Slap & Tickle

I spent the day doing interviews.

Man, what a load of crap. We actually had two GREAT interviews, the rest were junk. Some people just do not interview well. We were interviewing some temps who working the very jobs they were interviewing for and if I didn’t already know they were great employees I would never have hired them.

Some of the questions are tough, but I want to see how the interviewee is going to react to things flying at them from left field. It’s amazing how many stupid answers we get. Especially, when they don’t understand common terms like “initiative,” or “prioritize.”

A number of people had no idea what the term “seat of your pants decision” means.

“Tell me about yourself” gets the oddest of answers. Tell about your work abilities that are hinted at in your resume, but I am not concerned with your personal life—especially, your collection of tea cups.

“What is your greatest weakness” is an opportunity for you to shine and take your “weakness” and make it a strength. “I work too hard.” “I never give up.” “I have a 10-inch dick.” Okay, the last one was just something I’d like someone to say sometime. You know, some kid actually said his weakness was coffee? You are correct if you assumed he was not hired.

At one point, I ask the interviewee about a time in their work where theyfailed and what they learned from it. I want to see two things: 1) the ability to take responsibility and 2) what they f’ing learned. Do you know how many people bring up items that someone else did wrong? Sometimes, they don’t even have anything to do with work—Sarah told us all about her vacation 10 years back and how things went “horribly wrong.” I wanted to ask her if the interview was sort of a déjà vu of her vacation.

Worse, they never seemed to learn something other than “never do that again.” Yeah, well, I wouldn’t try to run a skunk over either—but I knew that without having done it, Sarah.

And then there are the liars…

These guys are great. We ask them if they’ve ever done something (mail-merge, large conference set up, etc.) and when they say yes, we start asking specifics. …and then it all falls apart.

One guy said he did mail-merges all the time, but when we started asking specifics, it turned out he knew not one damn thing about mail-merges. I’m not sure what he thought it was, but it had nothing to do with duct tape.

When the bright and shiny ones come in and blow us away, we just sit there amazed. Are they truly that great, or are all the others just that f’ing bad? Now, many would feel that working at such a prestigious university, we are snobby. No, I just expect you to be able to spell. For Christ’s sake, if you are going to say you are an expert in “Wrod” and “Exell”, you are certainly expected to use the spell-checking option.

A personal joy is when their references reveal “the truth” about them. One person, when told that we were going to hire her ex-employee, said “Run. Run as fast as you can.” She ended up getting a job in another department on campus and they have been trying to rid themselves of her from day one. I guess she didn’t expect anyone to check her references—and it’s obvious that the idiot that hired her certainly didn’t.

Tomorrow, hopefully, a bunch of people will cancel like they did this morning and I’ll get some work done.

I’m tired and I’m gonna go home, so I can wake up and do this again tomorrow.

Until then, my friends!
--cml