4.18.2004

They're not just interviewing you; you're interviewing them too

Sometimes even someone senior and experienced has the interview from hell. We thought we'd present this one for your reading pleasure, if only because it went so badly we thought it deserved a formal post mortem. (This one was sent in by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous.) The goal of the interview was to permit a final evaluation by the hiring manager. The title of the job was Network Tools Manager, who would supervise a staff of six. This was a third interview; the first one had been a phone screen, and the second one was a face-to-face session with the hiring manager. In the third session, the concept was to sit the candidate down with a representative from the group that he or she would be supervising. In addition, they would sit down with their future peers; these were the manager of the security group, the Unix manager, the Microsoft servers manager, and the support manager. The interview went badly from the start. No sooner had the interviewee walked through the security doors with the hiring manager than the power went out to the entire facility. Beepers were shrieking as systems switched over to generator power, sending out alerts to pagers. The temperature was already rising as the interviewee and hiring manager went towards the meeting room. This third interview had been touted as a session where the interviewee's future peers would ask questions and the interviewee would draw technical diagrams on the whiteboard for them to assess. Nothing even remotely close to that happened. The hiring manager left to attend to the emergency. The rest of them gathered around a table in the cafeteria, which was the only place left that had enough light. There was no whiteboard, and a lot of traffic in the area, what with people gathering in small knots to discuss the outage and others rushing around in the middle of getting systems back online.

Initially, the interview started with a variety of open-ended questions. These ranged from queries about the interviewee's management style to slightly more focused questions, such as which came first, the mission or the people. There is no correct answer to fluff questions like these; the interviewee replied with an equally fluffy answer about supporting the mission but not at the expense of their people. The interviewee already knew this company did not particularly care about its people; the interviewee wanted to see what the manager's reaction was when they did not answer "the mission" right away. He kept probing until he got nowhere with it and dropped it. Then he asked a semi-open ended question about what the interviewee would do given limited resources in their future group, a critical problem that needed solved because they had just inherited a gentleman from purchasing into this highly technical group. The interviewee responded that they'd get temporary assistance from a contractor to cover any gaps in the skill set, while sending the new guy to school, as he wouldn't have been much help anyway. They seemed to be pleased with this answer. Then the questions seemed to take a 180-degree turn. Instead of being the kind of questions that the hiring manager had hinted the interviewee would face, they turned out to be highly technical questions that had very little to do with the sort of work the interviewee would be expected to perform. The interviewee was led to believe that as a Network Tools Manager, their duties, although somewhat technical, were primarily to be a manager. This would involve scheduling, metrics, coordinating with other groups, troubleshooting problems, handling outages, and some development duties. The reason why this particular interviewee was picked as a candidate for this position was ostensibly their development skills. This was an area that this company was short on, and the hiring manager liked that the interviewee had both an operations and development background. However, none of these things seemed to have been taken into consideration when the other managers prepared their questions.

In nearly every other interviewing situation the interviewee had been in before, the interviewers worked from printed lists of questions, which presumably had been vetted by human resources personnel. These forms would have lots of space between each question, so that they could scribble notes and compare them objectively later on. The interviewee had conducted their own interviews of other people at other companies the same way, working from a standard checklist of questions to ensure nothing was overlooked. This was not the case here. The Unix manager started in on detailed questions about network monitoring software. The interviewee answered these the best they could, but they did not have expertise in this area (and this was known to the hiring manager before the first phone screen, and not considered an issue). In fact, the recruiter who had sent the interviewee to this company assured this candidate that although they did not have the exact software packages the client wanted, the interviewee had sufficient knowledge in other areas - ones which carried greater weight in the eyes of the hiring manager. He had told the interviewee so himself in the second interview, so the interviewee was a little nonplussed by this line of questioning, but the interviewee gamely did the best they could. The Microsoft manager also started in with highly detailed questions about how the interviewee would architect a network managing and reporting solution. The interviewee answered this the best they could, but thought his line of reasoning odd; weren't they already committed to a particular software solution? Then he started asking the interviewee what the difference was between Unix and Microsoft systems. The interviewee really did not know if he was talking about the processes, or the user interface, or what, so vaguely worded was the question - and this manager defied the interviewee's attempts to politely maneuver him towards clarifying his questions. By then, the Unix manager was rolling his eyes, had crossed his arms, and was looking off into the distance. So was the support manager, who emitted an audible sigh of disgust. The security manager chimed in with a few pertinent questions, but at that point, the interviewee realized that these people were not exactly interested in whether the interviewee knew what they were doing or not.

The interviewee had made the mistake of wearing a neatly tailored navy blue suit to the interview; the other managers were in ratty jeans and techie giveaway t-shirts. The interviewee looked too management for words. The interviewee had managed to threaten and intimidate their not-so-well-attired peers, none of who were exactly management material themselves, despite their extensive technical knowledge. It may have happened inadvertently, but it had nonetheless; they were out to show how much better they were than the interviewee was. They had no intention of finding out if the interviewee was technically competent or not. The crucial point of the interview came when the pack of managers, nearly in unison, almost at the point of exasperation, demanded that the interviewee tell them what the interviewee's area of expertise was. They wanted to know, so they could query the interviewee on it and "have the interviewee impress them and blow them away". The interviewee looked them straight in the eye and told them, "I don't do that". That is not the interviewee's style; this particular candidate is all about collaboration and empowerment, not one-upmanship. This really seemed to frustrate them. The interviewee had already suffered quite enough at their hands and had no wish to further prolong the agony. The interviewee realized that whoever the hiring manager selected, these other managers would have it in for him or her and but good. At this point, mercifully, the hiring manager came back and asked if he could join in. The managers got up from the table with little ado. None of them shook the interviewee's hand goodbye, said thanks for your time, or even made eye contact with the candidate as they left the table. The hiring manager did not really seem to notice. The interviewee talked with him for about a quarter of an hour more. The interviewee let him know, right up front, that they did not seem to be what these managers were wanting or expecting. He reassured the interviewee that they did not share his vision of where he wanted the group to go. The interviewee could not have agreed more. The interviewee had never seen such socially challenged individuals, with such a glaring lack of interpersonal skills attain such supervisory responsibility. It was a testament to the youth, immature dynamics, and utter lack of process inherent in the company. The hiring manager walked the interviewee to the door, and said he would let the interviewee know if they were to be selected for the fourth and final interview.

The interviewee learned unbelievable amounts about the dynamics of the company from the way they were treated in the interview. The interviewee learned that the client company does not promote from within. This made the current employees jumpy, as they could not expect to rise through the ranks. The interviewee also learned that newcomers were seen as a threat to those that were already entrenched. Yet what the interviewee had experienced was that at other companies, it was hard to compete against the old timers, who had a huge reserve of corporate knowledge against which newer skills were not as highly valued. The interviewee learned a great deal about the hiring manager. The interviewee, personally, had developed a tremendous rapport with him. However, this was swiftly perceived by the others, and resented. Since the hiring manager had been there a while, it is likely that he had hired all the managers who conducted the interviewee's inquisition. Why would he hire people with such a lack of interpersonal skills? Was the political environment so treacherous that hiring people who could obviously never replace you was warranted? Was the interviewee also considered just knowledgeable enough to do the job, but no threat politically? Just how solid would this rapport ever turn out to be? Probably about as solid as wet toilet paper. On the other hand, was the interviewee's personality perceived by him to be the kind that would not challenge him in any meaningful way? The interviewee also realized that they would not have any meaningful rapport with their peers, should they ever be hired. This atmosphere of mutual distrust would also prevent any unwelcome coalitions from forming that might threaten the position of the hiring manager. Yes, this interview was quite an experience; among the worst the interviewee had ever endured. The interviewee certainly learned more from it than they had ever bargained on.

A Beautiful Fairytale

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle.

The frog hopped into the princess' lap and said: "Elegant Lady, I was once a handsome prince, until an evil witch cast a spell upon me. One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back into the dapper, young prince that I am and then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle with my mother, where you can prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children, and forever feel grateful and happy doing so."

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on a repast of lightly sauteed frog legs seasoned in a white wine and shallot cream sauce, she chuckled and thought to herself, "I don't really think so."