If you’re ever been on an interview, you’ve most likely heard any of these useless questions:

1. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
2. What are your greatest strengths?
3. What are your biggest weaknesses?
4. Why do you want this job?
5. Why should we hire you?
6. What type of animal/tree/food/mineral/planet are you?

Now I’ve seen many interviewers that say these are very important because they say something about the candidate! Yes, they say just how much time you’ve wasted online looking for answers to these very questions. Overall, they say nothing, and really have nothing to do with any job.

After all…

#1 Where do you see yourself in 5 years — what are you psychic? Now the interviewers say they want to know what goals you have for yourself to see if their inline with the company… but in all honesty, chances are in 5 years you’ll be looking for another job because either they’ve let you go, the company’s shut down, or just the job totally sucks and you’re needing something better, or they aren’t paying you enough. At the same time, there’s not really that many companies that have advancement no matter what job you’ve got. You a programmer? Great! Start at an entry-level position, work your way up to senior programmer (maybe 10 years if that), but after that you’ve got to either leave the company or enter a position unrelated to programming. If they’re looking for a programmer, and you say in 5 years you’ll be doing something other than programming (because, well, you might just be if you advance like planned) – do you really think they’ll hire you for a programming position?

As a similar thing, how do you even know that during the interview some plane, semi, train, car, etc isn’t going to come crashing through the building and take you out – or just cause the business to close shop? How do you know you won’t die unexpectedly while sitting there? You have no clue what will actually happen 5 seconds from now, let alone 5 years. A similar thing exists for what you’d be expecting: you can’t give specifics, only some vague standard “doing a job related to {the job I’m interviewing for now} with a company I love” which is pretty much the happy little lie that the interviewer likes to hear even though they know you’re lying. You’d really like to see yourself owning your own island with tons of parties, money, and not having to work.

#1.5 What guarantee can you make that you’ll still be here in 5 years? — This is a question sometimes asked, but is really similar to #1, so we call it 1.5. A person can’t guarantee that they’ll be alive in 24 hours — there’s no way they can guarantee you’ll still be working for them in 5 years. The business can’t even guarantee that they’ll be around in 5 years. They can’t even guarantee that they’d still be keeping you around that long. This question is the dumbest one around as you can’t even give a standard response – as it requires knowledge of the future, and a guarantee that knowledge of future events won’t cause the future events to be changed (so everything’s set in stone, if you know you’re going to be killed in a car accident at 8am, even if you have yourself committed into a padded room, the act of you getting committed will cause you to die in the accident). Yet there are some really dumb people demanding a guarantee from people before they’ll hire them.

#2 & #3 What are your greatest strengths/What are your biggest weaknesses? — Yeah, and who’s going to say their biggest strength is the ability to drink anyone under the table, and the biggest weakness is missing too much work from being in jail for drug offenses? Once again, the interviewer expects you to lie and give a canned response. But if you think about it, do they really want your strength/weakness in reality, or as related to the job you’re applying? If it’s in life, it doesn’t apply and shouldn’t be asked for it has nothing to do with the job at hand; if it’s the job, what if you’re just now entering the field? Do they want you to answer given your jobs overall? What if you got injured at your prior job in a way that you couldn’t/shouldn’t do it anymore, and are going into a different field? The greatest strength of a human resource manager wouldn’t really matter if you’re going to work in a non-HR capacity. If your job was as a programmer, your greatest strength/weakness wouldn’t apply to a non-programming job — overall of course, as some things (ability to solve problems, etc) could overlap in a general sense.

#4 & #5 Why do you want this job / Why should we hire you? — For virtually everyone in the world, the “why” would be “I need a job/I need more money” or a variant thereof, and the answer of why they should hire you, if answered honestly, would be the same answer. There’s not much else to say about this, every so often a person wants a job because they actually just want the job (and don’t need a new one, they’re moving on because of desire), every so often a person has a unique set of skills that matches a job position perfectly. In the end, why the company should hire you over someone else is entirely up to the company. A person either has the requirements for a job, or they don’t. They’ve got no idea what skill set anyone else applying for the job has. It’s just one of those questions that is pretty much useless. The person needs a job – that’s it. If they applied, they aren’t overqualified for the job. They aren’t going to leave you in a few weeks for another job (generally). They applied and showed up because they need a job.

#6 What type of animal/tree/food/mineral/planet are you? — Or any other question along these lines where they try to figure out what makes you tick by saying you’re a “yellow fox orbiting Jupiter”. The interviewer might have some psychology-based research paper that says “someone who identifies as a ____ is ____” and might be going by that to find the “perfect match”. Yet the person applying for the job might say they’re a cat because they like cats, not because they’re a predator that stalks and kills their prey.

In the end it all comes down to a few things about job openings, a business will always end up getting more applications than they have open positions. Some people will have to be cut. But questions like these and others that are just dumb to even ask could all be eliminated with one very simple way: have the employee wait 5-10 minutes in the waiting room, and ask the receptionist their opinion of them, and what they did (or use security footage). That’s it. If they practically bite the head off the receptionist, you’ve got a better idea of what type of person they are than what type of animal they are. If they’re polite, look around, check out any awards, pictures, etc you’ve got up about your business – you know they’re interested in your company. If they sit like a dead log and don’t even check out the rules of the business that might be on the wall, you can figure out other things.

Well at the time this is posted, it’s highly likely given general statistics and predictions.  Now while it’s possible that everything will be tossed on its head, chances are Obama will be the new President.

Which leads to the questoin:  did you really think he’d be the best president for the country?

That in itself is insulting — most likely to the socialists. When you have two parties in a country bashing each other’s brains out to see which group-mentality leader of the drones comes out on top (you know you’ve seen them — the people who are 100% for Obama or McCain no matter what they say or do), then one goes around and calls the other a socialist in a round about way in a negative light.

I know, some of you out there think that’s not a problem – but imagine if you called someone a communist, republican or a democrat. It’s not all fun and games until someone insults your belief or party. It’s something to remember. If you’d get upset if someone were to make a comment using your belief or party as the “bad” phrase – it shouldn’t be said.

Now this is perhaps one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.  Actually with all the crap I’ve been seeing around here lately I haven’t been in the frame of mind to be even slightly objective these past weeks.  However this thing is absolutely wrong.  Personally I think neither should be done, no matter what they think (there’s just a line you shouldn’t cross….).  And my problem is, well, confusing in a sense – but it’s along the lines of making jokes about the Klan – and implying someone’s in it to sway votes…. Anyway…

Obama supporter puts up a “Halloween” display with McCain in a KKK hood chasing Obama — granted the person doing so said he thought it’d be offensive to everyone — but it’s made the news in a somewhat “positive” swing from what all I’ve read.

But then there’s another man who took that idea and did a variant of it — an Obama sign upside down on a “ghost” that’s hanging from a tree.  Media’s interpretation of it?  People are afraid, find it racist, evil, wrong and think it shouldn’t be allowed (some think he might try to assassinate him because of it) and it has a “negative” swing (despite him apparently saying he did it in response to the McCain KKK thing).

Now while I find them both wrong — it just goes to show the way some people seem to be going this election — either you’re for Obama, or you’re racist.

Yes, you read that right.

I’m getting so annoyed with this “change” all the parties are chanting like mindless brain-seeking zombies (“chaaaaaaaaaannnnngne”).  A lot of the time it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Candidates are saying they’re the candidate for change — and asking for you to re-elect them (you know, the things they’ve been doing apparently are lies or something – otherwise they’d be doing the same-old thing not “change” when put back in).  Other candidates are saying “change!” like it’s the magical word that makes it all better.  Like a mother’s kiss on a boo-boo, or open source in the computer world (hey, I use and write it!  I’ve just lost count to the people who light up like a child on Christmas day when they find out a program’s open source).

It’s like the parties are saying: “we, the same two parties and people, that have the same beliefs as those currently in office are wanting you to elect (or re-elect) us to office so you can have CHANGE!!!!!”

It’s like taking ex-lax to get rid of diarrhea.  You might run out of crap sometime, but you’re not quite sure what you’re going to be left with once it happens – and you’re pretty sure you’re not going to like what’s going on until then.

While for many people out there, it probably seems extremely obvious:  election years (presidential in the US at least) bring out all the crazy people.  All the worst qualities in people come to the surface for all to see.  You hear your neighbors talking about how one candidate should be voted for because they’re pro-torture (“waterboard the bastards — they’ll talk!!!” [sadly, I've heard that frequently]).  They want people killed for crimes they may or may not have done (well, they’re guilty of something aren’t they?!?  And we need the space!  All those pot heads need put away!  (Ironically — they did it back in the day).

Normal everyday people go around and talk about how they want morals in their president — so go for the one who’ll kill, murder, torture, lie, cheat, and steal, all while making their friends rich and screwing the low/middle class.  Now that’s some morals for you eh?

It’s always rare to hear the people say how they want peace; the end of wars.  People to take care of other people.  Ending hunger and problems in the country.  Making the place just a good place to live.  Nope, don’t hear from them that much — could be that they’re afraid of being labled as a communist and be shot by the war hungry people.

This is part of the fall festival posts that happened October 4, 2008

Apparently the idea of “change” was running throughout all the parties.  It’s turning out to be the biggest fad of all time.  A candidate, that’s been in office for years and is running for re-election has a sign that said “vote for change! vote for X” (can’t remember who the X was).  Here’s the kicker — it was a republican!

Tell me, please, anyone…. how can you vote for a “change” by re-electing someone back into office?  Wouldn’t that be, by default, voting to keep things the same as they’ve been in the past?

Better yet… what’s worse, that the candidate thinks people are too dumb to realize it, or that there’s a number of people will vote for him because of it?

i know there’s a lot of people happy over this, but really it’s not a good thing.  People have stopped walking around more – instead they’re taking their cars places again.  Prices in the store haven’t dropped (around me at least).  No other discounts on products or services that were raised “because of the gas prices”.

Yet I kept on hearing people saying “if gas was lower prices will drop in the stores!  Yeah…. what happened was all these places discovered that people would spend more money for things, so now there’s no reason to drop them — more money for the businesses.  Now I don’t blame them entirely… as you never know what the gas prices will be one day to another — but i just goes to show that the prices people were used to won’t be around anytime soon.

But doesn’t it seem all-too-suspecious that prices dropped right around election time?  Sometimes a coincidence is a coincidence — other times not.  But considering that there’s basically one party in favor of the oil companies and a number of other parties, well not “against” but not as “favorable” towards them, it sure does seem to be an election plot by the oil.

Media chooses who does and doesn’t get spots and when during shows, and the edit the news for what’s “newsworthy” which has the effect of deciding who gets elected in a sense — and now the oil companies help out the other way to make it “balanced” —- or other company based on the election, but generally the media seems more democrat based than republican, although I’ve seen them be “discriminating” against both parties in my lifeime.

It’s what organizations seem to be great at doing — wasting time doing stupid stuff.  It’s no that the things they waste time on are stupid in themselves, but they’re just things that don’t really mater overall.

It’s like an organization that wants to implement a new idea, let’s say whether or not to redesign their website, but instead of saying “new website with x, y, z: yes or no?” they do the following:

- Person A says “We need a new website with the following items [list of all the items in categories and subcategories, even with a summary and purpose section]”

- Person B says “we can’t vote on that!!!!  The proposal isn’t in the approved format!  It’s suposed to be [format template]”

- Person C says “but we never voted on that format, we just make proposals in the clearest way”

- Person B says “we need to implement the proposal I said since it’s the standard”

- Person C says “what standard?  we can implement whatever we want for our organization…”

(and so on, and so on…..)

- Person B says “you can’t just implement something person D says because person D said it!  The only reason it was approved was the people who disagreed left”

- Person C says “so a vote with the majority approving doesn’t count…. because they don’t agree with you?”

(ensue the fighting until personal attacks happen and a cooling off period takes place)

[months/years later]

- “Hey everyone!  We still need a new website…..”

Sadly I’m not even eggerating… corporations, politicians, even organizations spend tons of time messing around to take care of things that don’t matter — such as the method to make a proposal to do something — instead of taking on the actual problem!

Life’s short, and there’s enough messed up things in the world as it it that deserve attention.  Wasting time debating on the method to use to submit the idea needs to be stopped.

While we just posted about the candidate sueing over them missing it, it’s also said on other places that they did file in time — well they filed with dummy candidates or something to be on the ballot, but not with the actual candidates, and they would update with the proper people.  So the filing date actually doesn’t apply to any part holding a convention….. that holds power.

We’ll see…  Actually we’ll see the case get taken to court, people realizing that this type of thing shouldn’t be done.  Tons of people getting in an uproar, then it being brushed under the table in the wonderous mind-washing abilities of the mind-numbing speakers we call the establishment.