Why IT Recruiting Can Be Your Hardest Job

CIO hell is an 3-foot-by-6-foot interview room with no windows and a door that can’t be opened because the conference table is too large. In hell, CIOs spend eternity interviewing job applicants with the technical savvy of Jethro Bodine and the sensitivity and charm of John Rocker for positions that the HR department will never approve. In hell, résumés are 165 pages long (not including the applicant’s arrest record), and each candidate is accompanied by his agent, an angry-looking guy with a red, pointy tail sticking out of the back of his double-knit green leisure suit.

 It’s recruiting day at my alma mater, and if these interview rooms were any smaller, I’d need a license to practice medicine. I watch the last candidate as he swaggers out of the room in his borrowed-for-interviews gray pinstripe suit and too-tight-in-the-neck oxford shirt and wonder if he could read my desperation. Of course he could! I hate this kid.