interviews

I participated in a second interview session up in Sugar Land last week. We were looking for future field supervisors for most of the segments in the United States. The interviewees had all been through a first interview of some kind, either in person at a career fair or a phone interview. The interviewers were either members of the recruiting team or 'hiring managers' like myself. Who knew I had yet another illustrious title. I'll have to re-emboss my business cards with a Phillips head screwdriver instead of the regular flat head that I've been using. (I'm even considering an upgrade to a Torx-style screwdriver. Very classy.)

The session left me with a lot of interesting impressions and some questions about how I came to work here. Right now, we're still in a ramp-up mode and hiring very aggressively, especially field supervisors. However, I was keen on rejecting borderline candidates while many of my colleagues seemed willing to take a more, uh, gallant approach. We should all know the costs of a failed hire and it's measured in much more than simple dollars.

There were characteristics, particularly leadership qualities (these are field supervisors) and a couple other key markers that I don't want to give away, that we were all looking for. The experience has left me very badly wanting to participate in a field engineer interview session. When I look back at the person I was many moons ago, I'm not sure I would have hired myself. However, there may be certain factors that go into a FE session that were not strongly weighted during the FS session. Or, I was much more dazzling than many of the people I have so recently seen.

I question my own hirability (which I'm fairly certain isn't a word) because I did not possess many of the markers that I believe correlate with a higher retention rate such as degree-type, school, past internship with company, know people in the company, etc. Essentially, I was the ultimate outsider. Some days, I still feel like an outsider in that I'm never going to be a one of the boys, not a local or even semi-regional guy, I don't look the part, and I just feel like I have a fundamentally different approach to most things than many of my counterparts. However, most days I am an insider because of what I do, the time I put in, what I know, and how I'm able to put it all together. I'll call it a definite topic for future discussion.