Twelve Angry Men and Women

All of the interviewers met early the next morning in the large, unventilated conference room. The Vice President of Operations created a chart of each specific job requirement. For each item, we went around the room discussing the three candidate’s qualifications in each area, rating it as “did not meet” (-), “met” (=), and “exceeded” (+). The purpose of this was to come up with a depiction of how they met the qualifications, regardless of personal impressions. This part was actually pretty cool because any personal vendetta against a candidate were right in the open for discussion.

The process lasted nearly four hours. It was nearly universal that Candidate One, who flubbed his presentation, was a net minus. As expected, Candidate Two received a lot of “exceeds,” though not universally so. Candidate Three generally had “meets requirements.”

The biggest concerns about Candidate Two were his commute length — he had already indicated he didn’t want to drive more than ten miles to work. (Tell it to the hand, Candidate.) The other concern, not expressed as overtly so, was that the candidate really wanted to be the Big Enchilada, not a mere Vice Minister of Yatta Yatta.

The engineers made the excellent point that Candidate Three was no more technical than they are, yet also lacked any discernible people skills. This was discounted because Cliff and the two Vice Presidents were ebullient that this was Our Salvation.

Cliff said would consider the comments and make his decision.