Kris Tarr

Yeah, it’s that time of my life again. Job hunting time!!!

Gee I almost wrote that time of the year again, which wouldn’t be that accurate since I’ve spent about a year and a half at my current employer which will officially move to the my previous employer status as of November 27, 2008. No worries, I’ve done nothing wrong. The company is about to tank and I guess I was just making too much money here so they had to let me go along with hundreds of other employees… So I did what most of us do in this situation: shined up my resume and made sure they are up-to-date on workopolis, monster etc.

This brings up an interesting job interview experience I had just a week or so ago:

I saw a SEO position advertised, emailed my resume to the recruiting agency, got a meeting with them within an hour. The first impression meeting went very well, so well that the recruiter told me that he will only send his top five people and I’m at the top of his list. Then came the interview with the hiring company.

As always, I prepared for the interview with extensive research of the client’s web site, including keyword research, inbound linkage (quality, quantity of linking sites as well as the anchor texts used in the links), on-site issues, redirects etc… Probably because I was prepared the interview went very well. I really felt that I made a very good first impression, I demonstrated my extensive knowledge on the field and answered all their questions. At the end of the interview they even talked to me like if I was already on the team. Right before I left though, I got a homework assignment to do over the weekend: They asked me to do a full SEO audit on their site.

Maybe because I was a bit shocked, I told my some of my SEO friends about this experience and asked their opinion about the assignment. They replies included words and phrases like: unprofessional and obviously inexperienced in SEO.

I spent the weekend thinking about what I should do. Then I decided to do a full report on their site and just give them hints, including nothing but the most important things that need to get fixed and the reasons why it is absolutely important for them to fix those things. Sent them the mini version of my audit (including the note that there is more, but first you have to hire me to get the full list, of course not with these exact words) and in minutes I got a reply from them saying “brilliant” and that they will let me know about their decision as soon as they finished interviewing for the position.

Nothing really happened for almost a week until my recruiter called me that they got back to them with the answer that they are drafting an offer for me. At that point I almost started celebrating my victory but something stopped me: it was a bad feeling that what if these guys used me. My feeling got stronger when I found out that this company also interviewed some of my colleges as well, who told me that they were asked to do the same thing. One of these friends with very little experience (compared to my nearly 10 years) on the field told me that she got an offer from them which she accepted and will start working for the company shortly. I thought that she would be a good co-worker at the new place, so was still excitedly waiting for their offer which never came. Instead I got a note from them through the recruiter saying that they are not hiring for the position until the first quarter of the New Year, which could mean no income for me for 1-4 months. I was a bit disapointed, but not mad just yet, until I found out that the hiring company started fixing all the errors I mentioned in my report. I’m not mad at them. I think I’m just mad at myself for letting them take advantage of me this way.

So here we go, I’m back on the market but now with another experience under my belt so hiring executives, please don’t ask me get a SEO audit done for your site, because you will get a bill with it which will have to get singed by you that it will get paid upon the date of a non-hiring decision made.