10/16/07 - Greatest Interview EVER...Must read!
This gentleman, whom we'll just call by his last name Tomlinson, showed up to be interviewed in a white long t-shirt, a pair of not necessarily clean jeans and a dumbfounded look on his face. I asked him to sit in the food court and I'd be with him in a minute, because I knew this one was for the record books... I just got that feeling.
I grab my counterpart, Jason, from his Gamestop store in the mall because we typically try to do dual interviews so we can go back and forth with how we feel afterwords and determine if someone deserves the job or not. Well, today, it was more for shits and giggles than anything else. I tell him we're interviewing a guy in a t-shirt and jeans, and he says, "At the end of the day, sometimes all we need is a warm body to interview because that's all we really need..." and although true, this was not the body we want to hire...
So we sit down with him and introduce each other, and I ask, "What do you know about Gamestop...?" Answer..."Umm...well..." and then he starts to rub the top of his head, and then rubs his chin...through ALL of these exchanges, this is his general response..."I don't really know about the company."
Jason: "How do you feel one person affects a company?" Answer...shrug, rub head, rub chin..."um..." rub chin, rub head, rub chin..."I don't know what the question means."
Jason: "What's your favorite game of all time...?" Answer..."I dunno. Maybe NBA Live 2007 or maybe it was 08..."
Rob: "Sell it to me." Answer: "Huh? Sell what?"
Rob: "Your favorite game to me. Sell me a copy of NBA Live 08." Answer: "Ummm..." rubs head, chin, head, chin, "I only played it a couple times."
Jason: "Your favorite game, you've only played a couple times?" Answer: "Uh, well, I never really play games."
I look at him at this point and ask, "Are you feeling overwhelmed by the questions we're asking? You don't seem to be giving us much information, or answering any of our questions..." Answer: "Nah...hm. I'm, uh, not hm...overwhelmed."
Rob: "Do you know that you applied for a sales job?" Answer: "Uh" shrug, chin, head, chin, chin, chin..."Hm, uh, I put and application in."
Jason: "Rob, do you have any more questions for him, because I feel like I've got everything I need..."
Rob: "Yeah, just one more...If you were the boss of a business, and this was the interview that you just had to hire someone...would you hire that person?"
This question's response was terrific...chin...chin...chin...head...head...head..."uh, um..."...chin...chin...chin...::breath::...chin, chin...head, head, head..."I'd, uh...well, I'd have to think about it..."
Jason: "You know, you only get one chance to make a first impression..."
Rob: "You know, we're trying to give you a fair chance here...but you haven't answered ANY of our questions, you haven't given us anything to go by, so we'll be doing our call backs in about a week. You've got our number, right?"
Answer: "Um...uh. Well...yeah."
Rob and Jason: "Alright, then, have a good one."
Wow, just writing about it here, it doesn't get the same gusto that a lot of my stories get, because you really have to animate the hair and chin rubbing, because there was A LOT of it...this guy, afterwords, here's the conversation Jason and I had about him...
Rob: "Jason, you said warm bodies...I don't think he qualified even for that classification...I think he was dead."
Jason: "Wow. That was the greatest interview of all time. I mean, I'll look back for months, maybe years, and go, "Well, it still wasn't as bad as Tomlinson..."
And you know what? He's probably right.
