Little typo

So I was filling out interns evaluations. Generally the word PUBIC is not one you want to read on an evaluation, but there it was.

Some words leave a bad taste!

I've been doing interviews for interns again and  I interviewed someone from a university with a borderline GPA. He's at the lowest cutoff. Of course that doesn't concern me  so long as I can hire the person and they do the job I want them to do.

One of the questions I ask these days is "Why should I hire you instead of any other student at your university in your program".  I guess he figured since his grades are lower then many of his classmates, he was going to play with that. So he said that  he actually understands the material. That he doesn't memorize it the night before to vomit it up for the exam.

Yes he used the word VOMIT.  Usually people use regurgitate, since it's closer to the actual process.Either way, you shouldn't use the word VOMIT in an interview unless it was brought up by the interviewer. I figure in some fields, like janitorial, it might come up in interviews. Or even in nursing......

But when applying for an internship in an engineering company the word vomit, has really no place in the interview. I was on an empty stomach at the time and the word affected me adversely.  Hell it's 2 weeks later and that's all I remember about this interview. He didn't stand out as being knowledgeable or interesting. No he stood out because he used the word VOMIT.

In case you're wondering, I actually felt nauseous after this interview.

Long week before release.

Most who read this blog know I was shipped to Toronto Monday July 21st and came back on the Thursday. I was sent to Toronto because the company I work for is producing a product based on an AMD chip.

In some ways it was a thrill, because ATI technologies, has been my favourite graphics vendor for over 20 years.  It was too bad that it wasn't before the merger with AMD. I suspect the company mentality was different before being bought by AMD

The products I've been working on are out as customer samples and I have to get a release on our website by Monday morning.  I've been working on this project for easily a year and it's been a long year. This project has by far been the most confusing, with the least possible documentation.

Usually I get some form of specification which helps me understand the software and drivers. This time, nothing. Trying to get information is like pulling teeth.  Also because those responsible for drivers aren't in our building or even in the same city,  and the guy who is our go to guy at AMD, while being an outstanding human being, is a lousy tester. He tries, he really does. But it means I get to revisit scenarios over and over and over again.  To prove to my bosses, that yes, the problem is still there. Why they aren't seeing it at AMD... your guess is as good as mine.

Some time ago, I ranted about Eyefinity cards. I talked about how much more congenial our software and interface is then theirs, but how their graphics engine was far more awesome then any of ours. Well we will now have the best of both worlds. Our very user friendly, configurable software interface with their kick-ass hardware.

I have to say, I've been validating the AMD version for 8 months and our spin-off since mid july, my specialty is to find catastrophic fails in display drivers.  Their driver is reasonably well validated, as I found very little display driver issues per say.  Most of the issues I'm finding are communication issues between their driver and their low level interface which talks to our interface. 

This week and next week are going to be killers, with many hours of overtime. Hopefully what gets posted on the web Monday as a beta for customer samples is going to be a success. We worked really hard like headless chickens in the past few months, would be nice to see some results.

Of course while all this is going on, this is when I start going through CVs and am doing interviews for hiring interns that would start in January. I started yesterday with 3 CVs and it's going to continue. The timing is so wrong but if I miss the deadlines I miss having interns and that would be a bad thing. 

Also our June equipment budget  only got approved in July and while the purchaser was on vacation, so while I'm trying to get this release out the door, I've been flooded with new equipment . Most is unpackaged but I still have a huge box of items to tag before distributing it.  I have LCD's that are doubled on shelves because I don't have the bandwidth to re organize my benches and my teams work benches. And if this wasn't enough, we got maintenance to postpone waxing our floors THIS week-end. That would have meant that all systems are shut down for week-end, and all cables rolled up otherwise EVERYTHING gets caked in wax.. That's going to be next week-end.

3 Months later and finally I get more feedback

I ranted 3 months ago about a comment that I was 'too rough" during interviews. Turns out  after my boss went digging deeper, that there was ONE complaint made by a student I interviewed in the past 2 years.  Apparently the student felt intimidated and uncomfortable during the interview and felt it was cut short and he was not given a chance to prove himself.

I'm not surprised he felt uncomfortable. Most of the time I feel highly uncomfortable during interviews and I know that makes others feel uncomfortable. Nothing I can do about that.  I was asked to make sure I keep interviews no shorter then 15 minutes. So if I have nothing else left to ask student I can ramble on about the positions I have to fill and the job in general and in particular. I usually come off as passionate and heavily into my job and that should not make anyone feel uncomfortable.

If it was just the ONE student, who I didn't hire, presumably because he didn't meet my criteria, given I interview 50 students on average every 4 months, it's really not that big of a deal. Fact they made it out like a big deal at first is what upset me. I'm also presuming this student was not hired, probably why he complained.  Honestly though if you don't have a good fit with the person interviewing you and you will be working for them you might spend the entire time you're working there feeling like your boss hates you...

Also the other complaint is that I was not giving them enough work. However that's not my fault. If I have no work to give I cannot give it. I'm exceptionally good at inventing things for them to do including reprogramming all the boards in my rack.

So now the fall candidates have all been chosen by my male counterpart who runs  the hardware team, I'll be interviewing again for winter interns. 

Vague feedback months or years later...

So my boss pulls me aside the other day to tell me that Human resources have gotten complaints from prospective interns that my interviews are 'too rough'.

I haven't interviewed since February it's now late April. And after talking more to my boss, he says he's not even sure it was a complaint from February it could have been from even longer ago.

Well how much more vague can you be? Do you know if the students who complained were those who didn't get hired and did it not occur to them that perhaps the student complained because they didn't get hired?

I'm not sure how I can be too rough, other then by being "awkward'.  I mean I don't grill them on their knowledge anymore because feedback I'd gotten from the students I hired is that since most of them could not answer half  of the questions they left the interview feeling they did miserably and were shocked they were chosen.

So we ask them about their favourite classes, and the first operating system they used. What PC or laptop they own and if they can tell us the components. We also ask them about previous work experience and I generally ask them why I should chose them instead of another classmate of theirs I'd be interviewing.

I'm not sure how that's being rough.

Should I be calling them in and offering them coffee, and then asking them what they hope to be doing during the internship and telling them it's going to be ok.  Or perhaps I should hold their hand and whisper sweet nothings to them so that they don't feel it's an interview. Like WHAT THE FUCK? A job interview is supposed to be stressful. It's not supposed to be a fucking picnic!!!!

All I can say is that anyone who finds ME too rough, had better develop some balls because they will never survive as engineers. They think I'm rough, wait till they run into one of our owners. He barks at people.

I keep forgetting that this is the snowflake generation and these kids think that the world has to be their friend.  I don't know how any of these kids will survive at work.  I can see them going to HR to whine that their boss looked at them funny or worse gave them a tight deadline.

Survived

I survived the day from hell. I managed to make it to the dentist by 10:30 for an 11am appointment. Except that they didn't take me till 11:15, which mean my appointment ran to 12:15.  So I called from the lobby at 12:20 to tell our receptionist to advise the HR lady that I was potentially going to be late for my 1pm appointment.

To make sure I was not late instead of taking the decarie service road to the 40, I actually took the Decarie highway.  It wasn't jammed, despite the snow. I could not believe a woman from Ontario driving an SUV cut in at the very last minute to get on the 40, and was driving 40km per hour, on a highway with a minimum of 60. The minute I could, I got out from behind this moron.   In the third lane of the 40 I was comfortable going 90km per hour.  So long as there is no one close to you, snow should not prevent you from driving.

I made it back to work at exactly 1:02pm, despite having to go park on the street because the front parking was full.  I took an extra 5 minutes to wolf down a tabouleh salad with feta, before doing my first interview.

Would you believe I was running 2 minutes late and some yahoo from another division just walked right into my interview with a comment like "It's my turn now". I asked her politely to let me finish. It's one thing to respect interview schedules, but to barge in while someone else is interviewing after they go beyond the allotted time by 2 or 3 minutes is called lack of respect. I mean WTF?  When I walked out a few minutes later ,the woman ignored me and just barged in. I tried to tell her you can't just walk into someone's interview. But she was just going to be a bitch. So I complained to our HR lady. That  this yahoo needs to learn some manners. We don't just  barge in and then when we're told to wait, SLAM the fucking door?!?!?!  Mature!  and they say I"M MOODY! HA!!!!

I did the 5 interviews. This university thinks it's giving their students a better chance for jobs by having us decide to hire their students first [last day to tell them who we want is this Friday, all other schools is next Friday]. Well not having seen other candidates, I was only comfortable choosing one of their students. This girl was awesome, the first female candidate I interview that has built her own PC, and is totally comfortable with hardware.

Besides this school is giving their students bad advice. I'm told they tell the students to apply to all the jobs they like whether or not they meet the requirements.  Well for a QA job that doesn't fly. If you can't read requirements, I will think you will not do QA properly.  If I ask for first or 2nd year bachelors students,  I will put in the garbage all the resumes from people in 3rd, and 4rth year bachelors degree, and all the masters students.    Also we have a minimum required GPA, if you don't meet it, I can't hire you. If I cannot hire you, then I certainly won't waste my time interviewing you! I received a pile of 20 CV's from that university. I interviewed 5, the other 15 went straight into the garbage.

Oh what a fun day today will be

I have a dentist appointment around 11 this morning, to get my teeth cleaned and checked for problems.  I should be back at work by 1, and then I get to do 4 or 5 job interviews for summer internship by myself because my colleague is on vacation at the moment.

Just to make life more interesting, I will be driving to my dentist in a snow storm.  We're expecting about 10 cms or 4 inches.  Weee.

Because of the fact that I have to get going early to be at work early to do an hour or so before the dentist, I barely slept last night, kept waking up or being awake. Yay me.

A little surreal.

This week has gone by so fast it's almost surreal. 

It's Wednesday night and I don't know where the time flew. I didn't really do much of anything this weekend other then to veg out. Went shopping on monday with my gf.  Went to Carrefour Lava [as my gf's auto correct says]. We went early morning around the time the stores were opening. Thank God. By noon we were both ready to kill a few people. 

I swooned. They opened a Vans store in Carrefour Laval. I'll have an easier time getting my favourite Vans. I know there is one downtown and I went once or twice, but their layout was really not conducive in me finding the right shoes. I wonder if there will be a boxing day sale at the Vans store.. Swoon.   I can't explain why I like skater wear, but the past 10 years or so, I wear Vans running shoes and the past 5 years it's been Billabong dresses.  And last summer one of my favourite combo's was the Vans with the hot pink laces, and a Billabong dress with hot pink detail, seen in the scenic photo below.

In August 2013, at the lookout on Mont Royal.

Old Navy had some of my favourite long sleeved cotton tops for $5 a piece. I took 5 home of different colours. The purple, burgundy and hot pink one were v-necks. the Monet blue, and charcoal grey are extra stretchy and scoop neck.

Work has been so busy for me. Usually the week between my interns I have to set up equipment for them.  Anyway I'm realizing many of the systems don't have windows 8.1 on them.  It's quite the task to set them all up.  But trying to make sure each intern has 2 systems available to them fully configured.  Dunno if I will succeed. Maybe they will just have 1 that is and one that isn't that will get rotated out once I have others done.  I have work for weeks, doing it between other tasks.

Tidbits for THursday.

I'm finally feel a bit better. Will probably not be on muscle relaxants today. My back isn't twinging this morning. But I'm sure by 2pm it will be. I was at work yesterday, though not particularly productive. However it was good that I went, as I ended up having 4 interviews that morning and my partner in crime didn't come in the morning, as he was meeting a new pediatrician for his son.  So I did the interviews alone. Most of them this time around I did alone. I liked 2 out of the 4 I saw yesterday a lot and that sucks because I only have 1 position left opened.  However I cannot complain, this is the most students that have applied for a winter internship.

Interestingly, I've noticed we get more students that were originally living in France. They either recently migrated and redoing their engineering degree, or alternatively studying in both France and Quebec depending on the year.   I've actually had one in an interview say to us because we started the conversation in English, that "aren't we in Quebec, shouldn't we speak French?".  Yeah. That didn't impress anyone. He was very full of himself. And where his comment shot him in the foot, is that I was called later and asked if this student spoke any English. When I mentioned his comment, he didn't get offered a job someone was considering him for, but hadn't checked his English skills.

I can't believe Montreal has bought an armoured car? To what end? To use against a few protesting students?  I know Montrealers like to protest but seriously, an armoured car?  Our tax dollars at work.

Why bother having a CO-OP program - RANT

I've been hiring interns I think for the past 18 years.  I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Usually though it was the students, not with the support staff in the universities that deals with the students.

I've had issues with one particular University with one of their stage coordinators and until this summer, I had not hired anyone from that University, in probably close to 10 years.  Because of the way I was treated by their coordinator.  So finally I chose to interview a few students from there. For starters we had all sorts of issues with Skype. It was extremely painful to interview that way because the voice kept cutting in and out, if the student on the other end even moved a hair while sitting   You would think that they would have tested their Skype setup before the interview day. 

I've interviewed a student once through MSN messenger video chat who was in  Jbeil Lebanon, and although he could not receive video, I had an easier time with that interview despite Lebanon's piss poor internet service of the time. The audio and video I received from him was sufficient and he understood me. 

In the end after the lousy skype interviews, I had chosen one student. I chose to make her an offer, but not to the other two that I interviewed because I did not think they were a good fit for me.   What they were expecting me to do is to send them a message that said

Student a  - 1
Student b - 2
student c - 3

What I did was the equivalent of this. Which I have every right to do.

Student a - 1
student b - 0
student c - 0

My HR person just basically sent them the name of student a, as being the only student we were making an offer to.  On a day where she was out of the office, the coordinator decided to call her.  He called her backup who said "This isn't anything that can't wait till tomorrow, wait till she's in". So he called my colleague who interviews with me, but got his voice mail. Next he called me. That's when he started saying "It's obvious you don't understand our ranking system, so I'm calling to explain it to you". That's when I said to the guy, that I was making one offer. He says "What if she refuses, you get no one". I answered "I have students from other universities I'd rather make an offer to". He tried again to explain to me the ranking system. I told him that I've been dealing with ranking systems for coop programs for 15 years, besides if he has a beef with HR, he should talk to HR.

Student A did accept my offer and she's working with me. She was a good fit in the team, and is doing an awesome job.  Normally during the internship, the  coordinator is supposed to come for a visit. That has to be scheduled through our HR department. But no, the coordinator sent me and the student an email saying he'd be at my office on a particular day at 2:30.  Well that's nice, but 1) what if I was meeting another coordinator from another university that day 2) I was on vacation 3) there were no free conference rooms to reserve for that day and time, because it's not like I can take him to my desk, I work in a restricted area.  So I forwarded the email to HR, who called him to tell him that he has to coordinate with HR to schedule appointments with my student and I.  It's still up in the air as to when this will happen because the coordinator managed to really piss off the HR lady.

Now let's think this through. The internship program is to benefit the students. So they get some experience in the field they are hoping to work in. The support staff in the universities that help make this possible, should not be pissing off employers. They should be working hand in hand with the HR department of the companies they deal with.  We almost always have one HR person dedicated to handling everything that goes with the internship programs. I've worked with every single one of them and they were all competent organized people.  Rarely did it happen in the past that a coordinator would phone or email me directly. It all went through the HR department.  Now all of them do it. So I get phone calls and emails from 6 different schools. From various coordinators and their support staff. I get spammed by all sorts of emails from the various universities for all sorts of things I should never be emailed for.  Like each time the school has an award presentation I'm invited.  Let's be honest here. Who goes to award ceremonies other then those receiving awards and their close family and friends?

Despite the fact HR asked all of them to contact HR only, they all try me. And I have one broken record CALL OR EMAIL HR!  Apparently I was the first who had that attitude and forwarded to HR all the emails I get, and send emails to advise HR when I get phone calls. Now all the other managers who hire students do the same.

I mean the 3 main universities with COOP programs are Sherbrooke, Concordia and ETS [Ecole de Technologie Superieure ].   I have beefs with all 3. One of them tends to send me candidates from first year bachelors to masters students.  I now know why. The staff tell the students "apply to all jobs that you like and ignore the pre-requesites".    One of them spams me constantly with junk mail, despite asking over and over and over to be removed from their mailing lists.  Their website to get resumes is woefully painful. I had 15 applicants for my fall 2013 position and it took me over 2 hours to print the resumes of those that had adequate GPA. 

IT's a great idea to put everything electronically. Sadly when I interview either at their campus or when I interview in a room at work, I don't have access to even a laptop to view the resume. So I need to print them regardless. So having their whole system electronically has not improved things  but has made it more difficult. For instance it's very nice that I can do the evaluation online but it's a pain to print it so that we can keep a copy for our files for instance. Doesn't print very well. PRobably done on purpose by some environmental nazi. to discourage printing.

Same university again, about a year ago, I chose a whole bunch of candidates to interview and then never got given an interview schedule for the day I was supposed to interview at their campus.   And then the last university is the one I've been bitching about with the coordinators from hell.  I had issues with them and Skype  4 months ago. Apparently the Skype interviews that were supposed to happen today,  got completely messed up by the university . HR person sent all her instructions for how to connect to Skype via email.  When she called to ask why no one has connected by Skype to the manager, she was told that she hadn't provided the right information.  They blatantly lied to her twice today.  I'm so looking forward to meeting that coordinator. When he asks how come we rarely hire students from their university I am prepared to give him an earful, more then he cared to know that's for sure.

Then there's McGill, Polytechnique and UQAM who also sends us interns. One of them I can't really complain about. I don't get many candidates but the ones I've hired have been exceptional.  Another one for some reason now for the 3rd time in a row sends me resumes of students who are registered full time for the period for which they are applying for an internship. HR assures me that it says these are full time positions. How do those students expect to do 5-6 classes during the day and work full time? Or when I'm looking for winter positions they  are applying for summer positions. So CV's go into reject pile.   The last university, rarely sends me students at any other time then for the summer positions. But then I have so much more choice in the summer that their students don't get a fair chance sometimes.

New batch of interns today

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.

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.

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? "

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.

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.

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.

A rant about a nasty internship student coordinator.

I was ranting about Universities and student candidates for internship  yesterday and reading yesterday's entry might put you in context for this rant.

I seem to remember getting a larger selection of candidates and from many more universities in the past. Some of is is that the reputation of the company I work for in some circles leaves a lot to be desired so some students just won't apply with us.  Some universities burned their own bridges.

One stage coordinator decided at some point that she was going to teach me a lesson and decided that I was banned from hiring students from her university for 2 years until I resolved some 'issues' in my team. She figured that my colleagues would still hire. However from that point on, we stopped hiring candidates for that position from that school since  I was banned from hiring none of us were hiring.  It was probably the last straw as it was already a major inconvenience to hire their students because they were 2 hours outside Montreal and we had to interview them on the university campus.

My boss didn't feel I had done anything wrong, since a large percentage of the problems this university's stage coordinator  had with 'me' were really issues she had with the internship position itself.  I also suspect she was unclear on the concept of what engineers do.

She complained that it wasn't up to her students to do technicians work. Did she really expect students with 6 courses in engineering to be able to do development?  My boss, who was formerly an engineering student told this woman, that he would have gladly mopped the floors in an engineering firm just to see how the company worked when he was attending university!

She complained that students were coming in at 7am and that I wasn't in before 10am and they had no one around to help them out. That one was resolved easily. Students are no longer allowed flex time or to choose their own schedule. They get their immediate supervisors schedule imposed on them or my schedule imposed on them. Exceptions are made if the student has courses and must leave by 4pm. They are  allowed to come in at 8 on those days.  I found this complaint beyond stupid. Until that point students could choose their own work schedule like any other Matrox employee but because some were too immature to take advantage of the opportunity, it's not longer offered.  People who don't want to work generally choose the schedule that overlaps the least possible with the boss to do the least possible.  New employees can no longer ever chose their work schedule.


Another complaint she had was that I wasn't FRIENDLY ENOUGH. That unlike a colleague I had not taken my students out for a beer!! The said colleague at the time was only a few years older then the students and often went for a beer after work. Unlike me who went home to 2 children, and really did not socialize with co-workers ever. My boss said that he was just as quiet and introverted as me and he didn't socialize either with employees and that the role of a boss is to lead work, not to be friends! This stage coordinator was doing her students no favours by letting them think it was ok to expect their BOSS to be their friend.  It can happen but it's very rare.

Another complaint was that even when I was present I was too busy and could not give enough hand holding to the students, and  that they all answered to me. My boss told her that he had absolutely swamped me with work and it was amazing that I managed it that well. That unfortunately between layoffs and departures I was the only person with the knowledge to help the students with the tasks they were doing and that yes people at work are BUSY!!!

She tried to make it sound like I was a horrible boss and while she did a number on me, she attacked me and said things that no professional should ever say in a professional meeting.  I was so upset, that my boss and the HR person of the time also scheduled to have a meeting with her about my case.  Of course neither HR girl or my boss were attacked personally so they could defend me rationally.  After the person finished her attack the HR person said that I'd been at the company for 10 years and had had at least 200 students/permanent employees go through my department, and there was never a complaint made to HR by anyone who's worked for me.  

In fact my company did nothing to resolve 'my problems' because they didn't deem they were 'my problems'. I took out the one positive criticism, that I needed to share the knowledge with my team and made modifications. It's helpful if I don't have all the students answer directly to me. But as soon as I get someone up to speed on a project and it works well with the students, the person leaves and I'm back to square one again.

I know it was one particularly bitchy student from that school, who complained about me.  The coordinator claimed the last 6 students that worked for me complained, but she just warped the data. Sure the students will all say that the stage is a technician level stage, because it is.  It's not a complaint for most it's just the honest truth.

She said the students didn't like their experience so they didn't' come back for a second stage. As far as I know out of the 6, 4 came back for a 2nd stage, including the one who complained, so yeah they were all really traumatized!!  Three of them hated me so much that when they were doing their 2nd stage, they all stopped in at my desk to say hello, some more then once!

The bitchy student was a diva. On the first day when I tried to explain to her what I expected her to do, she cut me mid instructions to tell me it wasn't how you did it.  So I asked her how many years experience she had in testing display drivers. She said none, so I continued and finished explaining what the job she was expected to do. After that day, she did the bare minimum of work. I'd never seen a girl who multitasked so poorly.  She did very little and I'm not sure she realized that she wasn't with us to teach us things but to learn from us.  

Out of the three students I had those 4 months, she was the least productive, spent too much time on the phone chastising her little sister and she was by far the most mouthy. So when I did her evaluation at the end of the stage I did them honestly and hers sucked. Something she didn't appreciate when she realized she had the worst evaluation of them all. 

Maybe she or their stage coordinator thought they would rid my company of the bad seed [me] but I think this student and her coordinator might have been hit with a rude awakening. Just because Ms Diva was a gifted student in imaging, didn't mean that she could tell me or my team what to do or decide how the job was going to be done, a job she knew nothing about and had no experience doing.  When you're a student intern, you aren't given the role of the company's president, unless maybe if your dad is the owner and hers was not!!!!

Some candidates don't deserve consideration

As usual every 4 months I interview a slew of candidates for internship. As per company policy I can only hire students who have a minimum of 2.6/4.0 or 2.9/4.3 GPA. I also put in the job description that we only consider students from first or second year into their Bachelors degree. The main reason is, often if they are 3rd or 4th year, they have had enough programming classes to be able to work on small development projects, but I have no such work to offer them.  I've often hired students, that after 2 weeks of doing testing, come to see us and want to do 'development'.  When you tell there there is none in their job, they stay pissed off and do the least possible the rest of the workterm.  First and second year students don't have enough experience to expect development jobs and overall tend to be a better fit in my team.

The worst internship to fill is the winter one, that goes from January to April.  The easiest to fill is the summer internship, From May to August where I get too many good candidates for the few jobs I have. To give you an example, currently I have 6 positions to fill and I got 15 applicants. I had to brush off 5 candidates because they did not meet GPA requirements, despite the fact that on our job description, it clearly states the minimum GPA we accept. For a summer internship I could get 100-150 resumes for the same 6 positions. [Then I screen via GPA and if they have finished more then 2 full years of University]

Since I had 10 candidates left after screening, I just chose to interview all of them. Generally I don't spend much time reading cover letters as the majority quote at least 1 paragraph from our corporate website which tells me very little about them. The resume itself I skim through to get a sense of prior jobs and experiences. Generally though I base my selection of candidates on candid responses in interviews and not much on their writings. 

The first candidate we interviewed apparently seemed surprised that we were interviewing for winter semester, and was looking more for a summer job.  I'm not sure why I would interview students for summer in OCTOBER!!!!  Then just to make things interesting he proposed a schedule of the hours he could work on 3 days a week!!!  I'm not sure how I can use a student that comes 3 hours here and 4 hours there. I can use a student like that AFTER they have been with us full time for 4 months and were exceptional in anticipating the jobs needing to be done.

I thought I had just run into a clueless postulant. I wasn't so lucky. Today I got 2 more resumes from this particular university, and when I was looking for the students GPA, I realized both students were registered for winter classes according to their transcript.  One clearly say they want a winter internship, but I'm not sure how this applicant would manage it if they are registered in no less then 6 classes in Winter 2013. The other had no cover letter, and in really small print on their resume said they were looking for Summer internship.

I was so disappointed that I asked my HR person to contact the schools internship coordinator and ask why students with a full course load are applying for internship positions.   These are not part-time jobs after school hours. This is a full-time position between 9-5pm, 5 days a week. I have no interest in wasting time to see a student who I cannot hire full time for Winter 2013.

I can hear someone argue with me that I'm being inflexible. Perhaps, but the internship I have to offer is in quality assurance.  It is of utmost importance that the candidate knows the difference between a failure and a success.  If a candidate cannot follow simple instructions, how can I trust them to put quality into a product in a timely fashion?

Interviewing students again

We've been interviewing students for the fall internship the past couple of weeks. We have 5 positions opened and we had only found 4 candidates so we were still interviewing yesterday. 

One of the 2 students we interviewed was friends with a student we had 2 years ago that we kept on part time because he was such a sweetheart, did the work well and he wanted to stick around.  The student said all the right things, seemed eager and interested and the descriptions of the job we gave him seemed to enthrall him.  So we made him an offer, which he accepted. He'd obviously also heard good things from the student who worked with us.

The other student had never read the job description. It was obvious that he was at a point where he can't take any more classes until he does his first internship and he had applied to every single job he could apply to.  He showed up at the interview not only not knowing what he was applying for, but smelling of desperation. It's never a good thing to smell of desperation. That's definitely not a good way to sell oneself! 

Of course as usual I got large piles of CV's and I had to sort first by GPA, I can't hire someone who's GPA is too low, company policy, then I remove anyone who isn't a first or 2nd year. After that I start looking at cover letters. Anyone who's cover letter is taking about a division different from the one I work for is also not going to get an interview. Either make a generic cover letter that applies to all the company or make a different cover letter for each position you're applying for and watch that if you're applying in Graphics, you don't ramble on about how much you like our Imaging division!  Especially for a Quality Assurance job.  You need to pay attention to detail, if you can't even put the right thing on your resume, how can I trust you'll find the problems?

The current interns I have are doing really well. We have one that carried over from last semester. He's a student from UQAM, who was happy to stay on an extra semester especially since his classes were cancelled. So at least he's worked, got more work experience, especially since he's an international student and in his case really improved his English. He decided to do another stage in another team and got the internship for fall. So no matter what happens with school, he's good till winter.  Great kid. 

The other who started in early May are working independently and managing their work well. One student felt she was thrown to the wolves so to speak but is absolutely loving the experience.  She pointed out usually they get months of theory and then get asked to do something, here they got asked to do something and they are learning as they go along. But she also noted it she was really appreciating this experience because it's like nothing she's done before.  Many students are first surprised by the responsibility I give them, but then by the end of the work term feel like they were truly part of the team and it gave them a really good idea of what  working will be like. Especially for engineering students, if they will be responsible for designing things, they need to be able to work by themselves.

Before I went on vacation, I gave them a list of boards that needed to be covered with the drivers and told them to divide the work among themselves and to consult one another if they found issues. At first it was the two girls working on this, and the male student was assigned to another task, and then once it was finished he was to consult them to see what he needed to test. They made their own spreadsheet to keep track of their progress, and have found a plethora of issues.  They are doing the main of the testing because the rest of the team is currently on Wind8ws since it's getting close to release. 

Interviewing time again

Thankfully no interviews this week, but next week I have to go to a university downtown to do some interviews. The day before I'm also going downtown to accompany my girlfriend to her first dentist appointment where he works on her. 

I also will be having stage coordinators coming in to ask about our students next week. That's always fun because when they aren't that good students then I have to bitch about them. It's always harder to say bad things about people then good things. Thankfully the 3 students with us now are actually good workers. One is a bit full of himself, but the guy working with him can see past that and make good use of the resource. :)

Sadly in fall and winter months, the pickings for students are slim so we have to make due with the people we get. The student we like the least, at least does a good job. So the personality we can put up with - well most of us.

Not enough interviews, next week, I have a therapist appointment tonight :)