We sat at a yellow Formica table in a booth by the window under the garish glow of fluorescent lights. We drank scorched coffee, and I forced myself to eat a fritter just to have something in my stomach. As the crappy coffee took its effect and the rhythmic ticking of the lights overhead provided a beat that I could fall in line with, I slowly started to feel okay again. I found myself listening to the subtle sounds of Claire drinking coffee, her bracelet rattling on the table top as she placed the cup back down. It felt good to be near her. But there was a vague emptiness about the entire thing. And my mind kept coming back to this lingering question that I had no intention of asking but felt compelled to anyway.
“Why didn’t we have kids?”
Poor Claire gave her best shot at a reason but it was clear that she didn’t have the answer either.
THE INTERVIEW
The job to lead the department was out of reach before the first interview even started. Because of the nature of our industry, the firm required associates to hold to strict standards of conduct in their lives outside the office. That didn’t mean one couldn’t cheat on his wife or screw a friend out of money. Those were considered private issues no matter how public they often became. The firm was more interested in official legal issues, such as DUI, urinating in public, or getting arrested for manslaughter and conspiracy charges in a botched blackmailing scheme.
For a firm that was intrinsically risk-averse and for a job whose sole purpose was to keep the company from being sued, the idea that they would choose someone with so many questions around him was a dim option.
I knew Paul would make sure he brought my extracurricular activities to the attention of the key decision-makers in the hiring process. He wouldn’t do it in such a straightforward way as, “Did you hear about Chuck?” No, he would find some back-door method like sending out a memo requesting any updates to the Code of Conduct Handbook or promoting a new study on recidivism of persons who have committed misdemeanors.
The idea of reporting to Paul made me shudder, and I let myself drift off with the daydream of quitting before it became official, but deep down inside I knew I wouldn’t do that. I had it too good to be throwing it all away because I didn’t like guys with ponytails.
I still had to go through the motions of the interview for a job I never wanted and now had zero chance of getting. But despite all of that, I wasn’t ready to roll over. Perhaps it was all of the unfinished business of recent events that increased my desire to see something through to its end. Or maybe it was just that I despised Pat so much that I wanted to make his decision to deny me the role as difficult as possible. Either way, I wasn’t going down easy.
The first round was with the recruiting representative from HR. And although I was four times her senior in the same department, protocol dictated that she kick off the interview slate. She showed up in a tailored business suit that looked new. I smiled internally at the act because in many ways this was more an interview for her with the future lead of the department than it was for me as the potential future head. She needed to make a good impression and thus was more nervous than I was. I helped guide her through the standard slate of questions and we got into a nice rhythm. It felt good to loosen up a bit on questions straight out of the manual I helped pen.
“Tell me about a time when one of your ideas was not adopted and how did you react?” was the question to probe on overcoming adversity.
“If you had to change one thing over the last five years in your career, what would it be?” was a way to get insight on someone’s self-reflection tendencies.
My preparation for this portion of the interview was to drop key words from the job description in each of my responses.
“…foster a collaborative environment…build integrated capabilities…nurture cross-functionality between groups…”
The poor thing literally made check marks on her paper each time I used one of these phrases. By the end of it she was almost ready to shout, “You’re hired!” I thanked her for her time and then commended her on a very well-run interview.
I didn’t let this cream-puff session lull me into complacency. The interviews that remained would get successively more difficult and less predictable as I went through the day.
We transitioned out of the gobbledygook of HR into the business world with its own set of fabricated jargon. The important thing to remember was that the interview was not about me. The interview was all about the person asking the questions. If you could unlock them and answer accordingly then your chances of getting hired were greatly increased.
So when the head of IT asked me how the firm’s culture influenced results, I knew what he was really asking. The question reflected his concern that a stodgy management was slow to adapt with the times and spend money on new technologies.
“A firm that does not evolve constrains its long-term viability,” I began. “The challenge is,” (there are no problems, just challenges) “to make the hard decisions now, as unpopular as they may seem in the moment, that will pay off in the future.”
I thought the man, he with his ever-shrinking budget and zero respect internally for the thankless job he performed admirably day-in and day-out, was going to leap across the table and kiss me. I might have said nothing, but he found an ally.
I did this dance for hours and I loved every minute of it. It was as close as I could get to that feeling athletes have when the game is slowed down, where they see every move before it happens. I was making shit up left-and-right and it all went down as easily as soft-serve ice cream. And with each interview I slowly began to convince myself that I might have a chance at this job after all.
During the lunch portion, I purposely avoided carbs and caffeine. I didn’t need a post-sugar crash to mess with my rhythm. I ran into a little trouble at the two o’clock portion with the head of administrative assistants where we got sideways on my approach to associate development (for dead-end jobs) but I quickly rescued it with a clever turn of a phrase involving “stepping-stones” and “paths to career fulfillment.”
The three and four o’clock interviews with the Head of Operations and Chief Compliance Officer respectively were victories before they even began. It was as if they sensed when they entered the room that they were about to talk to the man who had the job. I didn’t let hubris get the better of me and I battled in those sessions with equal vigor. By the time they were over I felt like I could go twelve more rounds.
The final interview was with Pat Faber. The room was now stuffy from the late afternoon sun pouring in and from all the hot air puffed over the last seven hours. I bounced out of my chair to greet him by the door. We each attempted to out-pump the other with a handshake, and I gleefully registered the disappointment on his face. He expected an exhausted man. Instead, he saw someone who was ready to uppercut him into oblivion. Pat rose to the challenge.
“What does failure look like?”
“A man who accepts things as ‘good enough’.”
“What’s the one thing you would change about yourself?”
“Nothing. The first step is recognizing your faults then figuring out how to succeed despite them.”
“What would you change about me?”
“Ask easier questions.”
“Why shouldn’t we select Paul for the job?”
“I want to be selected on my strengths, not on another man’s weaknesses.”