Big Decision, Little Evidence
In just over one week's time I will start a new job. The process for how I got the job was pretty similar to other times I have sought new employment: Look for jobs online via Linked In and other job sites and then attend interviews. Though this time the interviews were all done virtually.
For my new job I initially had a 30 minute technical interview and then a 90 minute competency based interview.
The first interview consisted of two people asking me technical questions about tools used in DevOps like Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform etc.
For the second interview I was given ten minutes to produce a diagram explaining a CI/CD flow and then had to talk my interviewers through it. After that there were competency based questions around the organisations core values. Here I was presented with certain scenarios and I explained what experience I had of working in similar situations, dealing with related challenges etc. That process took about 75 of the allotted 90 minutes. I then had 15 minutes for me to ask any questions I wanted about the role and the company.
A few hours after the second interview I was called by the recruiter to say the interviewers were pleased with me and wanted to offer me a job; these were the terms and did I want it.
I said yes.
Fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes to ask questions about the people I will be working with seven hours a day, five days a week for hopefully many years.
Now of course I had done some research on the company as part of preparation for the competency based interview and I could draw some conclusions about the people and company from how they presented themselves and the sorts of questions they asked and how they responded to my answers. But even so I doubt the total amount of time I spent on the whole process amounted to more than four hours, after which time I had to make one of the more important decisions anyone gets to make.
Over the last week I've spent more than four hours researching what type of static exercise bike to buy with a budget of less than £500. Something of far less value and lasting consequence than a new job.
If I had gone out on a date with someone for four hours and then decided I would move in with them people would worry for me, but four hours is is fine to decide whether to start a job and effectively spend almost as much time with those people as I would my partner.
Not just fine but the norm. Aside perhaps from people in the most senior positions at a company or going into business for themselves, I doubt many people spend much more time than a few hours before accepting a job offer.
Why is this? I'm not totally sure but a couple of things spring to mind:-
One of the reasons I spent more than four hours researching what type of exercise bike to buy was because I could. There is a wealth of information out there, or perhaps a wealth of data would be a better term. Whereas there is only so much you can find out about a company and a team within that company unless you happen to know somebody who already works there.
The other factor is that the job I am going to do is a very similar role to what I have done before and there are only so many ways that can be done so I can extrapolate from previous experience. I can imagine if I were to want to change careers to something completely different, say to be a barista or a book seller (to pick two completely random examples) then I might spend a bit more time on research.
Even so it does seem like an awfully big decision to make on relatively little evidence and not something we do in any other area of life.
Oh except for one of course. Buying a house.