Job Interview – The Final Frontier!

I got a phone call from the outgoing chair yesterday at 5:15pm some 2 days after the interview panel had said I’d be informed.

They clearly had a major headache in making the decision.

Having been praised for my presentation (“a really enjoyable tour de force”) I got the dreaded news that I wasn’t being offered the position which was, and still is, disappointing. I was told that I would have been a “breathe of fresh air” but that I was considered to be too likely to make waves. In short I was too scary and therefore too risky. If I’m honest, this was not a surprise as I’m not a political animal and the 2nd interview showed me that you had to be pretty good at it to deal with the regulatory stuff/people.

But then I was dumbfounded to be told that they had decided not to appoint any of the candidates! So the deputy Chair has been told he didn’t get the job but, by the way, can you chair the board for the next few months on an interim basis while headhunters are appointed and do their stuff? I’m glad I’m not in his shoes.

Heaven knows what this is costing them. The ad in the Sunday Times won’t have been cheap, plus the expense of the outside assessor and now headhunters who are, I suspect, going to demand a flat fee as the post doesn’t pay well.

This has been an extraordinary process from my point of view and I’ve learnt a lot. Not least of which is that interviewing is a dance and that the appointed candidate may well not be able to live up to their performance of that dance.

No wonder so many senior executives fail so early in a new job.

The sad thing is that this is a great little company which has huge potential. It would have been great fun, and hard work, to take it forward. But if they have this much difficult hiring a Chair, I worry if they have the where with all to take the necessary tough decisions needed to grow the business. Time will tell.