Taking a new job?

2007 should be a great year for certain jobs and industries, if you're looking to make a job change. No matter what your motivation for making a change, you need to evaluate new potential employers carefully. A friend of mine recently made a job change, but I think he should have done a better job of screening his new employer. I've coached thousands of people on interviewing, negotiating, and evaluating potential employers, but most people don't do these things as well as they do at their job.

Checking in on my friend after his new job started, this was the response to "How is your new job going?"

To be determined... Only been there one day - Tuesday. Unlike my last company which would open if a glacier slid through the parking lot and surrounded the building, this company likes to take days off when the weather is inclement. Unfortunately, that keeps my wallet empty. I'm not real happy with the company rules; they treat people like children here - not professionals. Zero tolerance for personal emails, surfing the web, personal phone calls, etc. Hell, 95% of my web development at my old company was surfing the web getting ideas and stealing code. You can't eat anything but fruit, gum and candy at your desk. I'm thinking of bringing in caramel apples and cotton candy every so often.

Can't drink coffee unless it's in a company approved container (they give you a coffee mug with a lid on your first day - I used it to piss in). You have to lock your computer whenever you leave you office - regardless. This is fine and I understand to a point but you have to perform a shutdown on it if you are going to be gone for over a half hour. Evidently, productivity is secondary here. Forgetting your access badge is multiples of $50 per incident and the fourth offense termination. That may be real tempting in a few weeks but I just may prefer to skip the $150 payments and just split. Those are the worst ones but there's a lot of other petty ones.

That aside, technology-wise they are clueless regarding web development and most technologies for the most part. Their primary DBA doesn't even know how to write a trigger.

I've already updated my resume on Monster last night... Sorry for the rant but let's have a beer, scratch that, a martini sometime soon.

Don't let this happen to you. Pay close attention to what is going on, and ask insightful questions that paint the picture for you. In this job market, employers are starting to realize they have to put their best foot forward in the interview, and they need to impress you as much as you have to impress them. The companies you want to work for are those that have already realized this. If you have your own job horror stories, let's have them!

Soon I will post questions to ask and signs to look for in interviews that will give you some insight into how things are really done at your potenially new employer.