Ash Wednesday is always hard, but today I had to feel sympathy for someone else: we had a candidate for the college presidency here for an interview this afternoon. As I introduced him to the faculty, I mentioned my own experience with hiring processes.
When I applied at Ave Maria University, they kept me up late, gave me a lot of wine, and then began asking questions. That was one approach to getting a man’s guard down.
Then when I applied here at WCC, I interviewed on Ash Wednesday. That afternoon, when I was hungry and weak, the president and the dean got me alone in an office and grilled me. That’s another approach, I suppose–but not half so nice as the wine!
[Disclaimer: I don’t really think that these institutions intentionally practiced psychological warfare on me. They did it by accident.]
[Epilogue to the above: I got the job both times. So apparently I would say the right thing even under the influence of a truth serum.]
