A minute is a very long time. In the silence of the interview room with a vice chancellor and five unfriendly faces looking at me it was getting longer by the second. What had seemed a good idea in planning was losing credibility faster than a Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini-budget. My nerve broke…
Interviews share some of the characteristics of democracy in that they are the very worst form of selecting a new employee apart from “all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Much like an election, they can be a lottery where the politics on the other side of the table matter much more than the candidate’s capabilities. I succeeded at each of the first three interviews in my career but had a hit rate well under 20% after that.
I should probably have been better as a candidate because I’ve spent plenty of time as a hiring manager and chairing interview panels. But over the years the process seemed to become increasingly focused on ticking compliance boxes rather than having a decent conversation with someone about their fitness for the role. Most interviews are so dull they are instantly forgettable but there are a few examples where I’ve overextended my hand in trying to liven them up.
Silence Is Golden2
The silence in the interview room and my loss of nerve came during a two-minute slot where I was invited to give an overview on my suitability for a role as the university’s head of communications. I had decided to sit totally still and wordless for the first minute. It was intended to be a precursor to explaining that this symbolised an institution that had communicated nothing of importance for months.
My inspiration was a tale from the advertising world when Allen Brady and Marsh tendered for the British Rail contract in 1977. The client team, led by then BR chairman, Sir Peter Parker, arrived at ABM’s reception for the presentation to be met by a bored receptionist and were made to sit in a waiting room where the tables were festooned with used coffee cups and cigarette butts. They were about to walk out when agency director Peter Marsh and his team appeared.
Marsh said, “What I’ve been trying to demonstrate to you in these surroundings and the indifference of our receptionist there, is the experience your customers have of you, British Rail, every day. And it’s my job and intention to show you how we will overcome that problem. Shall we go and have lunch…” Totally brilliant in terms of concept, timing and nerve.
Among the problems with my own attempt at performance art was that I had forgotten to set my watch, the evident hostility of the panel at this unexpected silence got to me and we certainly weren’t going for a slap-up lunch afterwards. As the tension in the room grew I decided to speak up well before the end of the minute but fluffed the explanation, so they only heard me telling them what a terrible job they were doing. Totally my fault for bungled execution and the interview spiralled downwards from there, but as the vice-chancellor didn’t last much longer in his job it was probably a narrow escape.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond3
A later outing was with a well-ranked university where my research had revealed that the VC was a world specialist in materials with interests including alloys and crystallography. With this insight, I decided to base my vision for communicating the strengths of the university by using the metaphor of it being an undiscovered diamond. As I concluded my description the vice chancellor, who was chairing the panel, told me he was an expert on the subject. I said, “I know,” which were the last words from my lips for several minutes.
He proceeded to hold court, to a panel of ten, with a lecture on the characteristics of diamond formation, minerals, organic and inorganic compounds and alloys. Most particularly, he pronounced on why the metaphor didn’t correspond with his learned view about the diamonds. It was probably not helpful for me to suggest he had missed the point and that popular opinions about diamonds reflected more on their value and popularly understood characteristics than their chemical composition and isometric structure.
Everything I had heard about the institution being a tightly controlled autocracy became painfully evident as the panel took their cue from the top. The rest of the hour was a reminder that a good chair speaks last if they want to ensure they hear a diversity of views and opinions. My only consolation was thinking it’s sometimes better to crash, burn and learn than to land safely in the wrong place.
The Games People Play4
I was also particularly bad at the two days interviews which became popular with some universities. At one south coast institution I wowed an audience of 20 on day one with a presentation on the theme of distant horizons. I even managed to pull off a joke about the university being similar to Spock of Star Trek in having three ears – right ear, left ear and space the final frontier.
Day two was a terrible series of dull question and answer interviews culminating in a one to one with a vice-chancellor who had some pretty fixed views about pathway operators. They were suspended several years later after, as one of several issues, commissioning seven custom-made chairs costing £95,000. Wouldn’t have fancied managing the PR for that anyway.
But this is where the Lefty Gomez quote suggesting that it’s better to be lucky than good comes in. For one interview, I was a last minute addition to the list of six candidates because someone dropped out late. I missed the day of campus tours because I was driving many miles to get there and secured an agreement to be the first interview of the next day.
In the car park next morning, I bumped into a suited, slightly harassed looking person who I guessed just had to be one of the other candidates. I enquired how things were going and he told me he was just getting some handouts and overhead projector slides produced to give to the panel. At that point I hadn’t put my suit on let alone thought about my opening statement.
Forty-five minutes later I was asked for a brief overview on how I would approach the job. I paused for effect and looked around the nine-person panel. “Some candidates will probably come here today with slides and handouts which suggest that they know this institution better than you do. My view is that you are probably more expert than I will ever be in understanding the academic heart of the university but that I would add value by being the expert at communicating your work…”
After my appointment the Registrar told me that the very next candidate after me had done just as I predicted. I chose not to tell him the background. Neither did I tell him that my opening statement had an even greater truth because I really didn’t know very much at all about universities or the higher education sector.
“Get your retaliation in first,” is what Willie John McBride, captain of the famous 1974 touring Lions, told his team-mates when facing bruising encounters with the South African rugby team and it’s always seemed a worthwhile consideration. But also, as Paul Newman says in Cool Hand Luke, “sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.” Either way, it was another lesson that interviews are a game where the best prepared and most knowledgeable don’t always win.
Money For Nothing5
No recounting of interviews would be complete without sharing the very best answer to an interview question that I have ever heard. When recruiting new international officers, the favourite question was to put them in a scenario where their plane was delayed and they had landed in the early hours in a country with a reputation for kidnappings. Their pre-booked taxi was nowhere to be seen, suspicious characters were hanging around and they found their wallet had been stolen.
Faced with this situation it was interesting to watch relatively young and inexperienced people run through their expectations, hopes and fears while repeatedly foundering on the absence of cash or credit cards. No calls to the embassy, no hailing a taxi, not even bribing an airport employee was possible. There was only ever one winning answer. The mighty Pete Ryan, a top guy who not only got the job but went on to become a Head of International Recruitment, barely paused before giving the world-beating, “Well it’s no problem, like, ‘cause I always keep a fiver in my shoe.”
NOTES
- The lyrics of ABBA’s 1977 UK number one, Name of the Game, are worth considering in the context of interviews.
- The Four Seasons originally recorded Silence is Golden in 1964 but the Tremeloes’ version from 1967 topped the UK charts and reached number 11 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, so is probably better known.
- Shine On You Crazy Diamond appeared on Pink Floyd’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here. The song is dedicated to the late Syd Barrett, whose drug use and mental health problems caused him to be ejected from the band in 1968.
- Joe South’s 1968 Grammy Award winning song, Games People Play, is a pretty downbeat look at human character. He went on to write Lynn Anderson’s 1970 hit, Rose Garden.
- Money for Nothing was released in 1985 as the second single from the Dire Strait’s album Brothers in Arms. Sting sings background vocals and a falsetto introduction and came up with the line in the song, “I want my MTV”. The guitar sound is, apparently, modelled on that of ZZ Top because of their popularity on early MTV.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay