Video Interviews

Video recorded interviews – caveats and benefits

Circa 1998: a tall, well dressed man came for an interview at a systems integrator where I was employed and one of three interviewing candidates for a programmer position.
First impression given was one that would present well to a customer – in this case it wasn’t a customer-facing role.
After settling into the interview, the candidate began answering a trivial non-technical question before his facial muscles contracted,  his head tipped back, he was “somewhere else”.
The seizure lasted long enough for us to unconsciously seek non-verbal cues from our fellow interviewers before the candidate snapped back completing his answer and seemingly oblivious to what had happened.  As the interview progressed both candidate and interviewers relaxed and the session concluded with a written technical test in which he scored 99% and little repetition of the same incident.

We didn’t hire him – it was unanimous but a difficult decision which we three gave more consideration to than all other candidates. My own score in that technical test was 84%. The previous best was 86%, in our hearts we wanted to give him a chance but felt he was just too intelligent and soon tire of the “trivia” lined up for this programming role. While not suitable for a real-time “air traffic controller” type role, the question-mark hanging over our heads prior to the face-to-face was why someone (who would be a good candidate for a NASA-grade programme) would want to work as a programmer doing (what would likely be to him) such trivial stuff.
We concluded another company requiring his level of skill would snap him up – they would also be smart enough to see past a speech impediment but we later learned from the agency that he’d really struggled for months and months to get employed and urged us to reconsider. While it may be appeasing personally and fill an emotional need to be a good person, as an older, wiser person I reflect on our final decision because this candidate was actually an opportunity to help develop our business: He may not be hired as an “air traffic controller” but the sort of person you would want writing the code in the flight management system of a new aircraft you were boarding on a stormy day.

Anyway, because of this:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/jobs/new_screen_tests_uJ431dRpMGhsZO95yx2usJ

I ended up in a long dialogue with a specialist recruiter and did this:

In the New York Times article,  a Hire-Intelligence HR manager, Ryder Cullison, is cited as stating “Video interviews will be the norm in three years.”
I think so too! But I would hope employers tread equally as carefully in their decision making using this form of media as it could rule out some good candidates.

My belief is video interviews should not be relied on entirely. Telephone interviews are the same but we have to work with what is achievable.
The perspective I put on my own YouTube in this post is detailed below – and highlight what I see as details coming under two headings – “value” and “lack of value”.
It should also be obvious that no candidate or interviewer is perfect. Of course some are better than others but putting the most effort into something should yield a better result. The video interview could be an extra step towards a possible hire or seal the fate of a good candidate.

Value

  • Presentation of a candidate in a formal situation is revealed both audibly and visually. Presentation may be relevant in certain roles – such as pre-sales customer facing.
  • A live video interview is of great value if recorded for detailed review later. 60% of communication is non-verbal. If those reviewing are “tuned in” and the candidate is one of the 95% of us unable to prevent revealing truthfulness through body language, a review will help determine if the candidate is out of their comfort zone on the topic in question.
  • To physically attend an interview takes a great deal of preparation and has cost associated with expensive travel and time out of the current role. Someone has to pick that bill up. A Skype interview costs nothing and an effective way of lending itself to a “yay or nay” to take it to the next level.
  • An opportunity for other key decision-makers to provide their input based on questions presented for them at a live interview which they could not attend.
    Orchestrating an interview which has to involve a project manager, technical architect and 2 people from different continent is costly to a business. Some are going to phone-in anyway – if they can actually make it – as per what was the plan.
  • Pre-recorded “generic” interviews can be edited to remove a lot of waffle. I don’t generally waffle but you can see the interview of me was edited to get to key points. It’s because it needed to be kept short – anyone viewing it the capacity to hire is probably very busy.
    Although I knew what questions were going to be asked two weeks ahead of time, I didn’t rehearse the answers and didn’t include all the information that I would have liked (some I wanted to keep was removed) and could have done a better job of some of the answers. Nothing was asked of me that would put me out of my comfort zone so it doesn’t give the viewer the opportunity to see how I operate under pressure.

Lack of value

  • Presentation is revealed – this can also be a negative if,  in the unconscious mind of the interviewer, they don’t like what they see its going to be hard to get past this stage. A candidate that would otherwise be successful at a telephone interview may actually have the chance to work on their relationship – but it’s a bit more complicated than that in reality.
  • Stock questions and answers: Years and years of being asked the same questions is a chance to rehearse answers. You are not telling the potential hirer stuff they don’t want to hear – hopefully. In this particular interview, nothing was asked of me that would put me out of my comfort zone so it doesn’t give the viewer the opportunity to see how I operate under pressure.
  • It could make a candidate overly nervous. It seems not many want to be scrutinised in this way – post interview – and know there is a recording of them in some company archives – especially if they make a hash job of the interview.
  • Some just can’t face a camera but are otherwise excellent hires – that’s the way it is! In fact, I didn’t feel comfortable at all uploading the video to YouTube and circulated it to a few close friends before writing this. Being camera-shy could realistically cause a company to reject a candidate – missing on an opportunity for both.

Conclusion

My position on the “interview thing” has always been the same, if an interviewer has a requirement and properly read my CV then there is not going to be an issue because my “resume” is an accurate document. I don’t know how unique I am in this but on several occasions I’ve asked “to leave the door open but wish to terminate the interview” mid-execution.
In the last 2 years I was telephone-interviewed and a parameter revealed causing me decide there and then I wanted to pursue another opportunity. The guy interviewing thanked me saying,  “I really admire your cander”. Perhaps I will work for that company again in the future. I hope so.

I worked with a business professional who had Cerebral Palsy – of course you couldn’t tell that from his well-written emails any more than determine his skin colour. He is an amazing, well-liked and talented individual who is also well-read and an interesting person doing a great job for his employer. But (for me) the jury is out on whether a trend in video interviews gives those with a physically impairing condition ‘disadvantage’ I hope those on a selection board are themselves selected to make viable choices and realise the potential in any potential hire without seeing blockers which aren’t really there.

I have also worked in teams where one may present themselves (how do I say this? erm..) their eccentricity may not be what is accepted as a social norm. To me, these people are not having something to hide, have great minds  and ones I have ended up “taking notes” to “better myself”.
I don’t believe any form of interview is the cure-all for getting a good hire and believe both live and recorded video interviews are useful but come with baggage and fear prejudice could rule out some good hires. Some of the faults are not the candidates: nowhere on my CV does it state that I have experience of developing complex workflows in Documentum xCP 2 but I still get asked.

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Documentum 7 install notes.

Documentum 7, Oracle Linux, 32 bit Oracle Client, 64 bit database

Just a note about my notes.

I dont have the need (a.t.m) for Documentum 7. Nor do I have the desire to prep myself by RTFM’s.  If I read the manuals (and followed them) things would install properly more often (but not always).
I make a living out of fixing other folks stuff and dabbling is a great way for me to learn. So this is me mucking about in 64bit Centos and Oracle Linux (amounts to almost same thing really) 64bit 11r2 server and 32 bit client.

Oracle VirtualBox Guest Additions

yum install kernel-uek-devel-2.6.39-300.17.3.el6uek.x86_64
yum update kernel*
yum install -y gcc kernel-devel
yum install kernel sources
reboot

X Windows Apps (xclock etc.)

yum install -y xorg-x11-apps

 

Additional packages

yum install libstdc++.i386
yum install libstdc++.i686
yum install unixODBC
yum install unixODBC-devel
yum install libaio
yum install oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall

Note the preinstall will only be found if /etc/yum.repo.d/ contains correct public-yum-ol6.repo and parts are enabled accordingly.

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-ol6.repo
Then yum install oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall

Post install of oracle pfile requirement

SQL> create PFILE = ‘my_init.ora’ from SPFILE = ‘spfileorcl.ora’;

File created.

SQL> startup

Auto startup of oracle can be achieved by following instructions here:

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/linux/automating-database-startup-and-shutdown-on-linux.php

This works for 11.2

Oracle 32bit client

New user (in my case dmadmin) to install oracle client 32 bit on 64bit machine throws error:

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /tmp/OraInstall2012-12-30_04-42-17PM/jdk/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so: libXext.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

unless yum install libXext.so.6

Oracle installer reports dependency required: yum install glibc-devel.i686

OraInventory must be writable.

sqlplus wont run without yum install libaio.i686 and ORACLE_HOME set correctly

32 bit Oracle client documented to be required,. Running on Oracle Linux x64 with 64bit database.
Seems even in D7 the 32 bit client is required still. What a ball ache.

Installing pre-req

LibX’s are definitely in the D7 documentation.

Documentum GUI installer wont run without

libXp.i686
libXi.i686
libXtst.i686
libstd++.i686

.bash_profile for dmadmin

# User specific environment and startup programs
ORACLE_HOME=/app/client/dmadmin/app/dmadmin/product/11.2.0/client_1
PATH=/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/home/dmadmin1/bin:/app/client/dmadmin/app/dmadmin/product/11.2.0/client_1/bin
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
export ORACLE_HOME
export ORACLE_SID=ORCL
export TNS_ADMIN=$ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
export DOCUMENTUM=/app/documentum/dmadmin
export DOCUMENTUM_SHARED=$DOCUMENTUM/shared
export LC_ALL=C
export DM_HOME=$DOCUMENTUM/product/7.0
export JAVA_HOME=$DOCUMENTUM_SHARED/java/1.6.0_31
export PATH=$PATH:$DM_HOME/bin
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$DM_HOME/bin:$DOCUMENTUM_SHARED/dfc:$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/i386/server

Software already installed message (Documentum D7)

Hidden file planted in home dir of installation owner called .com.zerog.registry.xml causes this message to appear.

This file is written by InstallAnywhere which is by Zero G Software Inc.

Configure Tomcat

Used Apache Tomcat 7.0.21, under ./conf is web.xml

<init-param>

<snip……..>
<param-name>enablePooling</param-name>
<param-value>false</param-value>
</init-param>

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Documentum Installation owner as LDAP user – Question of ‘performance’

Due to new corporate policy changes, instruction was received by Security telling this EMC/Documentum Customer to change all Unix-owned installed applications to LDAP-authenticated from local host authentication.

Has anyone ever done this or is running a Documentum system which is owned a user account which authenticates by LDAP? I detailed it here and looking for some feedback on the lines of “we have done this and the outcome was successful/unsuccessful”.

The part of changing the repository installation owner user account is not necessarily the main issue (though the nature of LDAP is that uniqueness of usernames must be provided which means jiggery pokery with all but one of the many separate installs across the domain) – its performance around LDAP which is the unknown.

Not to cause confusion: Documentum users are LDAP-authenticated anyhow – not the issue. Security tells us we must modify the GxP existing Documentum systems to LDAP on our Red Hat servers – this being something I’ve not seen it done before and not aware by dm_buddies have either.

It is implicit from Documentum documentation that domain authentication is supported but Windows does it differently from Unix and the docs don’t distinguish.

Performance I think is the big question – how many hits does the unix dm_check_password have in a day? Hard to measure and case by case but we do know the exercise with an SAP application was rolled back due to the massive number of hits against the LDAP servers saturating them.

My own proposal is untested and follows with three theoretical environments (Prod – dmadminp, Stage dmadmins and Dev, dmadmind):

1. make dmadmin (install owner) an inline user. Saves mucking about with object ownership and getting involved in the docbase.

2. re-own the binaries in each environment with the newly created LDAP user – e.g.  dmadminp, dmadmins, dmadmind

3. create a relevant super user in the docbase called dmadminp, dmadmins or whatever?

But anyway, anyone have any comments they can post me about this?

Thanks in advance.

Kevin

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Apple, Windows, the environment ladida

I saw a sketch on Family Guy the other night where a gorilla had adopted a kitten and was stroking it lovingly. Then Peter said something on the lines of “see I told you she’d eventually adopt it as her own”. Then came into view a huge pile of kittens which the gorilla had previously torn in half.

It reminded me a bit of Microsoft OS’s. I don’t know that we should ever stop trusting MS but an OS is supposed to work of the bare metal – other than virtualisation there is no “abstraction layer”. Maybe MS was a bit slow off the mark but the advantage Apple has seems to be in part owed to their hardware and their OS and they kinda work well together. Maybe it wasn’t that they were slow off the mark and that strategically MS did well for itself by servicing a market that existed because that’s exactly what the general public wanted.

But where is the economy in buying either a Mac or a PC?

People see Macs as expensive – but they are not really. You can get yourself a PC for < £500 these days or you can pay £900+ for a Mac. It's a shame to be restricted to what can be afforded.

What I never really understood is this big organisation thing : "lets have a rule where everyone shuts down their PC's at night – or someone will do it for them!" and how much electricity that will save over a year. At one place calculated it to be around £70 per desktop per annum.
I always through that was nonsensical because the whole "starting up" in the "am" meant either being efficient and resourceful or (more likely) drinking coffee for an additional 10+ mins while the whole thing settled down before you could use it. Say a contractor costs the company £60/hour, it doesn't take long before the false economy of the situation is realisable.

As I dipped between a PC and a Mac earlier today, the cursor froze periodically, the fan kicked in and the virus checker took a chunk of CPU to keep me safe. I don't have to ask the question, "which one was I using when that happened?"

The bottom line is when using my Mac I don't have the frustrations a PC gives me – other than the hash and delete key restrictions of the Mac.

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GxP Invalidation – whose fault is it anyway?

Those working in validated environments are trained to know that change requires a formal approach – a defined procedure that includes approval, implementation, validation and documentation.
Uncontrolled change is just not permitted in operational, validated computerised systems.

In this case I refer to systems comprising Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and newer operating systems which host applications that use the Win32_Product WMI class which will trigger the Windows Installer to perform a consistency check to verify the health of the applications. This consistency check could cause a repair installation to occur. This can be confirm by checking the Windows Application Event log where you may see an “information” event each time the class is queried and for each product installed.

The Event (Incident)

The message is:

Windows Installer reconfigured the product. Product Name: <ProductName>. Product Version: <VersionNumber>. Product Language: <languageID>. Reconfiguration success or error status: 0.And you could find dozens of messages like this depending on how many products are installed, for example:
Windows Installer reconfigured the product. Product Name: Veritas NetBackup 6.5.6 (6.5 Release Update 6). Product Version: 6000.0000. Product Language: 1033. Manufacturer: Symantec Corporation. Reconfiguration success or error status: 0.

Windows Installer iterates through the installed applications checking them for changes and taking any required action. In a GxP there should be no change but not generally recommend in production environment unless during a maintenance window.

The Cause

The cause is likely to be from a vendor application using a aforementioned WMI call to get a software audit. The offending command can be executed from PowerShell e.g. Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product . And this of course can be done remotely using

Invoke-Command -ComputerName <computername> -ScriptBlock {…..}

So effectively it can be coming from outside the machine as well as in.

The Resolution

Identify where it is coming from and contact the vendor.

Obviously use a different approach  – such as querying the uninstallable programs (see the technet link below under references).

As an alternative means, use Win32reg_addremoveprograms WMI Class if you have SMS client installed for auditing purposes.

References

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974524

http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/11/13/use-powershell-to-quickly-find-installed-software.aspx

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documentum content storage areas (dm_location) in xml format

In one of the monitoring widgets I’ve written to monitor Documentum regulatory systems, I perform a check against each server in a highly available configuration to determine the NAS is available to that content server host and that paths specified in dm_location_s.file_system_path are valid and accessible. Code is not deployed to validated systems – it’s not allowed – but the tool is able to make an inquiry and retrieve back details from a remote system.  This one-liner Bash script pulls back from the Oracle database the file system paths and, if they are accessible, puts a line in an XML block containing the max disk size, disk used, disk available, and percentage full. You need to log into the content server host and have the db user/pass@schema information.

The One-Liner

Bash Shell Script to output results in XML format (thanks also to Nominal Animal from linuxquestions.org for some input )

<pre>/export/home/dmadmin > echo "<locations>" ;printf 'set feedback off \n set pagesize 0\n set linesize 300\n select file_system_path from dm_location_s;\n' | sqlplus -s user/pass@schema | while read item ; do  [ "${item:0:1}" = "/" ] && df -P -h "$item" | sed -e 1d|head -3 | awk -v ITEM=$item '{print " <location>\n  <name>" ITEM "</name>\n  <max>" $2 "</max>\n  <avail>" $4 "</avail>\n  <used>" $3 "</used>\n  <pc>" $5 "</pc>\n </location>\n"} END { } ' ; done ; echo "</locations>"

Output

<locations>
<location>
<name>/data/nas_store/repo/content_storage_01</name>
<max>350G</max>
<avail>86G</avail>
<used>265G</used>
<pc>76%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/log</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/config</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/auth</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/secure/ldapdb</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/share/temp</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/share/temp/dm_ca_store</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/product/6.7/convert</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/fulltext/dsearch</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/product/6.7/install/external_apps/nls_chartrans</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/dm_check_password</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/dm_check_password</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/dm_assume_user</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/dm_secure_writer</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/opt/documentum/dba/dm_change_password.local</name>
<max>15G</max>
<avail>1.4G</avail>
<used>13G</used>
<pc>91%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/data/nas_store/repo/thumbnail_storage_01</name>
<max>350G</max>
<avail>86G</avail>
<used>265G</used>
<pc>76%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/data/nas_store/repo/streaming_storage_01</name>
<max>350G</max>
<avail>86G</avail>
<used>265G</used>
<pc>76%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/data/nas_store/repo/distributed/uklhrrepovmd4l_repo/repo/content_storage_01</name>
<max>350G</max>
<avail>86G</avail>
<used>265G</used>
<pc>76%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/data/nas_store/repo/replicate_temp_store</name>
<max>350G</max>
<avail>86G</avail>
<used>265G</used>
<pc>76%</pc>
</location>

<location>
<name>/data/nas_store/repo/replica_content_storage_01</name>
<max>350G</max>
<avail>86G</avail>
<used>265G</used>
<pc>76%</pc>
</location>
</locations>

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Clean up temp agentexec files from Documentum Content Server

If too many files appear in one directory then dm_logPurge will fail.

If you are going on a customer site to do stuff on the clients Documentum system and have a set number of days in which you will need to snapshot their Unix/Linux Documentum system then It should be born in mind that too many temporary files in $DOCUMENTUM/dba/log/<docbaseid>/dmagentexec will add hours++ to your assignment.

From the shell (and could be done before the planned visit by their Unix bod so its good prep)

As user <install owner> (so $DOCUMENTUM is properly set)

find $DOCUMENTUM/dba/log/<docbaseid>/agentexec -mtime +10 -exec rm {} \; &

Will do the trick but use it wisely and test with ls instead of rm. this process could run hours/days but if there are millions of files in there then your snapshot may also take that long + some more.

The & puts it in the background.

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