NO WAY! 8 Reasons I won?t work for your design shop

[quantum]

Interesting article I thought I'd share.

Link

[Mings]

That pretty much goes for any design profession. My previous employer did all the same things and I hated it.

To prove that these types of organizations don't work...my previous employer has laid off 40% of the staff this year. Every single professor I had told me how the place was holding me back and was glad to see me away from there in one way or another. I'm pretty sure the place will be out of business by the end of the year.

[CJR]

I had an interesting experience with that second item when I was interviewing for a development position a couple years ago, so it definitely isn't just a design thing.

I'm a big "my portfolio speaks for itself" kind of person but I don't think that's ever as practical as it should be. Employers are seemingly obligated to make you prove to them why you're good enough for them to hire you, rather than figuring that out for themselves. All of the good HR people I've talked to say it's also their time to prove to you why you should work there, so maybe that should have thrown up a red flag about this place.

It started with a phone interview that must have went okay because I got a call back a little later saying they wanted me to do some homework and then have a second phone call (I got the impression that the second call would have been an in-person interview but I was out of the area). I did the homework and had the call the next morning.

The call was with the guy I had talked to the first time and their lead developer. The lead dev started asking very "interviewy" technical questions testing academic knowledge rather than real-world experience. I told him I knew I wouldn't be able to answer his questions well as I'm self-taught and he had hit what I knew to be my biggest weakness. I'm thinking at this point it's not a fit and that we should just go our separate ways, no big deal. I didn't need the job anyway, I was just testing the waters.

The lead dev then proceeds to absolutely rip into me about how this was my chance to sell myself to them and I should prove why I'm better than any of their other applicants. I've already written them off so I say that maybe I'm not better, maybe they should hire someone else, that's up for them to decide.

The original interviewer comes back on the line and says they'll let me know but before I go there's on more thing: My homework was the best they'd ever seen and they wanted to know if I'd sell it to them. Astonished, I named a price and got it. They said they'd be in touch. I got the check a few days later and never heard from them again.

In short, my body of work spoke for itself and was good enough for them to pay me but not good enough for them to hire me. I wouldn't have wanted to work there anyway but I think how that worked out is a sign of how tied to this ridiculous interview process.