"Stepping into an interview room, you never know what's going to happen."
Clap -- my car door slammed shut. The early morning California sun was gleaming over the campus parking lot. It had always amazed me how students these days could afford brand new luxury cars and big hulking SUVs. The elevator was on the very far end of the parking lot.
Beep -- the seeing impaired friendly elevator door opened for the career center. "I'm with Nanohard," I told the bulky career counsellor. She pointed me down the hallway past the fake palm trees that were supposed to elicit a calming feeling and the nervous students in suits. The suits were big and bulky to make them look powerful. Yet, their young bodies were skinny and looked helpless in those suits. Like in a Sci-Fi movie, I could feel the air shiver and distort from all the pent up nervousness around me. It gets even me a little shaky.
Swoosh -- Roger placed the folder with my interview candidates on the desk in front of him. He smiled softly. His tie was striped. The knot was sharply tied and pushed hard against his Adam's apple. Deep down the hallway, he lorded over the makeshift check-in desk. On a map, he circled the very last room, cleithrophobically far away from the building exit.
Squeak -- I leaned back in my swivel chair. It looked and felt cheap. The candidate chair was deliberately cheaper and uncomfortable. There was not even upholstery on it. The back rest was deliberately low to make it nearly useless for leaning back. So, the candidate would have to sit upright. The chair was purposefully lower than a standard chair. The entire room was tiny. The desk in between us created a modicum of emotional distance, because our knees would almost be touching.
Clack -- the door swung open and hit hard into the desk. Roger said, "You are a go in five." He held up five fingers and waited for my nod. With him gone, I was back alone in the small room. My eyes meandered around. The window was behind me to blind the candidate with light. It only opened one perfunctory inch to prevent suicide jumpers. A motivational poster said, "When your best isn't good enough." A runner was on it with his face buried in his hands and his body slumped over in despair. I stretched out my arms, feeling both sides of the room with my hands.
Click -- the door opened gently. A pause built anticipation for what the candidate would look like. A young woman entered in a solid black suit and baby blue shirt underneath it. The fabric was much too large for her slender body. She was wearing skinny high heels, which were covered by her too long pants. Only the sharp foot tip and skinny heal peered out. If she were barefoot, she'd be standing on her pant hem.
Flop-dop-pop -- my ballpoint pen pressed grooves of blue ink into the pad of paper. I underlined "Jean." I noted the time in the margin to start a timeline "8:06." A big circle went around the number 1 followed by "Manhattan traversal problem." She pushed her resume on crisp white paper across the desk. I asked the perfunctory small talk, "how was your morning?" She smiled silently and very kept together.
Ffff -- I inhaled deeply to cut into the interview, "let's get started on the technical questions, because that's what you are getting credit for. Feel free to illustrate your thinking on this piece of paper. I'll collect it at the end. Are you familiar with the Manhattan traversal problem?" Jean was silent. Her eyes looked like tiny black buttons with a sliver of blue around them. That's why I liked interviewing on campus, because there is a rawness to it. Interviewing industry candidates is always very serious.
Ding -- the hard material of her heels hit her metal chair leg, as she nervously shuffled. She drew the rectangular grid of Manhattan on the pad. She mumbled something about x- and y-axis. I hadn't even asked my question yet. I had no idea what she was trying to do. I cleared my throat to get her attention. "Let's say there is a garbage truck that has to visit x locations..."
Squid -- my eyelids made a quiet sound as I squeezed my eyes to poke the look of disbelief out of my face. It's not professional to make faces at the interview candidates. Jean had started drawing the statue of liberty in a mindless kind of way of being stuck on a hard problem. This was an interview for an engineering position, not fine art. "What are you doing? I haven't even explained the particular problem yet."
Sniff -- I involuntarily smelled the air. She must have been sweating hard. A wall of moist air hit my face. The tiny room was quickly smelled with the scent of her arm pits and body. My secret pleasure was taking in that scent. My manhood's circulation increased. It didn't harden. It rather simply inflated itself to a well sized flaccid shape.
Oh -- she exclaimed and sat back staring at me. Her mouth was gaping open. There was a dark black hole with thin, youthful lips around it. The skin on those lips was as smooth as only a young twenty two year old near college graduation could have. There was no lip stick on it -- pure innocence. "Yeah, it's hard to solve a problem, when you don't even know yet which it is," I said with a smile trying to buddy up to get us on a good start.
