Interviewing

The last couple of weeks I (along with my boss and my boss' boss) have interviewed a half a dozen or so people who have applied for the position I'm about to vacate. Up until today we hadn't really talked to anyone that was really impressive. The gentleman we talked to today was knowledgeable and had most of the skills we were looking for but when I asked him why he was leaving his current job, he said he wasn't necessarily, that he really liked his current job and that he was just "passively" looking at jobs, sort of to "see what was out there". When we asked him if he could come in for an in-person interview (the interview today was a phone interview) he indicated that his only available time would be at 6:00 pm. Obviously he's being careful about staying in the good graces of his current employer. So we'll have to see what happens.

Last week I asked another interviewee the same question and he replied that they were closing the office he works at and moving things to Texas. I asked if they were relocating anyone, he said they were. I asked him if they had offered to relocate him, he said they had not. After he left my bosses asked me what I thought. I said well there's one big red flag: if his own company doesn't want him why should we? If they think it's better to leave his position unfilled, or to hire someone else, that doesn't speak very highly of his perceived value. The second red flag is that he's not clever enough to lie about it. He could just as easily have said, "I have family here, so I declined their offer." Or if he was really worried about telling a lie he could have said, "Before they had even made their decision on who to move I told them I wasn't interested, so the subject never came up again."

Obviously this is a pretty cynical attitude, but hiring people is always pretty dicey. You've got an hour or two to decide if you want someone around all day every day forever. You really have to latch on to every clue you can.

Of course I've never had to lie in an interview