Response of the Day- WTF?! Part 2

Spending an entire day interviewing people can suck. After several hours into it, you start to hear the same sugar coated answers and cliche responses as if all the candidates stayed up the night before finding shortcuts from an "Interviews For Dummies" book. I spent 8 hours today screening people to hire, spoke to roughly 15 people and walked away with 3 that really stood out. The first 2 were exactly what I was looking for: self motivated people that are all about making money and being put in the spotlight for recognition. The last person I grilled, well, let's just say that he definitely broke the trend of scripted responses as his interview came to an end but stood out as a definite no hire...

Me: "What I require from everyone that works for me is clear and simple presentation skills and an understanding that urgency to close a deal at the right time is key. With me there is no such thing as tomorrow. With that, in the clearest and simplest words, recap and close me in 60 seconds why I should forget about the other candidates I interviewed today and offer you the job.".

Candidate: "I won't give you an answer you probably heard all day from everyone else. I will tell you something that may be hard to believe, even some of my family and friends don't believe me. My life is in a time of change. I've had life changing events that have made me a better person. I woke up one morning and realized that I was probed by aliens. (As he said "probed" he actually rammed his index and middle finger of one hand into the opening of his other closed fist!) I realized that the aliens wanted me to see that there are things out there that I don't know about. After the probing, I started talking to God and he touched me in a way I never knew existed. I never felt this power. I think the aliens wanted me to see this. I felt like this was a rebirth for me- it made me feel like being a young boy going to church for the first time and being touched by a priest."





WTF? What do you say to that? Talk about biting your bottom lip and trying to maintain a straight face, especially when he made the hand action of being "probed" as if E.T. and ALF violated his bung, and the last statement about "being a young boy and being touched by a priest" didn't exactly come out right.

Classic WTF stuff!