INTERVIEWS
Strange things happen in interviews on both sides of the desk. Lorne Epstein, author of “You’re Hired! Interview Skills To Get the Job,” has sent what turned out to be some very unusual candidates to interviews or employers to interview them (E3, $15).
One session was scheduled for an hour, and while he expected a phone call after it was over, his phone rang in 20 minutes. The interviewer, who, it turned out, had narcolepsy, had fallen asleep and the candidate wanted to know what to do.
“In jest,” Epstein says, “I told him to tell the interviewer, ‘Thank you for the offer. I will start on Monday’ when the person awoke.” Alas, the humor didn’t land him a job but a wholehearted invitation to a second interview conducted by someone else.
In another case the senior management team and the woman who’d report to the candidate gathered for an interview. After the candidate arrived, a problem developed. “Lo and behold we found out that he’d fired her from her last job,” Epstein mentions.
While that might have seemed a deal-breaker, it wasn’t for the man. “When I spoke with him at the end of the interview,” Epstein remarks, “he insisted that HE would be OK working as her manager again.”
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