Now Hiring

Job interviews are the business-world’s equivalent of speed dating. Based on a brief conversation, hiring managers are supposed to select the candidate with whom they expect to have a long-term relationship of forty or fifty … months. The employer is expected to make a binding commitment to this person until death, promotion, mandatory staff reductions in the face of lower-than-expected earnings, or internal restructuring do them part. Even with a really appealing candidate this is a scary proposition so it’s only natural that managers can get cold feet when it comes to hitching their career wagon to a newcomer.

The hiring process starts when a manager feels a certain emptiness and yearning for companionship and realizes that it would be really nice to have another staff member to help carry the load. It’s important for the manager to have a clear idea of the kind of person they’re looking for so, just like a young person looking for a mate, they’ll write out a detailed, realistic description of the skills and experience they desire.

I’m kidding, of course. The young person will have realistic expectations of the kind of mate they can land based on their physical attractiveness cross-indexed with their financial holdings. The manager will create a fanciful job description which will depict a recent business-school graduate with two centuries of real-world experience and specializations in forensic accounting, business forecasting, hand-to-hand combat, and gourmet cooking. Although not strictly necessary, it would also be helpful if the ideal candidate was a member of a religious order that had a vow of poverty.

Through the magic of advertising, the entire job description is compressed into a few dozen words that appear in the “Help Wanted” section of the local paper. Job seekers scan these ads and the matchmaking begins.

Energetic young company seeks equally energetic Accounts Receivable Manager for mutually beneficial, long-term relationship built on trust, companionship, long walks on the beach and a current AR Aging Report. Serious inquiries only, non-smoker preferred.

In response, the company is flooded with resumes and letters from job-seekers all claiming that they are the “one”. Resumes outline a candidate’s skills and abilities in a concise, more-or-less standard format; sort of like a Dungeons and Dragons character sheet except with fewer references to Magic Missile or Mordenkainen’s Faithful Hound. However, just like a character sheet, most of the information on the resume is a fantasy.

Based on years of experience and intuition (and a good saving throw against deception) the manager selects the top candidates to advance to the next stage; the swimsuit competition.

Not really.

The next stage has more in common with a quiz show than a beauty pageant. Which isn’t to say that candidates don’t have to look good for an interview. The ideal candidate should dress in a way that implies they don’t really need the work; they should appear to be an eccentric millionaire who wants a job as a way to stay in touch with the common folk. Managers know that success breeds success and the only way to have a successful company is to hook up with people who are already successful (but just happen to be looking for new jobs.)

In the interview, the candidate’s challenge is to manufacture answers that are close enough to the manager’s expectations to be acceptable and unique enough to stand out from the rest of the pack. This task is made that much harder by the fact that every candidate is trying the exact same thing. The manager, meanwhile, is trying to be a human lie-detector by sorting the sense from the nonsense in the candidates’ answers.

The typical questions are things along the lines of “Tell me about your experience”, “Where did you go to school?”, and “If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, isn’t it time to get a new chicken?”

Well-prepared candidates will have stock answers like “I single-handedly restructured Chrysler in the 80s”, “Harvard and Yale”, and “In that case I would suggest outsourcing all egg-production operations to a offshore supplier.”

Some managers try to get clever and ask probing questions like, “What are your weaknesses as an employee?” (Hint: the answer is not, “I steal office supplies” nor is it “Due to my titanium endoskeleton, liquid Teflon skin, and integrated cold-fusion power cell I have no weaknesses.”)

Other managers like to go for bizarre, creativity-straining questions like “Why are manhole covers round?” (Answer: “Because manholes are round so square covers wouldn’t fit.”) Still others prefer more touchy-feely questions like, “What are the physical characteristics of the ideal manager?” or “Don’t you think I look good in this suit?” In the end, all interviews follow pretty much the same pattern of the Q&A, the Bluff the Listener Challenge, and the Lightning Round before the manager has to make a final decision.

After carefully considering all of the evidence and weighing the candidates’ qualifications and answers, the manager will decide to hire the one who made the best impression during the first fifteen seconds of the interview.

Really.

All that remains is the offer. If it were a marriage proposal, the manager would be expected to get down on one knee and produce an expensive bauble to cement the relationship. Fortunately, in the world of business, kneeling isn’t required and the bauble can be easily replaced with a generous hiring bonus. On the other hand, prospective spouses rarely come back and try to negotiate for more compensation or announce that they have a better offer elsewhere.

Once the deal is struck, the manager and candidate are joined in the task of advancing the mission of the organization. Over the years they’ll labor to build equity for their employer secure in the knowledge that when they have a few decades of experience, new candidates will be interviewed to replace them.