On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 5:09 PM, Henry Paul <he...@paulfam.com> wrote: > On 05/09/2011 04:56 PM, Merrill Oveson wrote: >> <snip> >> So who are you? >> >> Lastly, I feel the relationship between employee and employer is asymmetric. >> I get a job. They decide they don't want me. I'm asked to leave >> immediately - almost never is severance offered, etc. (Has anyone >> ever been let go and been told we'll do everything we can to help you >> find another job?)
You may have wrongful termination grounds on your hands if they don't offer anything, or at least qualification for unemployment. Unless they can prove you violated company rules, etc. >> On the other hand, I get a job and decide I want to leave. Now >> suddenly there's a lot of "How can you do this to us? Could you give >> us a month to find a replacement? If we have questions, we'll call >> you and expect you to help us out, etc." Ahhh, the double-edge of at-will employment. I remember being let go from a company and I was the one saying "How can you do this to me?" and "can't you give me a month to find a replacement job?" The point I'm making is, don't we all dislike being surprised? >> It's the same thing with finding a job. I've been expected to fill >> out my entire job history, including former bosses, so they can be >> called and ask about me. You can thank the attorneys of our country (and HR departments who work for attorneys), not recruiters, for the pleasure of having to conduct thorough background screenings. I assure you I have better things to do. Any recruiter will tell you that reference checks, so called, are minimally effective at best. >> Would a company ever give me a list of former employees - so I can >> call them and find out about working there? I publish self-updating list for you to reference anytime. I keep them on LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook and Google ;) Try this query on your favorite search engine: worked OR "working for" OR job OR "my employer" OR "works for" AND INSERTCOMPANYNAME >> >> I'd just like to make the relationship a little more symmetric. >> I've intentionally not applied to a certain company in this valley >> based on the information I've learned from current and former >> employees. >> Good. Wait. Is it mine? >> */ > I agree with the symmetry angle. I have decided on more than one > occasion not to work for a company based on networking with my contacts > who worked there. +1 I strongly recommend always doing this. People do business with those they know, like and trust. Find out from those you know, like and trust about the company. Realize that departments, changes in management, locations, etc, can make a big difference. PEOPLE DON'T QUIT JOBS, THEY QUIT MANAGERS. Understand who the people you talked to worked for. Not everyone can work for Steve Jobs and love being yelled at every day. Some can. > > There are a growing number of companies also I believe that are > reluctant to hire externally without a solid recommendation from someone > on the inside. I have encountered this at the past couple of places I > have worked. Thanks to the relatively immature science of talent acquisition, this feels like a backward way to achieve the goal of hiring through referrals as evidence shows that the most-successful hires are always internal referrals. > > So maybe there could be more of a networking component included where we > could get to know people working for good companies. > I know and have recruited for a lot of companies. I am always willing to share my thoughts, though not from the direct front-lines of the engineering team. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
