Talking with my potential boss, I showed that I had vision and cross-functional competencies that could be a tremendous asset in designing products to be manufacturable.

Talking with HIS boss, I showed that I understood the materials with which I’d be working, to the point where he said that it was clear I “knew more about plastics than they did.”

Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. I think I terrified them. Which, incidentally, is something that was said about me when two people in another interview situation were talking about me (I happened to overhear them). One, the leader of a company who wore “hundred league boots” and was a true visionary, talking with his operations director, and the OD said “Arnold, no wonder people are terrified of him – he’s just like you!” (Negotiations fell apart, I think, when I wanted to know the scope of the job – not just accepting a paycheck.)

Most companies don’t want stars; most managers don’t want people with initiative and excellence, because that person might outshine their accomplishments back when they had the position. My desire to move into management got thoroughly squashed when I made a deliberate attempt to show the very behaviors they OFFICIALLY said they wanted, but in reality were only for the pre-chosen Golden Children to exhibit.

Don’t all through shoes at once, ok?

It might be that we are overqualified and unemployable.

First, when did I become an hourly wage earner — are these HR people trained at all? We are not hired hands, and yet …

A lot of companies are still thinking of their employees as hired hands that NEED to be spoon fed what to do.

With the comments that I see on this board …we not what the corporates seem to want anymore: we’re trained, experienced professionals who are self-motivated and resourceful enough to get a job done without constant prompting.

They don’t want initiative
They don’t want adaptability

They say that they want it: only if it can be controlled within hierarchy and HIGH politics.

It’s almost a “trick” question: “Can you take the reigns and drive?” Think twice before you say ‘yes’ because then they think … Hmm this one is going to take over, possibly be a threat to my job.

Is it my imagination?

So, they under pay you — I think that I am saying — on purpose, so that you will leave.

May be a bit off topic, but it would be interesting to probe a bit more into this statement: “The thing that I miss most is being free to think and share an opinion without bullying or retribution. Openness was a way of life at work and socially.”

Yes, that drives me crazy too: ‘the general assumptions made by HR types on what is important to “me” as the applicant’.

That’s why they always want to know your current salary, so they can decide if they would like the new salary compared to your current salary. Of course my criteria for what is a good job or a good salary are bound to be completely different.

This is illustrated by many of the messages in this thread which describe the different criteria of different people on what is a good job TO THEM. For example, I would never in a million years commute 140 miles a day but you were happy with it. Many HR people, and some managers, are determined to apply their own standards to everyone. They are missing out on the good applicants by concentrating on the conventional applicants.