Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Bayer Interview
Bayer went fairly well. I left myself an hour and a half for travel time even though it was only about an hour away. That was a good move because it turns out that they sent me two different sets of directions that went two different places. After driving around a while and asking directions I finally found it. I had just enough time to cruise in 5 minutes early.
The building was in disarray due to reconstruction. I think I accidentally breached their security because when I got to the sign in desk they wanted to know how I had gotten there. The building looked pretty downtrodden, but then again I guess that's why they're upgrading it.
To my surprise only one other candidate was interviewing today. It was later explained that "highly recommended" candidates were being interviewed in advance and later there would be a day where they called in a bunch of recommeneded candidates. I interviewed with someone from the Human Resources department and someone from the Informations Systems department. Both went very well.
The position that Bayer is looking to hire for is applications development in SAP. SAP is standard accounting program, which lots of companies use to run their accounting. Each division of Bayer needs to be upgraded to a newer version. This means that there is about 7 years worth of SAP upgrades to be done. This kind of work doesn't sound very appealing. There's a chance for travel or a different position after a year, but I don't think I would want to do it for that long.
Bayer is apparently going through a hiring freeze due to some financial issue. The HR person told me that I probably wouldn't hear anything until January, however the IS person (who I think was a little more impressed with me) told me that Bayer might want to do something fairly quickly. I don't know what to think as far as that goes.
I'm keeping an open mind until I hear from Bayer, but I already don't think that I'm interested. The work isn't really what I want to do. The corporate culture isn't as friendly as Penn National was. I don't think I'd want to be on this side of the state in the first place, so I'm certainly not going to change my mind when the position isn't quite right.
Despite my disinterest, I think it was a good experience to have. I got a sample of what to expect from interviewers for other positions as well as a chance to get some employer feedback on my resume. Though I didn't get too much feedback on my resume as the interviewers seemed to ignore it after I handed it to them. Most of the interviews involved me pointing things out on my resume. I feel way more confident about applying and interviewing for other jobs now, so it wasn't a waste.
The building was in disarray due to reconstruction. I think I accidentally breached their security because when I got to the sign in desk they wanted to know how I had gotten there. The building looked pretty downtrodden, but then again I guess that's why they're upgrading it.
To my surprise only one other candidate was interviewing today. It was later explained that "highly recommended" candidates were being interviewed in advance and later there would be a day where they called in a bunch of recommeneded candidates. I interviewed with someone from the Human Resources department and someone from the Informations Systems department. Both went very well.
The position that Bayer is looking to hire for is applications development in SAP. SAP is standard accounting program, which lots of companies use to run their accounting. Each division of Bayer needs to be upgraded to a newer version. This means that there is about 7 years worth of SAP upgrades to be done. This kind of work doesn't sound very appealing. There's a chance for travel or a different position after a year, but I don't think I would want to do it for that long.
Bayer is apparently going through a hiring freeze due to some financial issue. The HR person told me that I probably wouldn't hear anything until January, however the IS person (who I think was a little more impressed with me) told me that Bayer might want to do something fairly quickly. I don't know what to think as far as that goes.
I'm keeping an open mind until I hear from Bayer, but I already don't think that I'm interested. The work isn't really what I want to do. The corporate culture isn't as friendly as Penn National was. I don't think I'd want to be on this side of the state in the first place, so I'm certainly not going to change my mind when the position isn't quite right.
Despite my disinterest, I think it was a good experience to have. I got a sample of what to expect from interviewers for other positions as well as a chance to get some employer feedback on my resume. Though I didn't get too much feedback on my resume as the interviewers seemed to ignore it after I handed it to them. Most of the interviews involved me pointing things out on my resume. I feel way more confident about applying and interviewing for other jobs now, so it wasn't a waste.
# posted by Brando @ 2:02 PM 
