Questions from agency staff about c# , sharepoint , .NET position, what shoul I reply ?

Question

Recently I have applied for a job through the agency. She emailed me with this questions:

Please email me back with your experience in the following:

• .NET Framwork
• .NET Remoting
• ASP.NET
• C++
• C#
• Web Services
• Networking
• COM interop
• ADO.NET
• Sliverlight
• TDD
• Composite UI Application Block
• OO design

1) please detail what experience you have 2) and how many months/years experience you have, and gained from where i.e.

I have worked on C#, .NET, Sharepoint for around 3 years, but with different organisations. Few are the concepts and you will not use all the time, but aware of this. In programming how can you count this experience in months ?

Don't you think this agency people are asking stupid questions ?

Regards

Answer 1

Don't you think this agency people are asking stupid questions ?

Yes. They're simply unqualified people to do this work (search for personnel), which is why they're asking this sort of questions.

Write back you have 3 years on all of them. That will keep them happy.

P.S. It is a big red sign if a company is hiring via agency. They either don't know what they want, have no qualified people to conduct interviews themselves or simply do not care what kind of people will land by them. Either is bad.

Answer 2

It would not say they are stupid questions; perhaps incomplete, but not stupid. Think of the questions as a prompt. They want to know a bit about your experience, and they are giving you a clue about the kinds of information they are looking for.

Answer 3

Be honest - you will get found out very quickly if you claim experience that you don't have.

Do any of those areas interest you? If you don't have experience in them but want to gain it then tell them so.

The consultant's job is to match applicants to vacancies. She may have something lined up for you, but needs you to fill in some of the blanks so she knows if you are a good fit. They seem pretty standard questions to me.

Answer 4

I would say 3 years experience in everything except C++ and Silverlight. Those 2 you just can't bluff your way through if you haven't done anything with it.

Like no-one exclusively works on COM Interop for 3 years straight (or at least no sane person) just knowing what it is should keep you safe. And this goes for more items on this list. You might have made a webservice or two but unless they ask for more details you don't have to tell them they only returned 'hello world'.

I think I've seen this list before, it must be popular with the agencies. I tried explaining Remoting was a bit outdated as a term, everybody does networking, Linq is much easier and you can't really do ASP.NET without knowing about a .NET language and the framework but that was too many difficult words already.