I just had a call from an agent about a position with a testing company who only take on the creme-de-la-creme, well that’s what the agent liked to think. The agent sent me the job spec and said he’d phone later and ask me what percentage fit I thought I would be with the company.

The job spec came through and appeared OK. The agent phoned later and asked me what I thought so I told him it appeared to fit with what I do. The agent didn’t like that answer and responded that I’d failed him and he was disappointed. The agent then said ‘do you remember the question I asked you on our previous phone conversation?’. He actually wanted a percentage figure for the me and company fit. ‘OK 80%’. 

The agent then went on to mention a team leader position, which wasn’t mentioned on the job spec, and which position did I think I would prefer. I responded ‘either’. The agent pushed and I said the team leader position as I was likely to gravitate to that position. He then said that ‘the job spec is specifically for a technical tester why do you want to do the team leader position?. Because he had widened the scope of the positions available and wanted an answer to that question.  Talk about bloody minded and arguementative. The agent then said ‘you are obviously leaning towards a management position and aren’t really a hands-on tester’. Give me strength. Hands-on testing is virtually all that is on my resume, and 18 years of it. But no he was having none of it I was a manager and that was that. He also said he didn’t like the way the conversation was going (HE didn’t? Ed).

Last week I was accused of being a developer and this week a manager. Earlier I had mentioned to the agent that some people get a bit intimidated by my experience and to bear that in mind. I was trying to be helpful but he didn’t like how that sounded and it was obvious that the whole application was going to fail and looking back I think that was the agent’s aim.

The agent received my resume and I suppose had to consider it as I had all the right experience. Just too much of it, and he was trying to get me out of the picture because that very experience was just too much for the creme-de-la-creme company. So he got rid of me by saying that I was a manager. Tiresome little man. I think I remember I had a conversation about that same company a year or two ago with a similar result.

I removed a few other bits and pieces from this blog and have got the load time down to just under 2 seconds and that’s probably as fast as I’m going to get the page to load.

Got to level 60 in WoW.

I heard from the agent about the insurance company interview last Friday and why it didn’t work out was that the interviewer had to consider ‘who I can work with’. Fair enough. He was a little inexperienced and he couldn’t have worked with me too well as I would have been brain dumping on him a lot of the time and that would have upset his view of the world as the test manager.

I had an interview a couple of weeks ago with a governemnt department which went well. The job was apparently quite techy and they did ask a load of questions on network plumbing and Unix. I surprised myself as I was able to answer correctly nearly all of them. I phoned the agent afterwards and told him that the interview went pretty well and he said he’d let me know when he knew from the interviewer the following day. I never heard another word about that position.

This happens a lot. As my resume has so much on it and with some great references I get interviewed sometimes because my resume is the best one in their in-tray and they feel they don’t have much choice, and if I have more experience than them…….. This is not a good starting point. The interview then becomes a series of skirmishes as they try and trip me up and find reasons for disregarding me. Depressing. Maybe my days testing software are coming to an end. My partner says that I should become a software test trainer of some kind. I have trained some Asians before on how to use Test Director correctly and that did go very well. Maybe that is my future.

Just got a disc from Microsoft named Springboard Series and ran it and it was a promotion for Vista. It did sound a little desperate saying ‘now may be a good time to take another look at Vista’. I think Microsoft have missed the boat with that one, now that people have heard of Windows 7. I think it’s time Microsoft forked with Windows and generated a version for business only and another consumer version with all of the DVD & CD writing stuff, Windows Media Player, Windows Live and everything else and ditch DOS compatibility and give themselves a break. 

I’ve just finished reading Rupert Everett’s autobiography Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins and he does write very well. I never realised he had so much trouble getting acting work, sounds familiar. Read it in a day and it was good. Recommended.