Interviewing Interns ... joy

Sat, 02 May 2015 03:02:57 GMT

Yesterday's post is a great example of the trash show that is my life. I started with a great idea and plan, had half the thing written in my head, wanted to get all these great project & hobby ideas out. Then: Came home exhausted, had a bit too much wine, a bit too little sleep, tried to write it while having text chats and watching Netflix, and.... got about 25% of my ideas out then trailed off at the end when I fell asleep on the couch.

I'm a horrible garbage dump of execution. XD

This week I've been helping with some interviews at work - one of the fellow managers wants to bring in a summer intern to work in the labs, and since he's a very new manager HR asked me to help sit in as someone familiar with interviewing (oh god am I familiar with interviewing). Interviewing interns is an interesting experience -- they're so young!!! Our HR guy had to - casually AND NOT formally, kind of as a joke - remind me to not be my usual self (I am pretty tough in interviews) and instead I totally aged/embarrassed myself at the first one by asking whether she was in the new Chem-E building at UAkron. Turns out she's too young to remember the old building. There is no old building. She's a sophomore. Just shoot me now, hide me under a rock, I'm done. *SHAKES CANE*

Anyway. It's hard to be rough on them because they're literally tiny bb students and I was quite welcoming and generous in the interviews themselves - if nothing else it's helping them get experience - but some of them really just committed some of my "favorite" ... interview or resume no-nos and I had to stop myself really hard from turning an interview into a coaching session. (Example: one had work experience listed on his resume in long periods of time to represent the whole period he had worked that job, when it was in fact a part-time job he had worked in small increments. Listing it that way with no other information makes it look like you're trying to pass it off as a fulltime continuous employment, which it isn't, and even if it was an honest mistake rather than being malicious it then makes your resume confusing which is the last thing you want your resume to be! And that's just one. There was some hard-core "selling" on the resumes which could have just been word fodder for itty bbs with no real experience, but I still think there are far more valuable ways to use that real estate.)

It did get me thinking though. I have 11 years of hiring experience at this point and while I don't need any extra work in my life I do enjoy -- giving advice, coaching, that kind of thing. (Teaching, I guess, but on a small scale - I don't have the necessary give-a-fucks about general humanity to survive as a teacher. That job would defeat me.) I've been asked by Case before to be a part of panels for hiring, interviewing, etc. It may be something I want to get more involved in - set up some networking and see if I can start becoming a real resource. I like feeling like I'm helping young kids get jobs - especially if I could focus on ladies in STEM, not because other ladies/gents/others aren't deserving of help, but because that's where my experience is and where I could really shine.

I don't (yet) give back to my college as an alumni, mainly because I have mixed feelings about that whole system, but this would be a way of paying it back / forward that I would be happy to do.

See, tonight I can easily wrap this post up, because I took a 2-hour nap after work and have only had one glass of wine. :D

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this unfortunate hobo turns 29

Tue, 03 May 2011 15:45:44 GMT

So I'm 29 today. That's pretty awesome. It's pretty old!

So here are, in absolutely no order, 29 Life Lessons from Sev.

( the most zen i will ever be )

Also:
- Cock jokes are always funny
- My friends are pretty awesome
- I fucking like cats okay
- My own tags will never not make me happy

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the trick is to keep breathing

Interviewing Interns ... joy

this unfortunate hobo turns 29