You just want to throttle these firms sometimes.......You call them up every few days and its the same response we're interviewing some more candidates and we'll get back to you a.s.a.p...What a joke.........I'm wondering if you should judge a job by how quickly they get back to you......I mean if they are not interested with you then why dont they just tell you flat out....

I see that the most common lie is "get back to you in 3-4 days".I have experienced it myself,so here is a suggestion I would like to leave in the forum - it might be helpful to someone.Somewhere in some email you send to the company (prefareably to HR)remember to include the magic words;"Data Protection Act - February 2002" in the same paragraph as"you are legaly obliged to provide me with written feedback on my interview".It does work. Tried and tested.(Accordingly to the law, you might be asked for a 10 pounds administration fee though.For further information on the legal aspects, just do some googling.)

There is also a law (in Britain) that makes it an offence to send CVs to a potential employer without the consent of the applicant.Only last night was talking to someone who had sent in an application for a specific (but possibly imaginary) job.The CV was with dozens of banks in London and NY by the next morning, they were pretty upset.(you can guess which firm did this).What was ironic was that the one firm who didn't get the CV was the one who'd asked to finde someone with his rather specialised skills.

"You're lucky and very unsophisticated", referring to out performance over a 10 year period.

Heres a new one...going for a back office role ...(...as back office as they come) and being rejected since you're too introverted...I mean for f**** sake....Next time I'll go in wearing a blonde wig, green goblin glasses and carrying a megaphone........

I think we're hitting a large class of lies here.Fact is a lot of people simply can't do a given job, and even a majority of the people one sees don't seem to have either the experience or raw brainpower to do it.Because we talk to people before they go to the bank, we make the judgement, and usually people take it well. We usually sugar the bitter pill with some ideas on things to work on.But it's not a nice thing to say, and most people want to think of themselves as good people.A few times you get people who can't do some of the things, and they won't take that as an answer. A couple of times I've had them sit there and say "but I can learn that", or other such arguments, which may trueThey are hard to refute politely, and some really seem to genuinely believe they can browbeat me into putting them forward. The "dead rat" section in the Guide is based upon real life experience of interviewing people, (OK no dead rat yet...)Thus it is soooo much easier to come up with an "dead stop" answer that doesn't really allow for argument, or legal action if the rejected person thinks you did it for the wrong reason.This applies to what is said to HH's as well. Some are really pushy, and a way to get rid of them is to say "we didn't like his personality".That's less damning than saying "he got all the C++ question wrong, and he thought Bambina was one of the greeks. He's a moron, we resent having wasted three hours on him".

"you were definitely the frontrunner amongst the external candidates"

QuoteThat's less damning than saying "he got all the C++ question wrongIs it not possible to say that the questions were answered wrong? In the 60's at school all the marks of all students were posted for the whole world to see. It made a statement about ability and not about the person. These are two separate issues but I reckon it is sometimes difficult for you in the position you are in.On the tatami, every judoka has a coloured belt and you can rise in stature by learning the next set of skills. Just like C++. ExamplesGreen belt heap and stack memory const stuff etc.Brown basic STL etc.It's quantifiable.In general it does not take too long to determine what the belt is.