What to do when you're the interviewer and you don't like your job?
- by emcb
I'm in a sorta strange predicament, and I could use some advice.
When I was interviewing for my current job, the job description I was given seemed pretty darn nice to me. Without going into the details, the job hasn't quite turned out the way it was advertised. The company is great and takes care of its employees, but for someone who cares about the code they write and the work they do, it's a bad environment - effectively, we operate between 0.5 and 1.0 on the Joel test, and due to political issues we're not going to move beyond that any time soon.
Bitter? Maybe. OK...so I'm in the market for a new job. But that's not where my dilemma is.
The problem that I see coming is that I will be participating in interviewing some candidates for a position on my team, and I'm not sure what to do. I've heard through the grapevine that we have some really solid, promising, fresh-out-of-college prospects coming in to interview, and I honestly dread the thought of somebody having their first experience of engineering in this department.
So I'm wondering: what should I do if/when the interviewee asks me
"Do you like your job?" (no)
"What kind of projects would I be working on?" (mostly static HTML/CSS changes)
Anything else that would elicit a negative answer if told truthfully
Do I tell the truth, to give the candidate a real picture of the job? What if this scares them away, and what if it gets blamed on me?
Do I fib or lie, saying we work on exciting projects with lots of flexibility, like the pitch my boss will give when the reality is quite different?
Should I feel any kind of moral responsibility to let a promising young developer know that this isn't the job for them, or should I shut up and be loyal 100% to the company?
Any approaches or advice is appreciated. I hope I don't come across as overly dramatic - I honestly struggle with this question.
