The First Interview

Despite the less than stellar GPA, lack of cover letter, and lack of research on the company, marvelously, Joe woke the next day with this memo in his inbox:

Joe gave a whoop of delight and promptly called up his buddy Shawn to go out drinking.

Joe still didn’t bother to research the company before he went in for his interview (bad!). Even though the interviewer had very kindly lined up what they would be covering in the interview (very rarely are employers so kind), he didn’t think of answers for any of the questions beforehand.

Throughout the interview, Joe made several major blunders.

First, Joe opened the interview by saying, “Didn’t I read about the stock price dropping for your company last week in the Wall Street Journal?”

Brilliant, Joe. You just insulted your potential employer’s company (which was a startup), by insinuating its valuation was low.

Following this blunder was another, just as horrendous.

“How much are you going to give me?”

Allen replied, a bit bewildered, “This is a commission-based job. Didn’t you read the description? How hard are you WILLING to work?”

Uh, Joe. Just so you know… YOU DON’T HAVE THE JOB YET. You definitely are in no position right now to negotiate a salary.

The rest of the interview was a disaster. Joe had no idea what his personal skills were. He had no idea what the company was about.

Then, halfway through the interview, Allen suffered from a major allergy attack and had to leave the room. “This interview is now over,” he choked.

Oh, yes. Joe, that cologne you put on this morning might have made you feel great as you were getting dressed, BUT it doesn’t do wonders for Allen’s asthma.

On his humiliated walk out the door, Joe bumped into Kyle Dogood. Kyle was to get the internship position because he did all the things that Joe had neglected to do and more.

You see, Kyle always knew that he wanted to do database development. Prior to his applying for the position of developer, he had taken relevant coursework, which he stated clearly on his resume here. He had written this nice cover letter, and arrived 15 minutes early to his interview, to show his punctuality and eagerness to work. He was extremely knowledgeable about the company, their competitors, and even Hasajob’s major clientele.

A decade later, Kyle Dogood was the happy CEO of the now publicly traded and much larger Hasajob Database Design Company. He eventually retired before reaching the age of 40 and moved to Honolulu.