So, it’s interview season at the agency. Lately, we’ve been looking for writers.
Even though it’s for the team I manage, I generally invite someone else to be my co-interrogator to ask the fundamental questions that help evaluate a candidate as good or bad on paper.
The process usually begins with us introducing ourselves, establishing a quick background about the agency, and then about the role we’re recruiting for.
Then, my partner in investigation begins with a set of industry standard questionnaires. The candidates respond in a well-rehearsed fashion. The answers fit the questions like custom-designed couplings.
This entire process gets wrapped up in less than 15 minutes. By then my partner develops a fair opinion on the candidate.
Then, the partner cues me in and asks if I have any questions.
Up to this point, while I am in the room, I’m not paying attention to either the questions or the answers. I keep my gaze fixed on the candidates as well as the fellow interviewer and observe how they co-exist in the room. In my head it plays like a silent film. Just visuals with no audio. And quite like Charlie Chaplin’s movies, I occasionally get a text card pop-up in my head that gives me context of what is happening.
When finally my turn comes, I begin with my share of questions. As a rule, I avoid spending 5 minutes explaining the question before actually asking it.
So, my questions are direct, in simple-to-understand language:
- What are your three goals in life: Professional, Family, and Personal?
- What is a dealbreaker for you—as in, if that happens, you would walk away from the company?
- What vice do you have which, even though everyone is pointing it out, you are quite content with?
- What part of your job do you absolutely hate, and just endure because it comes as a package deal?
You get the gist. Simple questions that require no prior rehearsal to answer, if one simply chooses to be open about them.
But what I normally get as a reaction is a blank stare, an occasional blink, and dead silence.
So, there we are—me, my partner, and the candidate all staring at each other in complete silence. I am wondering if I should explain more. My partner itching to answer the questions themselves, and the candidate questioning their choice of being there in that moment.
Some manage to attempt and falter awkwardly, but to me the answers were never really important. It only served the purpose of giving me a window to ask the final question:
“What is your philosophical grief—with yourself, the world, or life at large?”
And to date, I haven’t had one decent answer to this. Now, I do account for the candidates being in a dilemma about how open they should be in an interview and assure them that the real interview had already happened when my partner asked their questions, and my set of questions are just meant to know them better as individuals.
Yet, understandably, they hesitate. If it were purely about the fear of being misjudged I would have been fine with it. But in most cases, I get an answer like “I have no grief,” “What does philosophical grief mean?” and “If you can give me the context or example…”
And I wonder: if we have lived a life for so long, roamed the planet, navigated society, we might have accumulated a wide range of experiences. Now, clearly, I’m not expecting the candidate to confess wild thoughts such as “I want to eradicate humans from the planet, so stray dogs can roam freely” or such incriminating statements.
But to at least be in a position to say, I have seen the world, I have lived a life and I do have an opinion. It may be right, wrong, or in the worst case, not unique—but still, I have an opinion.
At least for creative professionals, I feel not having a mind that inquires, analyzes, and forms opinions, even if those opinions may change in time, is a handicap.
Frankly, I would have settled for anything ranging from “I hate people stealing someone else’s parking space,” “I am discomforted when I see a lack of civic sense,” or even “Buddha and Gandhi, if they were alive today, would be behind bars, serving time for first degree homicide.”
For instance, if I were in the hot seat, I would blurt out, “I feel we are all just waiting for the curtain call, yet performing like our life depends on it.”
While this season of hiring is about to turn a corner, I’m still waiting for an individual who has a philosophical grief.
So here I am, placing a classified ad in The Philosophy Today:
“Seeking: Someone with existential complaints. Must have opinions about life’s fundamental problems.”