Management Trainee needed for national retail organization. We offer extensive training with excellent benefits and excellent potential. We require a candidate with at least 2 years of college and demonstrated ambition. For an interview, report to in the Central Park Plaza, 8 A.M., Monday, May 10. No phone calls, please.
Because I needed the job so badly, I made sure I was there at 6:30-an hour and a half early. But when I arrived I discovered a lot of other people had the same thought. There were at least twenty-five others standing in a long line in front of the closed store.
At this time, by the way, jobs were scarce because the American economy was in a recession. If you were lucky enough to find a job, you kept it. Under the circumstances, I should have guessed there would be a line but I was depressed, anyway. "How," I thought, "could I possibly get the job with all those others applying?" I felt like walking away.
Still, I had no real choice in the matter so; I remained there with the others. My mind kept telling me that my education and career were at stake and that my life in general, in a very real sense, depended on getting that job. This was, after all, the only real opportunity advertised in the newspapers for weeks. So, I glumly waited as more and more people lined up behind me. By 8:00 AM at least forty others joined us.
Eventually, the door opened and they began letting people into the dark store, five at a time. When it was my group's turn to be let inside, we were led to the back of the store, told to stand against a wall outside the employees' lounge, and fill out applications. Then, one at a time, each of the people in front of me entered the room to be questioned by three personnel executives from New York City.
The door of the lounge remained open during each of these interviews, and I could easily hear everything that was being said. I remember that I was struck by the fact that the questions I overheard seemed almost random, off-handed. But there was one common thread to many of them; the candidates were always asked, in one way or another, how much money they wanted to earn that year.
Eventually, it was my turn and I was absolutely terrified. Everything was on the line and I began to search desperately for something to make me stand out, to look just different enough to be the one hired.
The three executives were sitting at a round table and they told me to take a chair some feet away. They seemed smug, self-important, and even arrogant in their dark, three-piece suits. My sense of inadequacy deepened.
"Have you had any management experience?" asked the one holding my application.I continued on my improvised theme. "I intend to make a lot of money and the only way that's going to happen is if I make money for you by working hard and producing' I stopped abruptly, nearly exhausted from my short but outrageous fiction.
"No," I muttered.
"Any retail experience?" another wanted to know.
"Ah ... no, I'm afraid not."
"Why should we hire you?" The first one demanded.
Now, for some reason I can't explain even today, I blurted out, "Money."
"What?" someone asked.
"Money!" I answered more strongly. "Money! Anyone who hires me is going to make money because that's what I am all about." At this point, I don't think I knew what I was talking about but I was on a roll.
"What do you mean?" A thin, very surprised face inquired.
One of the interviewers suddenly stood up, walked hurriedly over to me, and shook my hand. "Gentlemen," he exclaimed, "this fellow is our kind of people. I say that we don't have to look any further. He's our man!" he said with gusto and enthusiasm.
I was hired on the spot and the remaining candidates were told to go home. It was probably the most bizarre business moment of my life.
I've thought about the strange interview a lot over the years and have analyzed the dynamics of it at least a hundred times. I'll never be sure, of course, but it seems that my subconscious mind was locked in on what they wanted to hear and I just gave it to them. Whatever it was, the situation was unstructured, essentially unplanned by the interviewers, and it allowed me to control the results.
Incidentally, this interview occurred more than 20 years ago. You would think that things would have changed by now and that the process of hiring people would be more scientific. But oddly enough, it is still essentially the same today as it was then. As a recruiter and consultant in this area for some of the largest companies in the country, I can personally attest to the fact that, with rare exception, most positions (even the high paying ones), are filled in this haphazard way.
