In-person Job Interviews

Outrageous. The guy should have come to work and pranced around like a zombie after getting knocked out on drugs before the colonoscopy. I don't think HR would have been much help.

 

In 1985 I drove 200 miles (from Charleston, SC to Charlotte) just to take the Knight-Ridder copy editing test for Miami. Miami Herald's Paul Anger called a few days later and told me, "You did well enough to be hired . . . but we hired someone else."

A month later I was hired . . . by the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale.

And now I'm working in the city where I took the copy editing test.

 

It's not only more likely they'll "settle" on a candidate ... as a few weeks becomes a few months of getting by with fewer people, management thinks, "We don't have to fill that position." I've seen this happen numerous times over the years, especially in the past 10-plus years of newspaper recession.

 

When we had our opening in August of last year, my publisher told me to move quickly before the higher-ups in corporate changed their minds and cut the position they had just approved. I had some candidates within a couple of weeks and flew someone in for an interview in early September. For various reasons above my pay grade it wound up being late October before we formally offered him the job. Even though I had told him he was the guy for six weeks, it wasn't surprising when he turned it down.
I don't blame him, but it put us back at square one in the search process. All of the resumé leads and job ads had gone cold in those six weeks. I didn't want to keep interviewing people when there wasn't a job to offer, and if there was one then we had our guy in mind. I certainly didn't want to spend money and political capital on flying people in to interview in that situation.
We finally found somebody in December, a recent college grad,. He started in January, 4 1/2 months after that whole ordeal started -- and he got laid off in July, which was another level of ridiculousness.
By the end of the hiring process, though, I was ready to hire anybody with a pulse just to get it over with and get somebody on board.

 

My shop's procedure: They do 30-minute phone interviews with two or three people, then determine the top candidate and bring that person in for an interview. They put that candidate up in a hotel for a night or even two nights but won't pay airfare, although they do cover gas, tolls and meals for those who drive. The interview lasts most of the day. If they like the person, he/she receives an offer at the end of the interview. If they don't like the person or if the offer is turned down in a few days, they'll bring in the second-best candidate and try again.

 

Thankfully that hasn't happened yet at our shop, at least not with the full-time positions.

 

Years ago when I was editor of a daily I had to settle on a candidate and it worked out as well as expected. He was a great guy but a lousy reporter.

My best reporter was transferring to a sister paper and I was told if I didn't replace her and let her go, they would rescind the transfer.

That said, I hired journalists who interviewed well and had good clips and references and they were just as bad as him.

 

Word gets around with bullshit games like that.
No reason for good candidates to trust your paper now.

 

In reviewing my interview history, probably the most problematic was a tryout for a large East Coast newspaper's sports copy desk. They liked candidates to stay for a week, but I had little time off available and could take just two days (and in any case, asking for a week on short notice would've raised red flags with my bosses). So they agreed to the two-day tryout, but I was nervous as hell and didn't do very well. When they called to tell me I didn't get the job, they said the guy they hired spent a full week there and added, "We really didn't have enough time to determine how well you'd fit in" -- probably a nice way of saying they weren't impressed. If I'd stayed a week, I might have settled down and done a bit better. Always wondered how the candidates who stayed for a full week explained why they needed the time off, or if they were honest and told their bosses they needed a week for a tryout.

 

I guess if it was a big boy job at a large paper that's reasonable, but a whole week? As you said, that's ridiculous to expect you to be able to take that much time off on short notice, not to mention putting aside other life responsibilities for that long. Especially when there's no guarantees. That almost sounds like they're trying to patch a staffing issue through the interview process.

 

I agree. I wasn't happy about it, believe me.
I was told it was some sort of issue with our budget, where they'd approved the position and then were redoing some numbers and having second thoughts. All I could do was what I did -- be up front with the guy, let him know what was going on, and flat out tell him not to wait on us and take any better options that come along. Once everything settled out he would be my first call. Even if my paper didn't have much credibility, at least I could salvage some on a personal level.
In any event, it's a moot point now. In that last round of layoffs they also eliminated a news reporter position and left us with an emaciated skeleton staff. If any new hires are ever approved the first one will and should be a news reporter. I'm going to be a one-man sports staff for the foreseeable future, so my credibility in matters of hiring and offering jobs doesn't mean a damn thing.