Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What do y'all make of this?

Pack it in....pack it out!!

SEMPER FI!

Fields of study and schools are not the same either.

Wow, tough crowd. You guys that wanted to know my experience, my profile is filled out. It says IT Guy/BBQ slinger. I'll let y'all guess which one I was applying for.

The interview went great, everybody was happy and relaxed. I was killing it. Not my first rodeo. Then the last question was a follow up, you do have a degree, right? I said no, but I do have an honorable discharge from the USN (for the USMC recon jab), and seventeen recent years of experience doing this job (senior sys admin/virtualization). He was so disappointed as was I. When questioned he admitted it didn't make sense in my case but it was a door that would not open without a brick and mortar four year degree in anything. We parted friends. I'm still SMDH wondering what it must be like working as an assistant to a secretary while packing a degree.

Afterward I discussed it with my wife who was plenty pissed about it. She says that they're a bunch of stupid liberal suits that I wouldn't like working with anyway. I love that woman.

I should add, I actually had two interviews yesterday. The other one went very well. The HR manager asked if I knew what a 'virtual network' was. I bit my tongue and explained system virtualization to her. She took notes. Was that a trick question?

She is background checking me.

I have hired hundreds of people. The way I hired people was to:

1. Write down the things I wanted the new hires to ACCOMPLISH.

2. Hire those who had actually done that in previous jobs.

It was simple. I didn't care if they had degrees (though most professionals did), what they did for fun, whether they were divorced multiple times, etc. I didn't ask them trick questions during the interview to see how they handled "pressure." In fact I saved time by screening them via phone before a personal interview.

And note I didn't ask how they WOULD do something, just how they had done it.

Coincidentally my operation grew 50-fold in revenues over the years. My competitors didn't.

Good luck with your pursuits. I would agree an education and smarts don't always travel together. There are hobbyist with far more sense and skills than many PhD's.

Last position I filled did require a degree, but my final cut came down to a mediocre student, who had fun in college, but several years of experience with super references, against a straight 4.0 walk on water recent graduate using instructors as references. I went with the former, and she was one of the best people I ever worked with. Every reference absolutely raved about how lucky I'd be to pick her up, and the lady could do anything from heavy equipment to electronics and data analysis.

A coworker picked up the latter, but she was always sort of a square peg in a round hole.

Some companies have very strict requirements and even if a hiring manager wants to hire someone, if the candidate has something that bars him hiring the candidate, his hands are tied.

I wouldn't get bummed about it, the more rules, procedures and policies a company has, the harder it is to get work done and the more frustrating the job.

If you want a frustrating hiring process, I know of a large multinational corporation that takes nearly a year to hire an employee. You see the position posted on their website and have to fill out the application. Then two months later you'll get a call from HR for a generic phone interview. Then 2-3 months later you'll get a real face to face interview, but it will be with a team of three people going through a mix of technical, touchy feely and bs questions. Then 2-3 months before they make an offer and then several more months to starting work for them.

Funny thing is I went through their application/interview process several times, and no I never got an offer. But then I thought about the type of people that work there and all the corporate bs and politics they have to go through and realize that I was so glad that I never hired on as I would have been miserable.

My current gig was the complete opposite. The manager called me up and said if I was interested in a position he wanted to hire me. I applied on line and within a week I had an offer letter. I didn't even have to interview for the position.

If you're good at what you do and have skills that are in demand, you'll never want for employment. Don't sweat the companies that you don't hire on for. Most often in hindsight you'll be thankful you didn't work there.

Thanks guys for the support. I'm ok, got another interview request today. I was just flabbergasted that after admitting I was perfect fit, they couldn't get past my lack of degree.