There was a big recruitment spree going on in our company and specifically in our project. Most of the openings were for a few months contract job and so the project manager and higher officials were not interested in conducting the interviews. There was also the time constraint as there were nearly hundred people required for the project on short term basis. The candidates were shortlisted by the HR and the project manager would just pass the resumes to the Team Leads to conduct the interview. All of my friends had had a go at interviewing and so I was eagerly waiting for my chance. It never came and the recruitment was also completed. After almost a week, I got a call from my Project Manager and was asked to Interview a guy.
I just had time to skim through his profile before going to the meeting room where the guy was waiting for me!!! We greeted each other and I started off with the usual question of "Tell me about yourself". -- I needed this, as I didn't know much about him. That was when I got the shock. It was like a school boy reciting his homework. It went like, "My name is XXX. I have done my YYY at xxx college. I have X years of experience..blah blah. blah". This guy had some experience in the telecom sector and nothing much on what we required. I had made up my mind that this guy would not be suitable for us and that's what I told my PM too.
Then came the second shock. This guy was a relative of our CEO and had been offered a job in the company already. As they didn't have a suitable job for him, they wanted us to take him into our project. The third shock came when the PM asked me to take this guy into my team! Everything had been already decided and this was just an eye wash interview. I felt like a waste cloth!!!
But out of all this, I had got a GEM of a team member. He was a hardworker with a will to learn. He was also one of those guys who would never say die. In fact I was pretty unwilling to let him go when my company got a telecom project.
