Fred Starr recollects - The perils of the interview

Fred Starr FIMMM muses on getting the right candidate.

Have you ever come out of an interview, knowing it hadn’t gone right? Then keep in mind the aphorism of Dempsey, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite TV Detective, ‘Life is hard and then you die’. Or, as Benjamin Disraeli, an even earlier Prime Minister, used to assert, he had reached the very top of a very greasy pole.

Your interview might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, keep on with the climbing. Look elsewhere. I saw how fashions changed as to what organisations wanted. When I began work, Britain was in the throes of the ‘White Heat of Technology’, with new R&D departments being forged throughout the country. Candidates had to have ‘vision’. Thereby, as well as rescuing the company, justifying being higher-up in the empire building.

In the 1980s, the question was ‘can you control people in a rational, ordered way?’ Tick-box management had come in, at the expense of proper supervision and leadership. You had to be all for that, whatever you thought. I blame computers and spreadsheets. By the 90s, organisations were becoming lean and mean. Outsiders were brought in at all levels – newcomers without allegiances, their priority was the bottom line, not the staff, or longer-term programmes. 

You will see this is a rather different Recollection from the usual. Nevertheless, given that all of the readers of Materials World will have ‘got somewhere’ in their professional careers, and will themselves be assessing candidates, these few anecdotes about interviews, which could have spotted potential issues, might be of value. Or amuse.

Good relationships
In failure investigation, turnaround time is critical in getting a plant back to work. Just as important was the people running the plant had to have confidence in what we suggested. Meetings with the senior onsite staff forged an informal camaraderie. Sadly, I’ve forgotten most. One, however, sticks in the memory, when I had taken our latest recruit with me. After the walk round the steam reformer to view where the failure had taken place, we all went back to the manager’s office. Before I knew what was happening, my junior colleague began to insist that we must not rule out erosion corrosion. Everyone, except him, knew that this didn’t happen to stainless steel. I recollect the looks I was getting from the manager and his set of very experienced chemical engineers. 

I put this down to over-enthusiasm and inexperience, but the meeting heralded the start of a rather challenging relationship with this individual. He always wanted it his way. We should have picked this up at the interview stage, when he referred to his PhD supervision in a quite disparaging manner. That should have been a warning, but I thought at the time that here was someone who thinks for himself. Subsequently, I would ask rather blunt questions about how a candidate had got on in their last job, and why she or he was wanting to leave. A mistake wouldn’t result in just me who would suffer, it could be our whole group.

Chronic writer’s block   
A serious issue is the inability of some people to write up what they have been doing and putting it into words that the client will understand. If you are unfortunate to have got someone like this on your team, someone else will unfortunately spend hours doing the rewrites.

There is a way out of this, dreamed up by my opposite number at another British Gas Research Station in the Midlands. The interview team would give applicants something out of a textbook, relating to the job in question, asking them to do a 200-300 word summary. It certainly worked in sorting the wheat from the chaff. I wish I had thought of it!

Mr Multi-jobs
I didn’t do the recruiting myself, but I cannot resist passing this on to show how a smart candidate, with no compunctions, can fool any interviewing panel. This bloke was put in my team, but within days, it was apparent his attendance was erratic. He was sick, or on holiday, or had decided to work from home. He was eventually rumbled when one of my workmates at an international conference saw him, formal titles and all, giving a presentation on behalf of an entirely different organisation. When he eventually reappeared, back at work, he was asked to resign, which he did without demur. He had obviously been there before.

Would Facebook have helped, which didn’t exist in those days? I have my doubts. Someone who was that unscrupulous, would have got the internet to show him in the best light.

There is a tailpiece. A couple of years later, I was at another conference, when I got quite matey with a delegate from Ireland. For some reason he asked me ‘did I know X?’ It became clear that X was Mr Multi-jobs, and he had done the same to his company as he did to us. A serial adulterer, so to speak. The question is, did he move up from bigamy to polygamy, drawing a salary for three companies, not just two? He had the composure and nerve. Complete sangfroid, as the French say.