A Bad Interview is Like a Bad Date

So the local recruiter sent me over a candidate for my open sales position. He came in, shook my hand and sat down. I immediately didn’t like him.

I didnt dislike him personally, but he simply wasn’t a sales guy. He didn't have one of the “its” that salespeople need to have, which can be charisma, confidence, insight into other people, savvy or one of the dozen other personal attributes people leverage to make themselves good at sales.He didn’t have any of them. Plus his English was lousy.

So here was a guy who couldn’t even sell himself – no way was I gong to let him try to sell my products. I made up my mind in the first ten seconds, but I couldn’t just throw him out. Well, I guess I could, but that’s not my style, so I had to at least give the guy some face and spend a minimum 15 minutes with him.

So I treated this like a bad date. I just made small talk and willed myself to the end to when I could dump him (“I’ll call you…”).