And The Winner Is...

It’s probably no surprise that The Office is one of my favourite TV shows.   Michael Scott, the manager, hosts an annual awards night called the Dundies. where each employee wins an award in a category hand picked for them including the ‘Don’t Go In There After Me’ award, the ‘Tight Ass’ award, and the ‘Whitest Sneakers’ award.  In my working career, I’ve had the great privilege of working with lots of bosses and since awards season is right around the corner, I think it’s time they got some award-show style recognition.

Michael Scott...the kind of manager we should all aspire to become

The first category, the ‘Kind but Creepy’ award, goes to an old boss from my days in the fast food biz…I was managing a couple of his locations during the school year, and I was planning to go home for the summer.  He wanted me to stay, and I told him that I couldn’t afford to stay there and pay rent for the summer.  In the ‘Kind’ department, he told me that since he was hardly ever in town, (his home was in Thunder Bay), that I could have his apartment for the summer, rent free, and that we’d just have to be roomies when he came to town for a day or two each month.

Like Oscar and Felix, we were a couple of odd roomies

That sounded like an excellent deal, and it worked out well, until the day I got home from work and found him in the bathroom, door open, sitting on the toiled taking care of the day’s business.  That was awkward enough, but when you add the fact that he was sitting there eating a big plate of dinner, that’s the ‘Creepy’ part.  Kind?  Yes.  Creepy?  Freakin' right.   Still, toilet-dining aside, he was a good and generous boss.

It's always a shock to see your boss eating dinner on the crapper

In the ‘Napolean Knew Best’ category, the winner is one of my bosses from my days in the car rental business.  Like the diminutive Bonaparte, he was also a height-challenged French man.  What he lacked in tallness he more than made up for in attitude and temper.

When I wrecked one of the rental cars in an unfortunate roll-over accident on a night filled with freezing rain, other accidents, and floating timbits, instead of inquiring as to my well-being, he asked why I couldn’t have been one of the thousands of other drivers who managed to get their vehicles home safe that night.  If he saw you reading the newspaper at work, he blasted, "…you’d better be looking for a job…" as he trotted past you.  If you showed any compassion to him when he was feeling under the weather by asking, "Are you feeling alright?" he informed you that, "I give headaches, I don’t get them."

The only thing he was missing was his horse.  And his guillotine.  I'm not sure if the same could be said for Napolean, but this man could make me laugh.  

I once had a Regional Director, and often, our travel schedules synced up, so we shared cabs and flights and fairly regularly, a cocktail or meal at the airport.  She is the winner of the ‘Holy Crap, Really?’ award.  For a while, every time we were together, she would turn the conversation around to issues of the team, and engagement.  Who’s happy?  Who’s not?  What’s really going on?  And being fairly junior, and clearly not that bright, I didn’t exactly figure out, at least at the beginning, that she was digging for dirt, so I blathered on and on, talking about my manager, and what was working and what wasn’t.  (Stupid, right?  I know, I know).

My boss asked, I answered.  Bad Sean.  Bad.

On one surreal day, she sent me an email and told me that she wanted to meet.  Somehow I got it into my head that I was getting a raise.  I walked in, and she was formal and frosty.  She sat me down and told me how disappointed she was with my lack of professionalism.  She told me that team players don’t blab, and that she was writing me up for engaging in gossip.  To say I was stunned would have been the understatement of the century, but there was no arguing, or justifying with this manager.  She, for some reason, which I never learned, decided that she had gotten enough information out of me, and it was time to shut off the information faucet by slapping a letter in my file.

I was sick to my gossipy stomach, as this was my first official, ‘this will be a black mark on your permanent record’ kind of smackdown I had ever received.  The irony is, that aside from this bizarre event, I owe the last 20 years of my career to one or two opportunities made possible by this director. 

The first "letter in my file"...stayed there til my next boss took pity on me and shredded it.

The Sarah Palin Lifetime Achievement Award goes to a boss I really liked, and who gave me more opportunities than I can count, but who spent a great deal of time focused on her image.  The main difference between her and Sarah was that when my boss knew she was in over her head, she expected somebody to throw her a life preserver.   She also commanded an impressive knowledge of modern ‘business-speak’ buzzwords, more than enough of these ‘bumper stickers’ to fill any gaps in the conversation, often without betraying the fact that she didn’t know the answer.

Definition of acluistic :

(ā-clü'ĭst-ĭc) (adj.) Describing or pertaining to anything clueless; without a clue.

One of her most over-used (and frequently mocked) go-to buzz-phrases was…”Really guys, on this issue, I’m Switzerland.”  You used to hear it occasionally when a leader wouldn’t have an opinion on a particular issue…neutral, like Switzerland during the Second World War.    However, my boss used it every time she didn’t understand an issue, so it became a running joke.  If she wasn’t at a meeting, people would ask, "Who’s representing the good people of Switzerland today?"  If someone had a hard-line opinion, they would say, “Really guys, I’m North Korea on this issue” (or whichever country du jour was known for taking aggressive stances).  I really liked working for her, but sometimes she was just a little too acluistic.

What else do you think when somebody proclaims, "I am Switzerland"?

The Indiana Jones Temple of Doom award goes to a manager who spent her entire life looking over her shoulder.  She just knew something was out there, lurking, waiting to get her, and she was on a quest to find it, before it found her.  “Sean…” she said on many occasions, “…the most important job of a leader is to root out the Boogey Men.  You need to find them and deal with them.”   She was mostly talking about our own people who, from inside the business, would do us harm.   Hmmm.  I missed that one on every single day of manager school.

  

Indy:  Famous slayer of bad guys and boogey men

I really do understand that keeping your eyes open and anticipating the things flying at you that need to be dealt with is something every good leader needs to do.  In this case, there were actual real marketing, product development, revenue, and operations issues that didn’t attract nearly as much attention as the scary monsters in the closet.  Instead, she focused on boogey men.  I dunno about that one, but I did learn a lot of other valuable lessons while reporting to her.

Better watch out for monsters

The winner of the I’ll Take Geography for $1000, Alex award goes to one of my favourite bosses of all time.  We were once sitting in a bar overlooking the St. John’s harbour, in Newfoundland.   I had just been chastised by a customer for making some bold comments about my knowledge of Newfoundland geography that turned out to be really, really wrong.  My boss, who was giving me a hard time for the geographic blunder in the meeting said, (completely seriously, albeit ironically), "It’s great to just sit here, and stare out into Peggy’s Cove…it’s beautiful."  As it turns out, Peggy’s Cove is in Nova Scotia.

Beautiful Peggy's Cove, NS

Beautiful, but not Peggy's Cove

The winner of the I’m the Boss, So I’ll Say What I Want award is a former CEO I greatly admire.  First, because of his skill as a leader and grower of businesses, but second, because the guy could say whatever he wanted and get away with it every time.  I’m a chubby dude, and I remember being I was quite proud of myself because I’d lost about 25 pounds…I was standing by the elevator when the CEO stopped in his tracks, and looked at me.  I thought he was going to compliment my weight loss, but instead said, “Slater… man, you’re getting harder and harder to miss.”  Take away the folksy Scottish accent and his disarming smile, and the bastard just told me I was getting fatter.  Cheers.

"I don't mean to be rude, but have you gained some weight, Sean?"

Being a manager is tough, and I don’t mean any disrespect to any of my former bosses…in fact, I owe each of them a lot. Every one of them gave me the opportunity to learn and grow.  Even Napolean.

Tired @ Work: Wake Me Up When It's Over

I used to think the only thing scarier than falling asleep while you were driving was waking up while you were driving.   I now believe that the only thing scarier than falling asleep in a meeting is waking up in a meeting.  We are a tired society.  It’s well established that with all the things we have on the go, that the first and most usual thing we let go is sleep.  I am the long-reigning king of showing up at work with little or no sleep.  I’m not proud of it, it’s just the way it has always been for me.

Back in my university days, I could go for three or four days with no sleep…I’d go to school, then go to work, then go home and write a last-minute essay overnight, then go back to school, and repeat for another couple of days.  That alone may speak to my less than stellar results.  When I was younger, I was a bit like the Energizer Bunny…I could just keep going, and as long as there was something to do, I could go.  The crash came when there was nothing to do, like while spending time at home during reading week. 

Unfortunately, I carried some of these excellent sleep habits with me to the world of work.  Part of it is that I have a procrastinator’s soul.  Why do it now when there are three more weeks before I need to have it done?  I don’t get serious about things until the due date is nearly upon me, and when I’m not serious, I can’t effectively marshal the required attention…I’m mainly talking about presentations and reports etc.  If I learn about it today, and it’s due tomorrow, let’s go. When I learn about it today and it’s due in a month…check back with me in about three and a half weeks.  Then, I pull an all-nighter or two, and get it done.  If I need to be creative, I’m usually at my peak at about 2:30am.  If I need to be productive, I’ve got the focus of a hawk at about 4:30 am.  If I need to pound through monotonous paperwork, catch me at about eleven o’clock, once the kids have gone to bed and the house has settled.  I usually write this blog at about two in the morning.

I've never tried Red Bull.  I'm almost afraid to see what it would do to me.

It’s occurred to me recently that I’m getting too old to keep up that kind of schedule.  I crossed that magical chronological milestone on the calendar (40), and it all went to hell…I just can’t pull multiple all-nighters in a row and expect to be able to function anymore.  I’ve become a napper.  I’ve been known to blow a complete Saturday afternoon or evening in slumber-ville.  If you ask Laura, I’ve always been one to fall asleep on the couch or in a chair watching TV, but it almost feels chronic now.  I sit down, watch TV, and wake up at 3:37 am, with an infomercial for the Slap Chop or AshleyMadison.com (that’s an interesting one to wake up to…check them out on the Google) blaring forth from the TV, my glasses askew, sometimes with a drink in my hand, or my laptop on my chest, and I drag myself off to bed.

This is not an endorsement, but I do remember waking up once with an Ashley Madison infomercial playing and I thought it was Saturday Night Live.  

But it also has an impact at work.  I remember once waking up in a meeting.  My boss was staring directly at me in disgust.  I think my only saving grace was that the meeting was a conference call, and the people on the other end who were running the meeting had no idea I was asleep.  I got a bit of a stern talking to over that one.

If the Vice President can sleep in a meeting with his boss, why can't I?

I once worked the night shift at a hotel, and it was so quiet at night that I learned to sleep standing up, like a horse.  They wouldn’t let you sit down, and you needed to be at the desk, so somehow, I learned to lean appropriately and close my eyes for a few minutes.  Only once did I wake up as I was falling forward toward the desk, nearly cracking my skull open on the edge of the counter.

I usually don’t sleep very well the first night I’m in a hotel, so when I travel for business, which is a lot, I can usually count on a sleepless night, and a really tired next day.  In about 2002, I was regularly traveling to Winnipeg, every second week, for about a year.  Like clockwork, I would arrive at the hotel and not be able to sleep, and then show up tired at the office.  I’ve met a lot of people who share this ‘first night phenomenon’.  I now travel almost every week, so I have at least one of those sleepless nights per week.  A couple of weeks ago, I was in three different hotels in one week, and had three of those sleepless nights.  I was a disaster.

During one of those trips to Winnipeg, I arrived at work, and called my three managers into a meeting.  I remember sitting across my desk from Margaret, Kathy, and Stacey.  We were having our typical meeting and at some point, I put my head back.  My office was so small that there was enough room for my desk and chair, and a couple of guest chairs, but when I sat at the desk, the back of my chair was up against the wall, so when I put my head back, it leaned against the wall, which made for a pretty comfortable sleeping position. 

And sleep I did.  I’m not sure how long they let me sleep, but it scared the shit out of me when Margaret (a petite little thing) decided to get up on my desk on her hands and knees and get as close to my face as she could before she clapped her hands as loudly as possible.  It’s a bloody good thing I was wedged in between the desk and the wall, or I’m sure I would have jumped up, likely flipping the desk or the chair, and quite possibly injuring Margaret.   It turns out that I have a strong heart for a chubby dude, and it’s a good thing, or it could all have ended right then and there.

Margaret is no Kathy Griffin, and I am no Piers Morgan, but to date, she's the only woman to have ever crawled across my desk.

I am not the only person to sleep at work.  I remember once going to a sales presentation in another city with two of my colleagues and the local sales guy who had an existing relationship with the prospect.  We arrived in the room and it was like a sauna…the ceiling was very low, the customer had about 20 of their people in the room, and we were 4, all in a room designed for about 12.  We packed in, and it was HOT.  I stood up to talk, and because the ceiling was so low, I almost put my head right into a pot light.  Standing there, with my head in the light, I felt like a burger under a heat lamp just waiting to get sold.

As I started to talk, the sweat started to pour down my face.  I could feel it first beading up on my brow, then I could actually see it running down my nose.  I was standing beside one of my colleagues and I could see my drop of sweat splat onto her copy of the presentation…to say I was embarrassed was a gross understatement.  To her credit, she didn’t react.  (At least until after the meeting).

Yep.  Watching your own sweat drop onto someone else's paper is pretty gross.

While all of this was happening, the local sales guy decided it was time for a nap.  I looked over at him and he was sound asleep.  Not snoring, just sleeping, like a baby.  I’m pretty sure that because of how he was sitting, the customers couldn’t see that he was asleep.  That is until he woke up with such a start that 20 heads immediately snapped to the right to see what the kerfuffle was all about.  Between the sweaty presentation and the sleepy sales rep, we didn’t win the business.  I wonder why.

So the next time we're in a meeting together, and I'm taking a nap, don't take it personally, but in the immortal words of the great 80's band, Wham, please "Wake me up before you go go..."  I hate waking up in a meeting room all alone.

If you want to hear the classic Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, click here!

Tales From the Hot Seat...Part Deux

It takes one to know one…and I’ve blown lots of interviews.   I’ve blown it at the first interview, and once, I even blew it at the final meeting where I was expecting an offer.  It’s usually easy to see it coming when a candidate is about to blow an interview, and often I try to help steer them around a disastrous minefield, but it’s tricky business, finding a new job, and it’s surely not for the faint of heart.  Hiring is exhausting to some managers and fun for others.  I find it fun.  I have had the great fortune of interviewing some fantastic people, and others who were fantastically crazy. 

 

In 1999 I had just moved to Saskatoon to take the role of assistant branch manager and I was interviewing candidates for an overnight printing and distribution job.  They were to work alone printing and packaging the day’s work for delivery the next day.  It’s not as easy as you’d think to find someone who wants to work alone at night, just them and a Volkswagon-sized printer.   We had put together a group of five or six candidates to interview, and together with the branch manager, I hit the boardroom. 

By the time candidate number six arrived at the table, we were tired, slap-happy, and fully convinced that we were not going to find the right person for the job.  He started, and amazingly, he seemed decidedly OK.  We talked about his career up to that point, which had included a couple of night jobs.  He had also worked alone before, which was important, and he had an average knowledge of technology, so operating the print program and machinery seemed like it wouldn’t be a problem.  There didn't seem to be any red flags, or anything to worry about.

If only some candidates came with a warning label

As my manager was talking, I scanned his resume.  It was terrible, but I hadn’t spent a lot of time reading it before he arrived (which I do now), and when I got to his accomplishments section, he had written:  “I invented chocolate milk”.  Now how do you put that on your resume?  My theory is that if you do, you should be prepared to defend it, and this seemed like a far too interesting fact to not explore further.   As my candidate paused to take a breath, I blurted out, “You invented chocolate milk?”

It really hurt when my manager kicked me under the table.  This was not a line of questioning she wished to follow, but it was out there, and he was thrilled to be asked. He worked in a dairy, and as he tells the story, one day, he made a suggestion that they consider putting chocolate syrup into the white milk, turning it into chocolate milk.  This was Saskatchewan, and it would have been the late nineties when he did his big dairy job, and chocolate milk had been well established for decades.  But he was hell-bent on taking credit for it, and could tell a pretty good story around it.  I feel honoured to have met the inventor of chocolate milk, but not honoured enough to hire him.

In 2005, we interviewed a guy that I was really looking forward to meeting.  He went to school at the same place as many of our really successful employees.  We were hiring a telephone counselor, and his experience was right in line with what we were expecting.  The interview was set up for first thing in the morning, and I don’t mind saying, we were excited…it was a role that was really hard to hire for, and we thought we had a superstar.  He arrived, and as with all candidates, I offered him coffee or water.  Typically candidates decline both, and only in the rare case, they choose water.  Hardly ever coffee…I think they fear it will be an inconvenience.  (And it is).  However, this guy may have just disembarked from the Starship Enterprise because he asked for, “Earl Grey Tea. Hot…” exactly as Captain Picard would have ordered it from the Enterprise’s replicator.  Tea?  Really?  Would you like a crumpet to go with that?

I dispatched my assistant to scare up some lukewarm Red Rose, and began the interview.  He stopped things almost immediately to share a newsflash…”I was sick all night long…vomiting and diarrhea…I just feel terrible.”  Well thanks for sharing, Sport...When I asked him why he didn’t reschedule he said that he didn’t think it was an option.  For future reference, at least with me, it’s almost always acceptable to call and reschedule an interview if you spent the night alternating between sitting on the porcelain throne and hugging it.  The tea arrived, and the interview commenced.  He actually possessed the skills and experience, but when we got to the “Why do you want to work here?” question, he totally channeled his inner pervy stalker dude and responded with, "Charolette works here right?  I really want to work with her.  Will I get to work with her?”  Imagine it in a pervy stalker voice.

Well thanks a lot, enjoy your tea, and we’ll call you.  Not.  Earl Grey didn’t get the job.  Well, not at least until things got really desperate a few months later and he started to look pretty good.

It's amazing how bad candidates all of a sudden look better when things get tough

Under the heading of My Greatest Career Regrets, I’d have to put ‘The one that got away’ as my number one regret.  I never would have hired this guy, but I wish to this day that I’d have brought him in for an interview.  I received his cover letter and resume on July 13, 2001, and I have carried it with me ever since.  Whenever I need a chuckle, I pull it out and read it.  When someone is feeling down, and in need of a lift, I share it.  It hasn’t been more than an arm’s length away since the day I got it.  It’s survived a move across the country and the transition to multiple new positions and a few new companies.

This letter has survived the test of time

To put this letter into perspective, it’s important to know that I was hiring for a part time office clerk in Regina.  Now, in over 25 years in the world of work, I have seen (and done) some really creative writing when it comes to the cover letter, but this one takes the cake.  Some of the well-researched phrases that bring me immense joy in his cover letter include:

·    I am obedient (obedient, while good for new military recruits and pets, is hardly ever something one lists on a resume) 

·  My organizational prowess is exceptional due to working with a tight schedule resulting in a successful multitask oriented balance, through simple allocation (kudos to him for using the word prowess in a cover letter-not many people have the stones for that…the fact that otherwise, the sentence makes absolutely no good sense is another issue completely)

·  My confident command of oratory and prime social protocol are a result of top-drawer alliances and public life experiences.  (Huh?)

·  As you can see from my enclosed resume I have a rare, classical liberal education from an institution with an unique emphasis on refinement and fortitude; it has never failed to produce a perfectly well rounded gentleman (listed in the education section of his resume, and I’m so not making this up, Hair Design Academy, Moose Jaw, SK)

·  My education, diverse masteries, as well as my volunteer experiences make me a strong candidate to assist in any administrative capacity. (I seriously doubt that).

I filed this away and decided that I didn’t have time to meet him.  Every time I read his letter I kick myself for not scheduling an interview.  It could have changed my life.

For God's sake, forget the thesaurus when writing a cover letter

So, to recap…if you’re puking, reschedule.  If you think you need a thesaurus for your cover letter, the job aint for you.  If you’re offered water or coffee at an interview, and you absolutely need something, take the water.  If you’re going to lie on your resume, make it something that isn’t obviously a lie.  And don’t, under any circumstances, channel your pervy stalker as you’re name-dropping in an interview.  Ever.

Sarah Palin:  A study in how to blow a job interview

Tales From the Hot Seat: Recruiting, Part 1

I’m a manager and I love it.  One of the things I like best is recruiting.  As a hiring manager, I’ve made a lot of winning decisions, and a bunch of losing ones that really make me question whether I actually have a brain.   I’ve been wowed when I wasn’t expecting to be, and I’ve been let down when I was prepared for greatness.  I have met some unique characters during the interview process. To put the idea of me as the interviewer into perspective, it’s only fair to talk about my own experiences as the interviewee, which to be frank, have not always been stellar.   

I once interviewed for a job in a large ‘chateau’ style hotel in Ottawa.  I had been through a couple of interviews, and got to the last stage.  This was in about 1993, but I still recall that the HR manager had the straightest look on her face when she asked, ”compared to the average person, how much soap do you use?”   How in the hell do you answer that question?  “Ummm…” is hardly ever the right answer in an interview.  

Well, I knew for sure that using less soap than the average person was clearly not the right answer, so I scratched that one off the list.  In an interview you want to stand out, so admitting to being average isn’t always the best plan, but claiming to use more soap than the average guy might make you sound like a freak.  I very clearly remember the question, but for some reason I don’t remember my answer.   But I got the job, so I must have gone all Goldilocks and went with the ‘just right’ amount.

Howie Mandel, self-proclaimed user of more soap than the average guy

I know that mounting a job search is hard work, and maintaining the quality of your resume and cover letters is a challenge.  Often we resort to cut and paste and I know that on a few occasions, I’ve applied for perfect jobs and forgot to change the name of the company in one of the spots on the cover letter.  Talk about burning opportunities.  Maybe it was the short time I spent in journalism school, but I’m fanatical about spelling and proof reading (now that I’ve said that, I’m almost positive that I will post this blog with at least one spelling error).  

In the nineties, I applied for a job with a law firm, and I should have known that I was being set-up by the interviewer when she kept asking questions about my attention to detail.  She asked, and re-asked, and re-phrased the same question over and over again, and each time I gave a stronger answer about how important it is to me that my documents are flawless and blah blah blah.  Two seconds later, the hammer fell as she slid a marked up copy of my resume and cover letter across the table to me with not only my spelling and grammar errors highlighted, but also a couple of places in my resume where my dates didn’t exactly line up.  “If you’re so detail-oriented, Mr. Slater, can you please explain some of the highlighted sections of your resume?”  Very embarrassing, but lesson learned.  Somehow, I got the job.  

Busted with lots of mistakes on the resume...I was sweating that one

It was a job as a file clerk, at which I sucked.  Who knew the alphabet could be so tricky.  Instead of firing me, about six months in, they promoted me, out of the file room, and into my new high-powered career as an International Patent Prosecution Assistant.  Yep, just as exciting as it sounds.  International Patents.  It takes a special kind of person to love that work.  I’m not that special, and as it turns out, I’m not that wild about picky details.  My take-away from the law firm was that if you walk purposefully, with a file in your hand, nobody questions what you’re doing or where you’re going.

I've known my alphabet all my life...how could it be so hard now?

In 1997 I responded to an advertisement for an account executive role with a payroll company.  I had no experience with payroll beyond cashing my own paycheque, so I was pretty surprised to be called to an interview.  I dressed up in my best suit and headed for the office.  I walked in, and everyone was in jeans, so I was immediately self-conscious about my wardrobe selection.  I’m a blender, not a sticker-outter, so I was kicking myself for not doing more homework.  

Overdressed, and sticking out

 I felt the interview was going well when the interviewer excused herself to go get her boss.  She felt like he needed to meet me, which I took as a very good sign.  When he walked in, I immediately felt inadequate…he was young, not too much older than me, tall, really good looking, wicked hair and perfect teeth.  Clearly a sports guy, and he knew his way around the men’s store.  The right jeans with a great shirt, and the perfect jacket.  Me, Mr. Schlubby, in my rumpled Moore’s suit and tie.  I felt just a little out of place.  We started talking about my skills and the job requirements and I felt like I was getting into a groove, when out of nowhere he says to me, “Would you just cut the crap…”  I was completely shocked as I thought I was doing a great job of packaging up the crap, but he saw right through me.

 

I went away feeling a bit despondent, and that I was certainly out of the running.  About a month later they called, said they had made a hiring decision that didn’t work out and that they wanted me back for another interview.  That very afternoon, if I was able.  I was feeling like total crap.  I had a cold that was on the verge of the flu, but I didn’t want to burn the opportunity.  I put on my best jeans, found a jacket and shirt that made me look like I knew how to pull off business casual, ditched the tie and headed to the interview. 

I was so sick that I looked like I got dragged to the office behind a bus.  I was a wreck with my puffy eyes and my dripping nose.  I walked into the office and very nearly had a coronary.  They were all wearing suits.  Not just jackets and dress pants…full suits.  And ties.  I’m there, looking like I'm dressed for a second date.  It turns out my first interview was on a Friday.  As in Casual Freaking Friday.  My second interview was on Wednesday, as in Wear Your Best Damn Suit to Work Wednesday.  I sniffled and snorted my way through the interview and again, left despondent.  More wasted time, and another burned opportunity.

Four weeks later, after blowing two interviews, I got the call.  I got the job and I remember that on the phone, the hiring manager took great pains to very clearly review the dress code for me.  I appreciated that.  I wound up working there for twelve years.

Another time, I was contacted by a headhunter with an opportunity for a senior job at a small company that was being lead by the founding entrepreneur.  I have had some less-than-positive experiences with sole-proprietor, family run companies in the past, so I have always floated towards larger corporations.  The recruiter explained that the president was in no great rush, and wanted to take her time making the right decision, even if it took a couple of months.  I was interested in the role, so we set up a meeting. 

My first interview was in April.  My second interview was also in April.  My seventh interview was in June.  My ninth interview was in July.  My psychological assessments were in August.  My first dinner with the president followed, also in August.  Dinner with her and her husband was in early September.  My first interview at her office was late in September.  My fourteenth and final interview was in October, when I was finally presented with an offer.  

This marathon courting process took over 180 days.  To put that into context, the recent marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries lasted 72 days.  It took me over twice as long to land this job as Kim and Kris could stick it out together.  Somehow through that marathon process I managed to miss or overlook every single red flag and took the job anyway.

If the recruiting process lasts longer than this marriage, it's a red flag.

To be continued…