly lying, despite my qualifications, now I’m screwed because society values dishonesty for some deeply stupid reason. And just riding the wave at this point: is incentivizing brown nosing and lying really what we want? Because that seems like a bad incentive.

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Comparing the mundane small talk and boring back and forth of an interview to the shattering evil of slavery is well past extreme. These two things should not be compared in any context.

Youre not alone in being nuerodivergent. It was realizing that the interview process is an act, with orchestrated motions, that makes it approachable. Its not about lying or being lied to. Its a series of motions that repeat basicslly everywhere. You can learn and practice these motions, because they are so repetitive, and become very good at them.

Literally read off and practice answers to common interview questions. Any “top 10” or “top 100” guide. Have an answer to each of them, and practice them. You’ll be stunned how often they come up, and how much easier interviews get. You still wont get every job, but you’ll come through as a much better candidate in most cases.

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The only people who ever ask that are pompous assholes. And they especially love asking that of younger people.

The companies I loved working for so far have never ever asked that question. They ask questions that are relevant to the role.

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You left the conditions for “acceptable behavior” as “common and rote”. The point of the extremity was to demonstrate that this is a bad definition. Your revulsion to the comparison would indicate you understand this on some level, though that assertion is flimsier.

Well yeah, of course you can look up the questions and plan out answers. Hell, many of the questions are useful to ask. And get good results. I would further recommend that to prospective interviewees in spite of the heartburn the idea gives me. I’ll play the damned game but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t rub me the wrong way. Familiarity does not necessarily breed comfort. Sometimes all you get is resignation to an unpleasant task. But that wasn’t my point.

The point was this particular, common question is insulting and demeaning to everyone involved for no value to the interviewer and that the only plausible justification for it boils down to “its tradition” (which is a stupid reason to keep it) and further incentivizes character features that I hazard are socially detrimental (brown nosing and lying are not typically positive traits).

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That’s great! We offer competitive rates for your time, for instance, our Platinum plan can offer you up to 34% of what your time is actually worth on the open market, but due to your weak resume with gaps in employment history and the fact that you don’t have a doctorate for this entry level position, I’m afraid that the most we can offer you is a Silver plan, at 18% of your market value.

That is of course before you factor in the mandatory taxes and assays affording to relevant state laws and… how does federally required minimum wage sound?

Troy

View from the other side. We recently advertised for an Electronics Technician. Our primary posting was on the Gov of Canada jobbank. We linked to it from LinkedIn trying to drive people to the posting that had actual instructions.

What LinkedIn did instead was start accepting applications on our behalf entirely without prompting. Furthermore, we weren’t aware we were getting applications there until we got a message from LinkedIn telling us that we had reached our cap and would have to pay some premium to allow more applicants. The hell…

Also, other sites like indeed.com and such harvested it and were accepting applications, even though we don’t have accounts there and cannot receive the applications.

What do you think this looks like as a job seeker? You just get silence on these applications and think you’re doing everything right, but really the websites are just trying to hold your eyeballs there and don’t actually care if you get a job at all.

Unless the job says something like “we are only accepting applicants via LinkedIn”, assume that your resume is going to a black hole there.

Anyway, we just sent an offer to someone who applied using the instructions we gave on our initial posting on the job bank.