Job Interviewing

In my current position, I have interviewed hundreds of candidates for various open positions on my team. In all the hires I have made, I consider only 2 as mistakes. I believe the job interview is the place when the candidate will tell you 99% of what you need to know to make a hiring decision. The interviewer must craft their questions well, and listen carefully. When executed correctly, the candidate will tell you if they are a good fit on your team.


I always like to start the interview with a harmless sounding question like "tell me your story, what are you interested in, what do you do when you are not at work? It can start with I was born as an infant, and end with how you travelled to this interview. Fill in the rest". My intent is to get the candidate started with something easy that will make them comfortable. There is no chance they will offer up their interest in pedophilia, or augmenting their income through petty larceny. But as they describe their interests, I tune into references to family and friends. I want the employees on my team to be grounded with a support structure. I also become wary if they are not willing to share their interests. After all, we all have interests. Watching TV is an interest I can even related to. If a person is not willing to share interests, you have to wonder what they are up to.


At some point early in the interview, I ask how they have been evaluated in their current or past positions. The question seems innocuous and I normally get honest answers, especially when interviewing internal hires. They know that one call to HR will reveal the truth. Most applicants respond that they were rated 2 or 3 on a 5 point scale, 1 being the highest. I then move on to other questions.


Later in the interview, I follow up with a question about how many people have roughly the same role on their current team. If they have 3 or more peers, I ask how they would compare themselves to their peers. Invariably they respond that they are the best or in the top 2-3 contributors on their team. I will then ask how they square their self-assessment with the average evaluation provided by former bosses.


If I am interviewing a poor candidate, this is the point they tell you take a pass on them. I have seen multiple candidates melt down with explanations of favoritism, office politics, or a stupid boss as the reasons for the discrepancy. A good candidate will either assess themselves based on evaluation feedback from past bosses, or build up the abilities of their current team and peers.


The single most important part of an interview to me is to listen to how the candidate describes their past accomplishments. It is difficult, time consuming, and nearly impossible to check out every interview or resume claim, but if a candidate can describe their accomplishments with excitement and pride, they are probably telling you the truth.


It is also during this time I look for the "twinkle in their eye" that tells you they understand why the accomplishment was important and indicates a competency at the job. I would rather have a slightly under qualified employee that has bought into a bigger picture than a completely qualified employee that mails it in every day.


My best example was a hire I made in 1999. In order to mitigate potential risk, I opened a position as a contractor spot, but interviewed candidates as if I would eventually hire them full time. I learned early that hiring a bad contractor could be remedied immediately, while a bad employee hire can be with you for years. Of all the candidates I interviewed for the new position, the man I hired had the thinnest resume and admitted that he could not perform in the role without training. I hired him simply based on his enthusiasm and his ability to quickly pick up on why the job was important to my team's goals. He was not qualified to do the job, but convinced me that he would put forth the required effort.

I brought this candidate on as a contractor and he performed so well that I hired him to my staff 6 months later. He quickly learned the technical aspects of the role, worked hard, established processes to govern the assignment, met every deliverable given him, and excelled beyond anything I could have expected based on his resume. After working for me one year, this individual applied for an engineering job in a peer team. I spoke to that hiring manager and shared my thoughts. I gave my guy good marks for enthusiasm and execution, but mentioned that he was not a qualified engineer at this point in his career.


My guy must have made a good impression on the peer hiring manager because he got the job. I checked back a few months later to see how he was doing. Not only was he meeting expectations, the engineering manager said that all high priority, short time frame projects were given to my guy because he was tenacious and delivered when established engineers would not.


The only canned interview question I ask is "what do you want to be doing in 5 years". The answer I am looking for is different based on the specific job. If the job is a highly technical position, I want the candidate to tell me that their goal is to be the most competent person on my staff in 5 years. The last thing I need is to hire a subject matter expert whose goal is to leave my team. If the role is more a general staff position, I am fine with an answer that indicates movement into leadership roles within the company. I want my staff positions to assume leadership roles in the projects they are assigned.

The worst interview candidate I have ever spoke with was a woman, approximately 40 years old, who applied for a administrative assistant position on my team. She was a 10+ year veteran of the company and had spent those years in the procurement division, mostly processing purchase orders and invoices. Her demeanor through out the entire interview made me wonder if she had been given a lobotomy. Her responses were completely emotionless, deadpan, and dry. She offered no information unless prodded by a question. When asked about her expertise with Microsoft Office products, she indicated a proficiency. That was good, since the job required a working knowledge of Word and Excel. When pressed on her abilities at entering formulas into Excel cells, she replied "I mainly like to type stuff into the boxes. I don't do formulas. I really don't like details like that". She did not get the job.

National Healthcare

We now find ourselves in a national debate on improving health care for Americans. The rhetoric is flying, and so far little common sense has entered the debate. I have a few thoughts.

• Health care is not a right. I cringe every time I hear a person say that we have a right to health care. Rights are described in the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and associated amendments. No where in those documents will you find a right to health care. It would take a Supreme Court ruling to find that right. It may happen, but if it does we will have a good example of judicial activism.
• The United States Health care system is not broken. We have the best health care in the world. As with most things, you get what you pay for and ours is expensive. Our Canadian neighbors to the north have national health care. Why do those who can afford it come to the United States for health care? One answer, the care is better here than it is there.
• Medicare/Medicaid is not a model we can replicate. Many proponents of national health care claim that the government is ready to run the system. All that is needed is an expansion of medicare. It won't work and would likely cripple the U.S. health care system. The reason is that medicare is part of the problem. The rates paid by medicare are so low that many providers must inflate what they charge to private insurance plans to make up the difference. Expanding medicare would make the health care business unprofitable.
• Reward good behavior. Bad behavior such as smoking and obesity are the root of 80% of health care claims. The cost of health care would decline remarkably if office visits, surgeries, and hospital stays declined by a portion of the 80% of costs related to non-healthy behavior. Good behaviour should be rewarded with lower insurance rates. This is already occurring in some plans and by a few self-insured companies, and will work if implemented uniformly.
• Government is not the answer to lower cost. The government cannot be part of a competitive mix of health care plans. The reason is that a national health care plan would have the backing of the American taxpayer and the money printing power of the U.S. Treasury. A private insurance firm cannot be expected to compete with a government plan that may lose money, (as medicare does today), and simply pass the loss onto future generations in the form of debt.
• Competition by health care providers is required. If the average health care consuming citizen was required to pay for a larger percentage of their health care, you would begin to see consumers shop for the best deal. This would incent providers to become a lower cost option than their competitors. You would see hospitals, general care, and specialist providers retool their offerings so they could garner the most business. This model would dilute the cost of special equipment or services across many paying customers. Cost could be expected to decrease while quality could improve.

Those of us who believe that President Obama is moving to establish government control of the U.S economy know that common sense will never enter the debate. This is about growing government control. Health care is the next item to nationalize after banks, mortgage lendering, car and insurance companies. It is critical to the Obama plan.

Newlyweds

Allison Weber is my 20, almost 21 year old daughter. She married Jimmy Weber in July of 2007 when only 19 years old. Her mother and I initially discouraged the wedding, thinking that a couple more years of maturity would do both of them well.

I think you can reasonably say that they are still newlyweds since they have not yet made the 2 year anniversary. Yet, thinking back over the past two years, they don't fit the newlywed profile. It has been a tumultuous 2 years they have handled it with a maturity I could not have expected.

Let me start the story a year or to prior to their wedding. Jimmy's father, Joe, was a diabetic and generally in poor health. He spent quite a bit of the time Jimmy and Allison dated in and out of the hospital. Even when at home, his health was poor. During their courtship, Joe Weber died leaving his wife, Diane, and two sons, Jimmy and Joey. Joey is Jimmy's older brother and suffers from Muscular Dystrophy. He is effectively a quadriplegic and requires 24 hour care.

In July of 2007, Jimmy and Allison were married. Joey was part of the wedding party stood (seated) next to Jimmy. Jimmy and Allison moved into their first home together, an apartment a few blocks away from our house. What started out as a typical newlywed lifestyle soon changed.


On New Years Eve that same year, Diane became seriously ill and was admitted to Shawnee Mission Hospital via the emergency room. While the root cause of her illness was never determined, it caused her brain to swell and caused irreversible brain damage. She remained in a coma for the last week and a half of her life before dying in early January.


Diane's death left Jimmy and Allison with a decision. They could either find a state institution to care for Joey, or they could assume the care giver role. They choose the latter. Jimmy and Allison moved out of their first home together, and back into Diane's house so they could care for Joey. The greater sacrifice was not simply moving back, but rather assuming the care responsibilities. Those include ensuring state aid continued, transport for medical visits, school transportation, and management of in home nursing. It is a large responsibility for anyone, and not one that a newly married couple should have to take on. Yet, they took it on.


Over the past 18 months since the death of Diane, Jimmy and Allison have taken each challenge as they were presented. In addition, they were able to purchase and move into their first home and make it suitable for Joey's care. Their accomplishments were not easy, and my pride in both of them grows each week.


Jimmy and Allison: Hang in there. This is not the way it is supposed to be, it is just the way it is. You are handling it very well. It will get easier. Someday you will look back on this time with a sense of accomplishment in what you have done, how you did it, and that it was the right thing to do.

NutriSystem

A couple of months ago, I made the commitment to lose a few pounds. I have dieted once before using the Atkins method. It worked well for me as I lost around 25 pounds within a couple of months, and kept it off while on the diet. Since I am a red meat kind of guy, the diet came pretty easy. I did miss the bread and potatoes, but filled up every day on beef, cheese, nuts, etc.

After being on the Adkins diet for several months, Terri and I vacationed for a week in Charleston, South Carolina. I went off Atkins that week and gained 10 pounds in that one week. That seems to be the problem with that diet. Works well, but when you go off your body is very efficient at turning carbs into fat.

So now, several years later I need to diet again. Atkins is out since my doctor wants my cholesterol very low to guard against another stroke. Nutrisystem seemed like an easy diet. I saw Dan Marino holding a nice looking hamburger, and he lost 20 pounds in a single month. And you get to eat 6 times a day. I can do that!

Off to Costco to buy my first month supply of prepared Nutrisystem. My first mistake was assuming that Costco actually had the food. After paying the discounted rate, the clerk pointed me to a door where my order would be delivered. I asked the guy at the door if I would need a cart. He just smiled and shook his head. Then he went through the door and picked up an envelope and handed it to me. In that envelope was a Nutrisystem card that I could redeem online and get my order shipped to me. By nightfall the card was redeemed.

Nutrisystem delivered the order to my front door in about a week. Just as they promised, 1 extra week was delivered as part of my first order. I sorted it out and prepared for a new experience starting the next day.

First, the hamburger that Dan Marino advertises. Since all Nutrisystem food is non-refrigerated and non-perishable, there was no bun, tomato or lettuce. The dieter is expected to provide those essentials. The beef patty is another story. It comes in a cardboard box, inside a plastic tray and envelop. Preparation of the patty is to boil a small amount of water and pour it in the tray with the patty. The patty will then regenerate and heat. The flavor is not bad, but it is not nearly as appetizing as the one Dan Marino had in the advertisement.

Nutrisystem dinners are nasty looking, but taste pretty good. Entrees like meatloaf with mashed potatoes come in a plastic tray ready for the microwave. They taste fine, but always make you wonder how they can package the food with no refrigeration. The potatoes do turn a shade of tan, but are otherwise fine. The portions are small and when eating a Nutrisystem dinner, I know what Americans in Vietnam prison camps were thinking when they augmented their rice with insects. I have been tempted also.

The pizza always displayed in Nutrisystem ads are the worst food on the menu. First, the dieter has to put it together by spreading the sauce over pizza crust and then sprinkling cheese (that looks like plastic shards) over the pizza. After microwaving the meal, you are treated pizza that has the texture of a cardboard. Not the thin cardboard used in cereal boxes, but more like the thick cardboard used to box up appliances. It is very tough, hard to eat, and really not worth the effort.

Breakfast meals are okay. The pastries are pretty tasty, but just short of delicious. Cereal tastes like store-bought brands. Powered eggs with vegetable sausage is surprisingly good and easy to prepare. Pancakes are good (both of them). The oatmeal is horrible. You could patch your foundation with the stuff, but at least you know something is in your stomach when you finish. I couldn't eat all of the oatmeal they sent me.

Lunches are substantially soup. Black bean and tortilla, black bean and rice, split pea, and other flavors. All taste great.

Snacks are the only reason to try Nutrisystem. You get 2 a day and they are all very good. If I had the choice, I'd buy the snacks and leave the meals.

The one commonality for ALL Nutrisystem food is they are high in fiber. Even the chocolate pudding has a healthy dose. All that fiber puts a strain on your digestive tract, not to mention your friends, family and neighbors.

After two months of being mostly on Nutrisystem, I have lost 25 pounds. It was not as easy as Atkins, but probably a much healthier diet. It did train me to eat smaller portions, and that is something I can use as I go off the diet. I will be interested if that helps me keep the weight off over the next few months.

I am a Stroke Survivor, Part 3

June 11th, my 51st birthday marked my first day home as a stroke survivor. I felt pretty good and all I was required to do was take a mild blood thinner for a year and visit with the neurologist every quarter. For the first couple of weeks I experienced some weakness on my left side and slurred a few words, but the impact was not too noticeable. I took 2 weeks off before returning to work, and played golf (poorly) in the week that followed my release. So in my mind, things were returning to normal.

Terri may disagree and could have a little different recollection. She noticed that I was going though demeanor changes. I was far less patient than before, far more impulsive, and could quickly become irritable or mad at things that would not have bothered me in the past. As I put time between myself and the stroke, I too could see these changes. Although not as severe, some are still with me today.

Time has also allowed me to see that my logic and behaviour in the days following release from the hospital were odd. My check registry for that time period is full of errors. I would sometimes use a credit card, but enter it in the check registry. Other times I would use my check card and not register the transaction.

One day I received a new transaction card for our savings account. Thinking it was a new check card, I destroyed my old one, and tried to use the savings card as a check card without success. In my mind, the bank was horribly screwed up as it was all their fault.

After returning to work, I do remember one instance of confusion at an intersection near my place of business. I actually pulled out in front of a car that had the right of way. Luckily the other driver avoided collision. I do not recall other problems driving, but that one was close.

As time passed, the confusion lessened. The only affects of my stroke now are that I am quicker to anger than I once was, and sometimes I briefly forget names of those I am vaguely acquainted with. When presenting concepts or projects at work, I will stumble on words, or they will queue up in my head much faster that I can speak.

Terri might have other beliefs on how I have changed. In fact, she may have corrections on many of the events I have written about. One thing that was learned about right side brain injuries is that the victim is not aware of a problem, and is completely unaware of the strange behavior they may exhibit.

I am thankful for many things. Thankful the stoke was not severe with permanent disability. Thankful that I have not had a recurrence of the problem. Thankful that my employer was understanding an patient with my recovery. But most thankful that my family, especially my wife Terri, has put up with my strange behavior and moods, and still love me. Thanks babe, I love you much.

I am a Stroke Survivor, Part 1

It was Wednesday, June 6th, 2007. Terri and I were planning to fly to North Carolina for vacation on the following Friday. I was at work clearing out my pre-vacation to do's. It was lunch time and I was spending it as I usually do, quietly in my cube eating a salad and reading my email. I do recall that I was a little tired and attributed it to yesterday's blood donation followed by mowing the lawn in the summer heat.

I remember pressing the print button and getting up to go pick up the printed email from the printer. My next memory is that I was slumped over the printer as a friend and peer manager was asking me what was wrong. Later I was told that I had been seen clumsily wandering the floor, bouncing off of cube walls, and unresponsive to those I encountered.

After stumbling into one cube, I frightened and worried the resident enough that he reported it to his manager. I stated to the peer manager who found me that I was fine, just a little tired, I had a sinus problem and might have lost my balance. I could have come up with 10 more excuses, but she wasn't buying any of it. I was sat down in a chair, and another co-worker with a medical background took a closer look at me. He too thought that something was not right.


My boss was informed and the para-medics were called. Upon arrival, the para-medics also saw that something was not right with me. They questioned me on drug and alcohol use, and pressed hard on whether I had been dringing over lunch. After repeated denials the para-medics made the decision to transport me to the hospital based on their assessment that I probably had some sort of medical issue.


I was wheeled out of my place of business on a gurney as many of my co-workers watched. My boss called Terri and informed her of the situation and then followed the ambulance to the emergency room of St. Luke's South Hospital. I was quickly admitted to a triage room and assessed. Blood was drawn and sent for testing.


I felt normal and was responsive when Terri arrived at the hospital. She did notice that I displayed some left sided facial droop. The ER doctor indicated that I had probably experienced a TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack) sometimes referred to as a mini-stroke. Since these are by nature "transient" and do not leave lasting damage, there was thought that I would be prescribed medication and released with follow up testing. I asked to use the restroom and got out of bed. My left knee gave out and I stumbled. That was TIA #2. Immediate release was now out of the question and I was admitted to ICU.

My case was given to a neurologist who determined from an MRI that I have a genetic narrowing of an artery in my head, and this was the likely location of the TIA. The source of whatever temporarily stuck in the narrowing was now the issue that needed an answer. Some consideration was given to placing a shunt in the artery however, as the neurologist put it, prior attempts with other patients has less than desirable outcomes (what did that mean?).

ICU was an interesting place with private rooms and lots of nurse attention. The nursing staff commented on how I did not fit the profile for an ICU patient or a stroke victim as I did not smoke, had low cholesterol and average blood pressure. Regardless, there I was in an ICU room after having the most significant medical event of my life.


I will continue this story tomorrow as I went through a battery of tests in an attempt to find the source of a clot or plaque that may have led to the TIA. At this point, my main goal was to get released from the hospital in time to make a Friday morning flight to North Carolina. The neurologist led me to believe it was still possible, even as Terri tried to dissuade him. After all, she did not want to get stuck in North Carolina with a sick husband.

I am a Stroke Survivor, Part 2

So on June 7th, 2007, I find myself in the ICU of St Luke's South Hospital. I am 4 days short of 51 years old, this is not supposed to be happening. The day began a barrage of tests. I think I saw all the testing hardware available at the hospital. Sonogram, CT scan, and echo cardiogram tests were among the first to be performed. Each were intended to find the source of the clot or plaque that caused the TIA's. All turned up no evidence.

Vacation was planned for the next morning. Could we still make it? I lobbied the neurologist and nurses hard. I wanted to go! Late in the day, Terri and I met with the neurologist and I was successful in convincing him to release me with medication and a promise to return for testing after vacation. We were going to North Carolina!

But then TIA #3 hit, complete with facial droop. In a matter of minutes, my condition turned from ready for release to seriously ill. It is not normal for a patient to have 3 TIA's over 2 days as this usually portends a serious stroke is imminent. Good bye North Carolina, hello St. Luke's Brain and Stroke Center.


I was immediately transferred to the St. Luke's downtown location that specialized in caring for brain and stroke patients. The next few days were spent visiting other hardware for tests, all of which were not conclusive. Fortunately, I experienced no more TIA's. The final test, an angiogram, was the gold standard for vascular problems. In this procedure, the doctor made a small incision into my leg, and fed a wire into an artery, through my heart and into my brain. From there they released dye just below the suspected TIA location as they watched a real time video of the blood supply in my brain. I too was able to see what they did.

The dye was released as I felt a surge of warmth spread through my head. On the monitor, all the blood vessels in my head immediately became visible. From this, the doctor was able to tell that this was no longer a case of multiple TIA's. The restricted blood flow had killed a small portion of my brain, so the diagnosis was now that I had a minor stroke. The vessels around the damaged portion were already redirecting blood around the area.


Still the source of my problem was unknown and may remain that way forever. Fortunately, I have not had recurrence of a TIA in the subsequent 2 years. So on Sunday, June 10th, I was discharged from St. Luke's Hospital. In the third and last blog on this subject, I will describe what has happened since my stroke.