Any Questions?

It's the end of the year and a new job came looking for me. I've just finished several rounds of interviews with two different companies and screenings by two others. First you have to answer the recruiter’s questions, then his boss’s questions. If you pass, they’ll set up a telephone interview with the HR department of the company in which you’re interested. Then, you may have a technical interview with a panel or an individual. If they’re still interested and you’re still interested, they will invite you to their home office for a face-to-face interview – I guess to see if your body matches your brains. During this half-day interview, you’ll be peppered with questions. The only difference I can tell between this process and terrorist interrogation techniques is that they don’t use waterboarding - yet. At the end they’ll give you a few minutes to ask some questions of your own if you have any breath left. They really do expect you to ask questions, though. It shows you’ve done your homework if you ask intelligent questions. This game of questions typically lasts from 4 to 8 weeks with emails in between.

Books are published on this stuff: 1000 Interview Questions for Hiring Managers. “What are your strengths?” “What are your weaknesses?” “Why do you want to work here?” “What motivates you?” “Do you like Piña Coladas?”

The last time I was looking for a job, one company flew all the candidates they had pre-screened to San Francisco for the day. They put each of the prospects in their own room and rotated interviewers. The interviewers would move from room to room asking each applicant questions. Then, at the end of the day, the interviewers got together and compared notes. The experience was kind of like speed-dating for business. (I got the job, but they never used the speed-dating interview process again.)

Why couldn’t this process be improved? Why couldn’t we just come up with one really good question? If you answer that, you’re in. Some of the interviewers I’ve talked to don’t even seem to have a path or a line of questioning. Once, an interviewer told me to keep talking until he could think of more questions(!) All these questions could lead to a job that may last two years, five years, or, if you’re really lucky, a career.

I got to thinking. Isn’t that what dating is all about?... Finding Mr. Goodbar or finding Ms. Rockstar? Didn’t you start this type of thing in primary school? “What’s your favorite color?” “Did you like the Lion King?” “Do you watch the Simpsons?” “Does your dad make a lot of money?” Then, as we grow older, wiser and more mature, our questions improve. (Remember, this is mate selection – presumably, to help us find the “fittest” of the herd.) “Do you like Jazz?” “Do you like sushi?” “Do you drink Mojitos?” “How do you take your coffee?” "Do you have any tattoos?" I guess if you get the wrong answers, you ask someone else.

Maybe we ought to be starting with questions like, “have you ever been convicted of a felony?” “Tell me why you left your last lover.” “Would you mind if I called the father of your last boyfriend/girlfriend? What would he tell me about you?” "Do you have any sexually communicable diseases?" “Is there anything in your past that might preclude you from running for public office?” “Where do you see yourself in five years?” (I actually used this one once.) The easy part is coming up with questions. The tough part is knowing what the “right” answer is. “Hey, we both like long walks on the beach. Woohoo. We must be compatible. Kismet!” Puhleez. Most of the questions we ask are worth as much and demand a rhetorical, “So what?” “So what if we both take our coffee with a splash of cream, no sugar?” “So what if we both like to talk on the phone?” (I don’t.) “So what if we both want to win the lottery?” (I won’t.) What does that tell you?

It’s like 98% of our DNA is in common with a chimpanzee. So, we’re trying to weed out that 2% with our questions. I think compatibility is highly over-rated. One book I read, Blink, says that we often make decisions without knowing why and without being able to defend them logically. First impressions are usually right. The book says that we gather data about someone and often immediately know whether we like them or not. In fact, I’ve been told that I make a pretty good first impression. I’m just afraid that means that the perfect woman for me is an amnesiac. That way I could make a good first impression, endlessly.

Back to my decision on which company to work for. I created an elaborate decision matrix for four different employers. I ranked and weighted 15 different criteria. It pointed to a clear choice. Logical, right? I didn’t like the answer that the decision-matrix-Ouija-board gave me. So, in business, as in love, I’m going to go with my heart.