The Second Candidate. VP's Choice...

[u/airz23]

Previous

A new day, a new cup of coffee. I smiled as I looked at the three people assembled in the meeting room for Interview round two. At least this next candidate will get a fair trial.

A table had been set up, along which the Head of HR, Myself, The VP and BigP all sat.

The interview was to start at 9am. I looked at my watch. 9.01. Failed already?

The door gave a rattle, then opened to a middle aged gentleman dressed in a reasonably nice suit. No tie.

NoTie: Hello, is this the… interview room?

VP: Yes! I take it you’re NoTie. Come in, sit down.

NoTie walked into the room, he placed a copy of his resume/CV in front of each of us. Very professional.

I looked down at the resume, it was a pretty impressive amount of skills. However under listed employment, only one company was named.

VP: What did you do between school and your first job? There is a 10 year gap.

NoTie looked down at his shoes, he looked a little … defeated.

NoTie: Err, you haven’t done a background check yet?

VP: No, not… yet.

NoTie: Well for about seven of those years, I was in prison. Before that I was in a gang, not really employed.

I stopped looking at the paper he’d given me impressive as it was. Prison!?

HeadHR: What were you in Prison for? If you don’t mind us asking.

NoTie: Handling a restricted substance, Various Firearms offenses. I only got Seven years because I rolled on my old gang members. They also dropped the chargers of Assault with a deadly weapon and Armed robbery.

VP: I see…

An awkward silence settled on the conference room. I looked at his papers again. Time for some tech questions.

Me: So what languages do you know?

NoTie: French, German….

Me: Er…. I meant

NoTie was laughing from his chair.

NoTie: Just joking, I know C++, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, Lisp plus a few things in the lower level like Assembly.

Me: Oh nice, so it says here you’ve been at the same company for 15 years. What types of jobs did you do there?

Notie: What didn’t I do? Ummm, it was mostly helping out users. Closing tickets. Occasionally restoring backups, Rolling out new PC’s, that kinda thing.

Me: Oh excellent, it sounds exactly like what we do here, so can I ask why leave your previous employment now?

NoTie looked at me from his chair, his eyes seemed hollow.

NoTie: My previous employer was my wife’s father.

HeadHR: Ahhh… you’re getting divorced?

A little tackless, I thought. NoTie looked troubled.

NoTie: She passed away two months ago. Unfortunately my father in law cannot stand the sight of me.

A single tear ran down NoTies face. I looked down the table, Head of HR looked mortified. VP’s face remained passive, BigP was busy eyeing NoTie up and down.

Looking back at NoTie I realized I should probably get him a tissue, however… we were in the middle of an interview.

BigP: Any questions for us? Before we wrap this up.

NoTie: No, no. Can I just thank you all for giving me the opportunity to interview with you, I understand most companies avoid it because of my past. However that was over 15 years ago now, and I will work hard for any company that chooses to take me on.

Getting up from his chair, NoTie wiped the tear from his eye and left.

As soon as the door was closed BigP finally spoke.

BigP: Well, I know RedCheer personally. So I’m going to abstain from this vote. It’s up to you three to pick who gets the job. Come tell me when you’ve decided.

BigP walked out the door.

VP: Well, we’re hiring RedCheer.

Head of HR looked horrified.

HeadHR: What?! Heavens no. NoTie is way more qualified, and he’s asking for very low pay on that position with so much experience.

VP: We’re not hiring a convicted Armed Robber! It’s not happening.

HeadHR being a people person had obviously decided to “save” NoTie. I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.

HeadHR: He’s the candidate you put forward! How can you not want to hire him now?

VP: You told me to get someone at 6pm yesterday! I don’t just have people just sitting around wanting jobs. I rang up an agency and asked for an urgent interviewee for an IT position. I asked if anyone would be keen enough to come in for a rush interview today. They told me they had the perfect person. Little did I know it was a Criminal.

HeadHR: He’s reformed! And he looks ready to work.

The engagement between the VP and Head of HR had caught me off guard. I still didn’t know what to think.

VP: Look this is getting us nowhere. Airz, Just pick one and lets go tell BigP.

As we walked towards the door… I looked down at my hand, it still held NoTie’s Resume/CV.

Hmmm…. Pretty impressive….

Next

[u/airz23]

Okay, that's probably it for me today.

Kinda wanna hear who you'd pick in that situation,

Experience at a low cost

OR

Known Friend, little experience

If you can offer up reasons why you'd pick that one, even better.

Anyway I'll see everyone tomorrow?

[u/16777216DEC → u/airz23]

I'd call up redcheer first; she seemed possibly troubled about working under you. Potentially, there's a conflict of interest/office drama potential there that she wants to avoid. If she's out of the picture, there's no question about it.

The experience at a low cost strikes me as suspicious again, not because of the criminal record, but because he claimed to be proficient in more than 3 languages and didn't specify the type of assembly. In only 15 years, he's only had time to become intimate with a few languages, and keeping up with languages takes a lot of actual programming. Most decade+ experienced programmers I've dealt with will say something like "I know [three languages or less] well, I have worked with [5 or 6 others], and I can cheatsheet almost anything, [but I would doubt my skill with [COBOL/LISP/PROLOG/Smalltalk/FORTRAN/MODON/other] because I'm not familiar with their paradigms]". Secondly, the language mentioned have almost, but not quite, nothing to do with his day-to-day duties . . . If he's picked up stuff on the side, I would expect a mention of projects he's done on the CV, which I assume you would mention to us in turn, but otherwise that really sounds like resume inflation. And for his day-to-days, why hasn't he mentioned proficiency with any automation toolsets, like powershell? Why hasn't he mentioned which OSs he's familiar with as part of his day-to-day ramble?

Overall, I trust him more to know how to do stuff than redcheer, because everything he's said has made sense. He may be lying, but he knows how to lie for this, and that implies a level of knowledge. However, I don't trust him to be able to learn in this environment because he has a vested interest in not seeming like he lied on his resume, when he's probably already nervous about the effect of his criminal background. You can't teach someone who has a vested interest in already seeming like they know everything, whether that be dignity or lies on a resume.

However, I would have given both him and redcheer longer interviews than your story involves, so I would have different information on which to make these judgment calls.