The Final Round of Interviews

After the dismal performance of Candidate One, Candidates Two and Three were brought in for four-hour, group interviews, in a format similar to the previous set.

Candidate Two was warmly received the engineers who’d be working for him. He was charismatic. He projected more seniority. He told them what they wanted to hear. Conversely, the two Vice Presidents who are candidates for succession when Cliff (CEO) retires were leery of Candidate Two. Several reasons were cited, but the real perception was that Candidate Two, having been The Big Enchilada at his own company would encroach on their turf, too. We didn’t need Another Leader. We need Technical Discipline, someone to do the Devo and get engineering motivated.

Candidate Three, who already had underwhelmed me, also drew a lukewarm response from the senior engineers, who described him as “speaking from his ass,” using jargon and buzzwords. For the same reason, this candidate was perceived as technically savvy and visionary by the two Vice Presidents and Cliff.

Interview Day!

Candidate Two’s presentation was ultra-polished, well-timed and flawless. Clearly, he was a Toast Master. Next came the group technical round. His responses were, in my opinion, squishy. The only thing he truly got hung up on was the Support Manager’s crazy-ass question. I invoked Designated Time Keeper authority and deemed we should move on.

One thing that impressed me was Candidate Two had taken some time to download our product, attempt to run it, and offer some suggestions for new markets we might venture into. I was not present during the executive lightning round, but understood that it went okay.

Candidate Three’s presentation was nowhere near as polished, but he had clearly taken my hint to download the product. He, too, offered some suggestions for the new and completely different markets we might venture into. If this was 1997, we would have had three business plans on which we’d seek funding!

During the technical round, two of the engineers were trying hard to derail the candidate. Though the responses to questions weren’t deep, they weren’t blatant bullshit, either. Once again, the Support Manager came up with a cockamamie question to waste our time. Mental note: put him in a completely different interview loop.

Both candidates went home.