This summer I'm only allowed 3 interns because some moron manager in another division asked for an unrealistic number of interns, so the guy deciding cut everyone's numbers drastically. Even those who had realistic numbers. So despite needing 6 interns I got 3. I'm not stressing out over it, in fact I'm just going to take all my vacation this summer. Not going to stress over the fact I'm short staffed during vacation time.
I'm praying that because we lack quantity that we will get quality. I had one intern that finished 2 weeks ago, that I never want to see again. I've never seen anyone want to work but do anything but the tasks assigned. Or to do them in such a way that he's completely unproductive and leave a huge mess behind. The funny part is how clueless he was. A couple of weeks before his stage was over he asks me if he can use me as a reference and I answer "I'm not sure you want to do that, I'm very honest and you may not like my answers". And he looked at me completely puzzled. Read between the lines. He fucked up bad and I gave him a chance to redeem himself in another job without adding my 2 cents. I hope he does better in that job, because his career in engineering isn't going to go particularly far.
Showing posts with label intern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intern. Show all posts
Monday, May 06, 2013
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Cold sores
Apparently my stress levels haven't gone down, as I woke up this morning with a large festering cold sore on the edge of my right nostril. It's leaking and swelled up. Will not be pretty later today. And I didn't even blow my nose, like wtf?
I have an intern that is really pissing me off. Other then the fact he pulled a fast one last week - he left at noon on Friday, didn't ask for permission, just said goodbye to colleagues near his desk and left at lunch time! He also tried to put overtime on his timesheet which despite fact interns cannot do overtime. He's also ignored my direct orders and not run the tests I asked him to run, to debug a problem he found and I didn't want engineers to waste their time on. I asked him to run a script overnight at 4:30 pm. Despite not leaving before 6pm he didn't manage to ask or run the test I asked him overnight. Not to outdo himself, he did it again last night. Two days in a row.
Sadly this poor intern is now in my cross hairs. I'm a great boss for people with motivation,and initiative, I give you a lot of latitude to do your thing. Don't do something to blow my trust. Once it's blown I trust nothing you do or say. This student has managed to make it there with his mistakes the past 2 weeks. What did he did because his mid-term evaluation was good that it was a reason to start being a moron? Does he not realize that he's also getting evaluated at the end and I will not forget how he disobeyed direct instructions.
I have an intern that is really pissing me off. Other then the fact he pulled a fast one last week - he left at noon on Friday, didn't ask for permission, just said goodbye to colleagues near his desk and left at lunch time! He also tried to put overtime on his timesheet which despite fact interns cannot do overtime. He's also ignored my direct orders and not run the tests I asked him to run, to debug a problem he found and I didn't want engineers to waste their time on. I asked him to run a script overnight at 4:30 pm. Despite not leaving before 6pm he didn't manage to ask or run the test I asked him overnight. Not to outdo himself, he did it again last night. Two days in a row.
Sadly this poor intern is now in my cross hairs. I'm a great boss for people with motivation,and initiative, I give you a lot of latitude to do your thing. Don't do something to blow my trust. Once it's blown I trust nothing you do or say. This student has managed to make it there with his mistakes the past 2 weeks. What did he did because his mid-term evaluation was good that it was a reason to start being a moron? Does he not realize that he's also getting evaluated at the end and I will not forget how he disobeyed direct instructions.
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Why bother having more then 1 employee?
I'm not sure what's up with the internship programs at the Universities, but none of them seem to understand that companies are not run by 1 person and that they have HR departments. For some reason the minute they cannot reach a person in HR, they call me. Like I work for HR?
I work in software quality assurance. Perhaps next time they call I will discuss about them the bugs I'm currently working on. I mean they call me to discuss stuff that is not part of my job description and then they are surprised that I don't want to talk to them.
I get interns. I interview them, train them, work with them. I am not responsible for the hiring process or answering anything that is the perview of a HR department. I cannot even decide how many interns I am getting. That is all chosen by other people.
So next time you can't reach someone in a company are you going to call the entire company and talk to everyone? It seems like the people who work at internships programs in Universities do.
If I have to deal with the 10 universities that I might hire students from and take all their phone calls and emails that would take up to 50% of my time. And it's not part of my job description. I'm not sure why they don't understand that.
Next time one of them calls I will discuss in great depth whatever problem I'm having in QA at that point. When they tell me that's not part of their job, I'll tell them "Well I thought you called to discuss my QA issues, why else would someone call someone in QA? "
I work in software quality assurance. Perhaps next time they call I will discuss about them the bugs I'm currently working on. I mean they call me to discuss stuff that is not part of my job description and then they are surprised that I don't want to talk to them.
I get interns. I interview them, train them, work with them. I am not responsible for the hiring process or answering anything that is the perview of a HR department. I cannot even decide how many interns I am getting. That is all chosen by other people.
So next time you can't reach someone in a company are you going to call the entire company and talk to everyone? It seems like the people who work at internships programs in Universities do.
If I have to deal with the 10 universities that I might hire students from and take all their phone calls and emails that would take up to 50% of my time. And it's not part of my job description. I'm not sure why they don't understand that.
Next time one of them calls I will discuss in great depth whatever problem I'm having in QA at that point. When they tell me that's not part of their job, I'll tell them "Well I thought you called to discuss my QA issues, why else would someone call someone in QA? "
Friday, January 11, 2013
Winter intern Saga finally finished?
I was desperate to find to find 2 more interns back in November, and through the help of a previous intern, I found 2 more candidates. Well come January 7th, the first day for my interns, one of them showed up at 10am, because the cab he took got lost!?!?!! [still means he left home too late].
One of them didn't have a work permit or a Social Insurance Number. This is something that that cannot be by-passed. When the student was hired in early December he was clearly told he needed both. He called HR in early January to ask if it was needed. So his contract was voided.
Late in December I got a call from a stage coordinator asking if I still had opened positions. At that point I didn't. However I called her back January 7th, to ask if she still had candidates, she had one. Then I realized his GPA was lower then what I was allowed to hire, so I asked if I could get an exception. That took several days to get approval. Then I was told, that I had to make sure I liked the guy and not just hire him because I was desperate. In the end we interviewed the candidate on Thursday and it turns out he has skills that the HQA guy can use since we're supposed to share an intern.
The intern who showed up late, also seems to require an inordinate amount of hand holding, and has less skills then we thought he did. So his position as an intern is changing and the guy we just hired Friday to start on Monday will be shared between HQA and my team.
Hopefully things will settle down. The HR girl is complaining this is the rudest most self-entitled bunch we've had so far. I don't know, so far the other 4 we hired are doing ok. They seem nice enough and focused enough.
One of them didn't have a work permit or a Social Insurance Number. This is something that that cannot be by-passed. When the student was hired in early December he was clearly told he needed both. He called HR in early January to ask if it was needed. So his contract was voided.
Late in December I got a call from a stage coordinator asking if I still had opened positions. At that point I didn't. However I called her back January 7th, to ask if she still had candidates, she had one. Then I realized his GPA was lower then what I was allowed to hire, so I asked if I could get an exception. That took several days to get approval. Then I was told, that I had to make sure I liked the guy and not just hire him because I was desperate. In the end we interviewed the candidate on Thursday and it turns out he has skills that the HQA guy can use since we're supposed to share an intern.
The intern who showed up late, also seems to require an inordinate amount of hand holding, and has less skills then we thought he did. So his position as an intern is changing and the guy we just hired Friday to start on Monday will be shared between HQA and my team.
Hopefully things will settle down. The HR girl is complaining this is the rudest most self-entitled bunch we've had so far. I don't know, so far the other 4 we hired are doing ok. They seem nice enough and focused enough.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Four Month INTERNSHIP AVAILABLE!
Desperately seeking first and/or second year Engineering university students living in Montreal for internship starting in January 2013. It is a four months internship and replaces the January 2013 semester at school. I still have two positions to fill and am receiving no resumes!
If interested leave me your contact e-mail address in the comments and I will email you the detailed job description including the company name. If you're still interested, you will respond with your resume which I will forward to my HR department and they will schedule an interview.
If interested leave me your contact e-mail address in the comments and I will email you the detailed job description including the company name. If you're still interested, you will respond with your resume which I will forward to my HR department and they will schedule an interview.
Friday, October 26, 2012
The blame game!
A few days ago I blogged about interviews I was doing for internship positions. I mentioned we contacted the school to ask why applicants registered for winter 2013 classes were applying for Winter 2013 internship.
She suggested that perhaps we'd made an offer to a student who was waiting for a work permit and that immigration Canada has been really slow!!! Yeah she blamed the government!!! I'm not sure how that applied to the Jewish kid that grew up DDO who was the one who suggested to us a part-time work schedule.
So tally, for the internship position in winter 2013, from this particular university, I got 4 applicants. Three of the 4 applicants were registered for Winter 2013 courses. The one we interviewed was registered for 3 courses one registered with 4 didn't meet GPA requirements, and the other registered for 6. Two of the 4 applicants mentioned on their CV they wanted a summer job. The one good applicant I lost to another department. I can live with that better then with the quality of their candidates.
I dunno what it is about this university. It's an excellent school, but this pushy candidate lost his chance for an interview. We had another student a few years ago from that school that we terminated 2 months into an 8 month internship, because he just wasn't doing much work at all. Besides that he was creepy, he was spending part of the day staring at his female supervisor. So we put a 30" LCD to use as a barrier. That didn't deter him, he's just roll his chair back and still stare. He spent way too much time surfing the net, in particular the situation in the Gaza strip, so the last month he didn't even have internet access and still that didn't make him more productive.
She suggested that perhaps we'd made an offer to a student who was waiting for a work permit and that immigration Canada has been really slow!!! Yeah she blamed the government!!! I'm not sure how that applied to the Jewish kid that grew up DDO who was the one who suggested to us a part-time work schedule.
So tally, for the internship position in winter 2013, from this particular university, I got 4 applicants. Three of the 4 applicants were registered for Winter 2013 courses. The one we interviewed was registered for 3 courses one registered with 4 didn't meet GPA requirements, and the other registered for 6. Two of the 4 applicants mentioned on their CV they wanted a summer job. The one good applicant I lost to another department. I can live with that better then with the quality of their candidates.
I dunno what it is about this university. It's an excellent school, but this pushy candidate lost his chance for an interview. We had another student a few years ago from that school that we terminated 2 months into an 8 month internship, because he just wasn't doing much work at all. Besides that he was creepy, he was spending part of the day staring at his female supervisor. So we put a 30" LCD to use as a barrier. That didn't deter him, he's just roll his chair back and still stare. He spent way too much time surfing the net, in particular the situation in the Gaza strip, so the last month he didn't even have internet access and still that didn't make him more productive.
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