The Interview Bar Today Is Much Higher
Before we begin:
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In This Issue
A 20+ year banking SWE refused five basic screening questions
How being a “passive candidate” in previous markets are different today
Why the interview bar for your old job is higher than when you got it
How AI fraud quietly rewrote the screening process at major banks
What to do if you haven’t job searched since 2009
I had a call this week that I can’t stop thinking about, so you’re getting it as this issue.
The candidate is a very senior software engineer. Java and Python, deep banking background including Cantor Fitzgerald, Nomura, and a few other names you’d recognize. He worked through the 2008 financial crisis and came out the other side employed. 20+ years in the industry and this is the first stretch where he’s genuinely out of work and actively looking.
He’s been searching for almost 6 months with zero progress.
On paper that makes no sense. Guys with his profile don’t sit for six months. Even in this market he should have received at least 1-2 offers by now. So I got on the phone with him expecting to find some obvious problem, a comp number wildly out of range, a geography issue, something.
It took me about ten minutes to find the actual problem, and it wasn’t any of those.
The Five Questions He Wouldn’t Answer
I’m working a role with a top 5 bank. Before they’ll look at anyone, they gave me five screening questions to run every candidate through.
This is standard now.
Five straightforward technical questions to confirm you’ve actually done the work on your resume, nothing tricky about them.
