INTERVIEWING FOR A NEW JOB

The moment I mentioned my Arthur Andersen background to Rick, we made a perfect connection. He was the Corporate Comptroller and the officer assigned to find the man to fill the position in the company’s subsidiary in Ecuador, Molinos del Ecuador (“Molidor”). The world just happens to be a very small village, where sooner or later we meet one another. He was also a former officer of AA, a firm he had worked for for over eight years, and had (just as me), reached the managers’ level before going to work for Seaboard Corp. We were talking not only the same language, but we were talking the same business language, because we belonged to the same business culture. It was a very pleasant dining experience. That night, when I went to bed, I was almost sure that things would run smoothly the following day when I had been scheduled for six different interviews with various levels of the company’s management, including one with the Executive VP Mr. Dick Myers, the man most trusted by the owner of the company Harry Bresky whom I met several years later when he visited Guayaquil.
At eight O’clock in the morning the following day, I was picked up by Jack Miller, the VP-Operations, a man who said he knew the Ecuadorian operation very well, had been to Ecuador and to the mill many times, the last one of them just a couple of weeks before, and was fresh from talking to the General Manager of the Ecuadorian operation who had emphasized the importance of speeding up the hiring of the Comptroller for his local operation. Jack, a man about 6 ft tall and weighing at least 250 lbs. was very nice with me and talked mostly about how important it was the Ecuadorian operation for the corporation in KC. He explained to me the ownership structure of the Ecuadorian operation, which was 50% Seaboard’s whereas the other 50% belonged to Continental Grain Co., a NYC based corporation engaged mainly in the grain and poultry business. After talking to Jack for about half an hour in our way to the company’s headquarters, it was clear to me that Jack was going to vote for me. So far I thought the score was 2-0 in my favor. As soon as we arrived to the main office, Jack introduced me to several people whose names and positions I can’t remember, all of them were very polite but I was under the impression their opinion was not important at the moment of making a decision about my hiring. I even interviewed with two of them but I wasn’t very impressed, and most likely they were not impressed by me either. Their knowledge of the Ecuadorian operation was almost nil, or only vague at best, they had never been to the “field” and I’m sure they barely new where Guayaquil was located...
My next interview was with one of the corporate lawyers. Nothing important to remember was said or asked in this one which lasted for about half an hour. By noon time I was invited to have lunch by Ted Paulsen, the company’s director of HHRR and we were accompanied by a couple of persons in the financial department, not including the VP Finance, with whom I was to have an interview at 3:30PM, right after my interview with the Executive VP and head of the KC office, Dick Myers. Lunch time was nothing but a time to socialize, and I guess, to give a chance to Ted Paulsen to make an opinion on my manners and social behavior.
At 2:30 PM, right after lunch, I was due to be interviewed by Dick Myers, the man in charge, the senior most executive of the company in the KC headquarters, the man who reported only to Harry Bresky, the “capo di tutti” and majority shareholder of the corporation whose office was in Boston and seldom showed up in KC.
Dick was a man in his mid sixties, he was about 5’6”, his hair was grey, and his face was typical of an Eastern European Jew but had been born in America. It was evident that he was a good man from the way he talked, from the way he addressed himself to me as he was seating in the large corner office desk, typical of the big bosses in Corporate America in those days.
More than a question and answer meeting, it was a very pleasant conversation, mostly about personal things on both sides. In the process he let me know he came from a deeply religious but not fanatic Jewish family, his father had worked for Seaboard too and had retired many years ago, Dick told me he liked my personal background, my language skills and my international experience, but he made a special point of the fact that he knew (from my resume) that I was a person with a deep knowledge of Ecuadorian Tax Laws from both, the private side, and the government side, and had a good experience in Public Accounting and finances, which he said, “make you the prime candidate for the position we are trying to fill”.
He was so emphatic, that he asked me what would be a compensation I would feel happy with, and what kind of fringe benefits I would be looking for. I began to answer and said; “Mr. Myers”, but he interrupted me and said “please call me Dick”, so I continued; “Dick, I don’t think I´m ready to answer your questions at this moment, I believe it would be better for me, and for you as well, that in order to give you an educated answer, I should have a chance to go visit your operations in Ecuador, to meet the person I would be working for, as well as some of the people I would work with, in case I make a decision to work for you”.
Dick said he liked my answer, and was fully agreeable to my request, in spite of the urgency they had to fill the position of Comptroller in their Ecuadorian operation. Then he said, “Rafael, please find the most suitable date on which you could go visit Molidor, we’ll place you the tickets and will make the hotel reservations you need”. I told Dick that since it was mid March, and I was responsible for filing a series of corporate reports for APCO ARGENTINA, including, but not limited to reports to the SEC and the IRS, I did not think I was going to be able to make that trip before the end of April. “That is just fine with me Rafael, just let me know the exact date as soon as you can”, Dick said, then he reminded me that I had to go through one more interview, one I was scheduled with Don Robhom, the company’s VP Finance. Dick and I shook hands and exchanged smiles, while he told me that he wanted to personally take me back to the airport after my last interview.
Don Robhom’s office was just a few feet away from Dick’s, so I was led to it by Dick himself, who introduced me to Don and immediately shut Robhom’s office door behind him. Robhom was a man about 5’11”, weighing at least 270 Lbs, with a massive head which should have, itself, weighed at least 30 Lbs, his arms, both resting on his desk, looked like those of a sumo wrestler just about to grab his rival at the beginning of a fight. He had not asked me to seat, so I seated anyway in one of the two chairs in front of his desk and looked at his eyes which did not revealed a bit of grace.
In my next posting: TOUGH INTERVIEW, NICE OUTCOME