I hired new graduates and I want to share some experiences and give advice!

[THE Bigzoman]

OK, so your university wasn't doing you any favors then. Because spreadsheets are dominant in business, and you should know how to use them.

What's astounding to me is that Universities focused on business majors don't do this as a matter of course. I've never even heard of Stata, and I'd wager a guess that it's not used anywhere near as much in business as Excel.

It's good for them to make you familiar with database systems which are likely more robust than Excel, but start with the simpler most commonly used tools first, then you can look at teaching some of the different types of tools out there.

I'll take your word for it.

I can't imagine it's too difficult to learn. What am I, just a Microsoft Office and a For Dummies book away from being ahead of a good chunk of my competition in the labor market?

Universities fail in preparing students in the workforce in many ways. Theres a reason that they're getting the coddler label these days. A part of it is on me for not using common sense though. Knowing Microsoft Office inside and out should've been intuitive for me.

Ty for your insight btw Reeve (and other employers who have taken the time to post today). I appreciate it.

[Magicpot]

What I found in my Job Interviews so far is that Interviewers could really care less about your paper qualification. They want to see you know wtf you are doing generally and don't completly slack off. Worked for me every time so far and im by no means a genius

[Grimbold21]

Graduates must be different in the Netherlands.

The way the.job.market is here in southern europe, we'll be lucky to get a position related to the course we took.

That and intern exploition.

[Crissi]

So Reeve, since you do skills test in jobs, I need advice. How does one fix anxiety making an interviewee mess up on skills one knows one has? Chronic practice has only helped somewhat >.>

[Barnabas]

Probably the only good tip (that I didn't already know, of course) I've read in the thread.

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You can learn a lot of things even if it isn't related to my subject (construction engineering). I discuss a lot of psychology with my psychologist buddy which I hope will help me understand and handle people better, something which could potentially help me in a management position. This is something I don't learn in school nor is as easy to discuss on the internet with amateurs.

But of course, I'm an optimist. Go ahead and strike me down, cynical entrepreneurs.

Life is an adventure full of learning and discovery. If it makes more sense to not think outside the box with management and you prefer the current tried and true methods of management then by all means go for it. You'll end up with bad managers that never get fired and miserable hard working employees under them. That is the goal at most companies right?

[StayTuned]

Even with hundreds of applicants per position, unless your resume stinks you should at least get called for an interview some of the time, even just statistically speaking. For the position I'm hiring in right now, I received about 25 resumes, 17 of which were absolutely crap and went in the rubbish bin right away. The remaining 8 I called in for an interview.

i dont even know where to get help, because if my resume is rubbish, i can't tell by myself. usually i write an individual letter of motivation in addition... and my internships are far from being rubbish.

by now i assume it's because my last name is a pain to pronounce

[THE Bigzoman]

So Reeve, since you do skills test in jobs, I need advice. How does one fix anxiety making an interviewee mess up on skills one knows one has? Chronic practice has only helped somewhat >.>

Have you tried having a regiment or something prior to facing an obstacle? For me, it's just taking 15 mins out of my morning to sit with my back against the wall, closing my eyes, and thinking about nothing but my breathing. Meditation can do wonders. Getting pumped by listening to music gets thrown somewhere in there too.


If you take the latter route, I even have a recommendation

.

[Deleted]

I always was told that soft skills are more important than hard skills, because without them you won't even get any opportunities, hence wasted time on the hard skills. I study computer science, followed by two jobs, one to deal with customers, manage things, co-operate with my team, other to brush-up my hard skills and learn new techniques to improve my programming, I think that way I shine more in my CV. I always, out of curiosity, apply for jobs and I always get the interviews. If an employer looks that you had some many jobs + a degree, it is a step forward. Off course I will start as an assistant or worse, but with my experience I will probably move up quickly. I am 21 by the way.

And no, I don't think, if I got a degree, I am a god, but I also think, working your ass off won't help either.

[Crissi]

Have you tried having a regiment or something prior to facing an obstacle? For me, it's just taking 15 mins out of my morning to sit with my back against the wall, closing my eyes, and thinking about nothing but my breathing. Meditation can do wonders. Getting pumped by listening to music gets thrown somewhere in there too.


If you take the latter route, I even have a recommendation

.

I do, and for the vast majority of the interview im fine. Then on some of the jobs, I get tested and I just freeze. ike the one for the one I applied to back in March, i basically messed up cause I just forgot what to do, but then when I went home I did it over and over and knew how to do it.

but I also blame the recruiter for not telling me what the job actually was so I could practise. Was just told "Its a GIS job".

[THE Bigzoman]

I do, and for the vast majority of the interview im fine. Then on some of the jobs, I get tested and I just freeze. ike the one for the one I applied to back in March, i basically messed up cause I just forgot what to do, but then when I went home I did it over and over and knew how to do it.

but I also blame the recruiter for not telling me what the job actually was so I could practice. Was just told "Its a GIS job".

Expect the unexpected and be honest about it if you come up short. Shake it off and try to improve upon it. Laugh at yourself. Dump it like a used tampon and move on after you've finished analyzing how you could've handled it better.

From where i'm sitting, it doesn't seem like anxiety. You just gotta get used to and respond better to getting hit in the mouth.

[Crissi]

Expect the unexpected and be honest about it if you come up short. Shake it off and try to improve upon it. Laugh at yourself and dump it like a used tampon and move on after you've finished analyzing how you could've handled it better.

From where i'm sitting, it doesn't seem like anaxiety. You just gotta get used to and respond better to getting hit in the mouth.

Yeah thats what I do. I take everything as a learning opportunity. Just frustrating when hiring managers wont take a chance, ya know?

[Deleted]

Life is an adventure full of learning and discovery. If it makes more sense to not think outside the box with management and you prefer the current tried and true methods of management then by all means go for it. You'll end up with bad managers that never get fired and miserable hard working employees under them. That is the goal at most companies right?

I was hoping to use a more altruistic method of management. Since I'm focusing on becoming a foreman at a construction site someday I'm looking at how to make people feel meaningful (since people feeling like they do meaningful work motivates them more and hence works better and more). And in order to make them feel meaningful you need to come up with altruistic management methods.

But again... I'm in no such position and I cannot tell if I'm a naive optimist or something else.

[Reeve]

So Reeve, since you do skills test in jobs, I need advice. How does one fix anxiety making an interviewee mess up on skills one knows one has? Chronic practice has only helped somewhat >.>

It's painful for me to watch the people who get anxious doing the skills test portion of the interview. I don't know about other interviewers, but I'm not bothered by someone showing their nerves during these moments, because you are in a job interview after all. I try to reassure the person that I'm not necessarily looking for the right answer, and that I just want to see how they go about thinking about the problem. Honestly, I've been debating a bit if I'm just asking too much there.

But from the perspective of the person to be tested, I dunno. I don't think there's a silver bullet to help with anxiety, aside from just being really prepared.

[THE Bigzoman]

Yeah thats what I do. I take everything as a learning opportunity. Just frustrating when hiring managers wont take a chance, ya know?

Their loss, not yours.

Darkness always comes before dawn (though it seems like nights are endless with no help from the moon.) The two differences between those that make it and those that don't lie in inner peace and how they handle getting punched in the mouth. I know it's frustrating, but just keep going.

Off topic: *In Dory Voice* just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

[Reeve]

Find someone with work experience not someone with a degree.

Nine times out of ten, someone who worked during their college career is head and shoulders above candidates who didn't in terms of how they handle the interview and their general judgment, in my experience. They just know how to carry themselves in a professional setting better.

[Crissi]

It's painful for me to watch the people who get anxious doing the skills test portion of the interview. I don't know about other interviewers, but I'm not bothered by someone showing their nerves during these moments, because you are in a job interview after all. I try to reassure the person that I'm not necessarily looking for the right answer, and that I just want to see how they go about thinking about the problem. Honestly, I've been debating a bit if I'm just asking too much there.

But from the perspective of the person to be tested, I dunno. I don't think there's a silver bullet to help with anxiety, aside from just being really prepared.

Well, thats still nice to hear. From an interviewee's standpoint, always afraid of being judged negatively. So knowing instead of thinking "He's such an idiot' that its "I feel sorry he's so nervous" actually makes a difference.

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Their loss, not yours.

Darkness always comes before dawn (though it seems like nights are endless with no help from the moon.) The two differences between those that make it and those that don't lie in inner peace and how they handle getting punched in the mouth. I know it's frustrating, but just keep going.

Off topic: *In Dory Voice* just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

lol thats what I do. I try and channel Usagi's personality as much as possible. ETERNAL HAPPYNESS. It helps me cope with my anxiety problems.

Also, I told them i would need a week off in July for a conference that I already paid for and couldnt get a refund (so absolutely wasnt going to miss it). That miiiight have had an influence on not getting it too :x

[Deleted]

It doesn't come off as very astounding to me.

Excel isn't used at all in my college. With everything involving data, we used Stata. Most times I logged on to excel was to send raw data from excel to Stata.

if you want to do Statistics and data analysis, R is a much better tool and way more used in the industry than Stata. If you know how to code a bit, Python is also pretty amazing with the right libraries.

[Deleted]

Well, thats still nice to hear. From an interviewee's standpoint, always afraid of being judged negatively. So knowing instead of thinking "He's such an idiot' that its "I feel sorry he's so nervous" actually makes a difference.

It's in the employer's interests to make the candidates comfortable, so that they can test for the skills they are looking for. They don't (/shouldn't) want to catch you out - they genuinely want to find out if you are the best person for the job.

From the employer's standpoint, one of the challenges of any recruitment exercise is to make sure that you are testing for the qualities which are most important to you in a prospective employee, rather than other unimportant or less important qualities: interviews and skills tests tend to favour those who are comfortable under a kind of pressure and scrutiny which may not be relevant to the day to day requirements of a given role.

We used to do pen and paper technical tests which were very time constrained and scrutinised. I thought they were terrible, and we've moved to conducting tests which emulate our real working conditions much more closely; the candidates get a PC, can use the Internet, and are given a task to work on. Hopefully, this lets them have time to get comfortable, and to show us how they would approach a real task.

This probably isn't very helpful, since I know many companies do things in a really stressful way. I guess one thing I would say is don't be shy to ask whether there will be a test, and for any details they are happy to divulge. If they are smart, they shouldn't be looking to catch you out on the day; there's no prize for stressing people out and sending them home, after all.

[Ayla]

This probably isn't very helpful, since I know many companies do things in a really stressful way. I guess one thing I would say is don't be shy to ask whether there will be a test, and for any details they are happy to divulge. If they are smart, they shouldn't be looking to catch you out on the day; there's no prize for stressing people out and sending them home, after all.

If I was an interviewer, Id be extremely unorthodox. Id create fake situations that would hopefully put people at ease. Or instead of being across from a desk staring into their soul, Id ask them out for coffee or something.

[Crissi]

If I was an interviewer, Id be extremely unorthodox. Id create fake situations that would hopefully put people at ease. Or instead of being across from a desk staring into their soul, Id ask them out for coffee or something.

yeah..I had 2 people over my shoulder while I was at the computer trying to create what they needed me to create. Nerve wracking is an understatement.

but this was also the company with a HR that said "You think you'll be ok here? Weve had issues with women before".