One of the candidates I interviewed claimed in her r?©sum?© to have an extensive
background in these areas. In fact, during the interview she claimed to be an expert
in the field. I have to admit, her r?©sum?© did look impressive.
However, as the interview progressed I began to have some doubts. This person
just didn??™t speak or act like a true techie, so I decided to give a little test. I asked
her to connect an Iomega Jazz drive to the external SCSI port on a workstation. A
pretty easy task for an expert, right? Well, she couldn??™t do it. In fact, she didn??™t even
know where to begin.
To make a long story short, upper management eventually hired this applicant in
spite of my objections. It wasn??™t a good situation. She didn??™t have the background
required and subsequently performed very poorly on the job and eventually quit after
only a year. The key problem in this situation was conflicting definitions of a ???computer
and networking expert.??? We define this as someone who could install expansion cards,
hard drives, and operating systems as well as set up a computer network.
This applicant, on the other hand, had a very different definition. She considered
herself to be an expert because she knew how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and
PowerPoint.
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