Of interviews, and interviewers Part 4: The InterviewThe room was square, with no windows, and a whiteboard on one wall. The air conditioner made a distracting thrumming noise, but failed to noticeably cool the atmosphere. In the middle was a table with two men sitting on the far side from the door. Facing them was a single, empty, hard and uncomfortable looking chair. As the candidate entered the room the older of the two men rose and extended his hand. "I'd like to welcome you here today," he said, "My name is Grey, and this is my colleague, Mr Brown. We will be assessing your technical skills." Mr Brown smiled a sardonic smile. |
Tomas de Torquemada Picture from Wikimedia Commons |
There was a moment's silence, but the candidate failed to say that it wasn't a problem. Mr Brown made a note in the 'teamwork' section of his note pad. "Now," he began, "for the first part of this practical driving test, I'd like you to explain exactly how you would perform a three point turn. We would like you to be sure to cover all aspects of multi-tasking your eyes, both arms and your feet. If you feel the need to describe a parallelogram of forces acting on the car then please feel free to use the white board. The marker is a bit dried up, but I'm sure you can overcome that small problem." His companion smiled wolfishly. The candidate cleared his throat nervously and started, "Well, first of all I would move my eyes to look in the rear view mirror..." As the interview proceeded the questions became more difficult. It became clear from his interjections that Mr Brown was a would-be Stirling Moss, probably the test center's guru. All his little additions to Mr Grey's questions seemed designed to show how clever Mr Brown was, and conversely, how little the candidate knew. Every time the candidate stumbled over his description of the action taken, Mr Brown made a note on pad, most of which was, by this time, covered with psychologically revealing doodles. "At this stage, I would move my left hand onto the gear lever, and shift it back into reverse by pressing down hard and moving it all the way over to the right before pulling it toward the back. At the same time my right foot..." The candidate was going through a description of parallel parking when Mr Brown said sharply, "Stop!" The candidate stopped abruptly, his train of thought interrupted. Mr Brown leaned on to the table, giving a very good impression of a predator moving in for the kill. "Your passenger chooses this moment to reach across and press the cigar lighter in, in preparation for lighting up a cigarette. What would you do?" The candidate thought rapidly, recognising this as a variant on the teamwork test question in his 'Driving Test for Dummies' book. Fortunately, he had mugged up on the question the previous night, and was able to give the politically correct answer to the effect that smoking was bad for the health, the dangers of secondary (and, for a bonus point tertiary) smoking, the cost to the Health Service (figures to an accuracy of 0.1 of a penny), and its effect on average life expectancy. This, noted the candidate, should be explained to the passenger. The interrogator looked faintly disappointed and leaned back in his chair. As he did so he asked, in a suspiciously casual voice, "By the way, as you are parking you notice a manhole in the road. Do you happen to know why manhole covers are round?" The candidate blinked. "Where I come from they're square." Mr Brown looked fazed for the first time in the interview, and the candidate mentally chalked himself up a much needed point. Mr Grey smiled faintly at his colleague's discomfort and indicated that the candidate should continue with his description of parallel parking. The interview wound on, seeming interminable. Eventually, Mr Grey said, "Well that seems to cover most of the issues, including exceptions, which my colleague added into a previous question by having a child run out in front of you. We only have one item left on the list. As you have probably realized, most of the questions so far can be considered to be high level driving problems, so we would now like to get an idea of whether you understand what is happening when you 'hit the metal' at we say in the trade." He gestured to Mr Brown, whose resulting smile would have done Torquemada proud. With a flourish Mr Brown produced a featureless cylinder of greyish-silvery metal, about a foot long, and perhaps three inches in diameter. He placed it upright in the exact middle of the table. There is a pause. A drop of sweat trickles down the candidate's face, but to brush it away would indicate nervousness and a sure fail. Clearly enjoying himself, Mr Brown allowed the silence to stretch on for a few more moments before clearing his throat noisily. "You see before you", Mr Brown clearly had a taste for histrionics, "a cylinder of metal, made from an alloy of..." he drones on for several minutes about the physical and chemical properties of the metal. He stopped suddenly , wincing with an expression of pain - obviously Mr Grey had kicked him under the table. "But I digress," he continued, somewhat superfluously. "What I want is for you to explain how you would machine this into a piston for a 1600cc family saloon. You have access to all the modern metal working machines - lathes, millers, shapers, annealing facilities, etc. However, none of them are numerically controlled, so you will have to do it manually." As an afterthought he added, "We call this the assembler test..."
(Note: names have been changed to protect the guilty - not to mention me) |