Two interviews

Two interviews today, both seemingly (on the strength of the CVs they had sent in) with fairly good candidates. The interviews were conducted by Neil Hancock (Sales Director) and myself, and were held in Neil’s office. This is on the coveted south side of the building and has a range of windows that look out over the landscaped car park. All the directors are in this part of the building and they have their own (semi-private) staircase down to their own discreet external door, and a tiny waiting area with cushion seats, today’s Financial Times, and a heap of old copies of The Economist.

Neil Hancock and I sat at one side of the long table in his office (a rather messy office – as a Director, Neil Hancock doesn’t feel he has to observe the company’s clean desk / tidy site policies). The telephone rang, announcing that the first candidate was waiting below. Neil went through a code-protected security door and I heard his footsteps as he crashed down the wooden stairs.

Seconds later he reappeared, accompanied by a man aged twenty-six (I knew this from his CV), shorter than average height, stocky build, short black curly hair, white shirt, pin-stripe suit, pastel-pink tie. The knot of this tie was loose, and the top shirt button was undone. He took off his jacket and put it over the back of a chair, sat down without being asked, and slouched back in his seat looking up at us.

We sat down opposite him and the interview commenced. Despite his very confident entrance, the candidate proved to be extremely nervous. Neil Hancock was merciless in probing the reasons why he had left previous companies (he told us he had left his last employment because the marketing job was going nowhere and his girlfriend had told him to leave). Several times over the course of an hour his story contradicted itself, revealing the fact that he was telling us small, unimportant, lies. There was no conclusion to the interview, it just sort of fizzled out. The candidate finished one of his unintelligible disconnected replies, and there was silence as Neil Hancock and I sat there for a moment, looking at him.

At lunchtime I bought a copy of The Guardian (very good journalistic standards, and full of interesting articles, but the editorials do tend to sneer a little, which is why I don’t read it regularly. An article today on weblogs was extremely interesting).

The second interview began late in the afternoon. The female candidate was aged twenty-five, dressed in a grey pin-stripe trouser suit which suited her slim figure. Blonde hair in a deliberately messy bobbed style. Subtle make-up. No jewellery. She was polite and self-effacing to begin with, but later became confident and chatty. Her CV contained a succession of marketing jobs that changed at six monthly intervals (the longest she had been in a job since leaving university was ten months). Neil Hancock pressed her hard on this job-hopping, and was unnecessarily intrusive (I thought) about the “boyfriend” troubles that had made her suddenly leave Bristol.

The interview went on for over two hours, long after everyone else had left for the evening. The formal questions stopped and we talked over cups of coffee, finishing with a long and quite lively political discussion on the National Health Service. Neil Hancock’s abrasive style had changed, and he was laughing and smiling at the young woman. The thought occurred to me: he’s fallen for her a little.