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New
Job Interview Technique
Take the
prospective employee and put him in a room with only a table and two
chairs. Leave him alone for two hours, without any instruction. At the
end of that time, go back and see what he is doing.
If he has taken
the table apart, put him in Engineering.
If he is counting the butts in the ashtray, assign him to Finance.
If he is waving his arms and talking out loud, send him to Consulting.
If he is talking to the chairs, Personnel is a good spot for him.
If he is sleeping, he is Management material.
If he is writing up the experience, send him to the Technical
Documentation team.
If he doesn't even look up when you enter the room, assign him to
Security.
If he tries to tell you it's not as bad as it looks, put him into
Marketing.
If he is wearing green sunglasses and need a haircut, Software is his
niche.
If he mentions what a good price we got for the table and chairs, send
him to Purchasing.
If he mentions that hardwood furniture does not come from rainforests,
Public Relations will suit him well.
How many
applicants does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but 200 applied for the job.
Thirteen. One to
change the bulb and a dozen others to make sure that everyone has an
equal opportunity to apply for the job.
"Why are you
so excited?", the surgeon asked the patient that was about to be
anesthetized.
"But doc, this is my first operation."
"Really? It's mine too, and I am not excited at all."
A young man,
hired by a supermarket, reported for his first day of work. The manager
greeted him with a warm handshake and a smile, gave him a broom and
said, "your first job will be to sweep out the store."
"But I'm a
college graduate," the young man replied indignantly.
"Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't know that," said the manager. "Here, give me the broom, I'll
show you how."
Three men took
a small plane to the wilderness in northern Canada to hunt moose over
the weekend. The last thing the pilot said was, "Remember, this is a
very small plane and you will only be able to bring ONE moose back."
But of course,
they killed one each and returned to the plane with three moose.
The pilot said: "I have told you to bring one moose only".
"That's what you told us last year," the hunters replied, "but for an
additional $100 you allowed us to bring three moose. Here, take $100
now."
The pilot agrees, and lets them bring all three dead moose onboard.
Just after
takeoff, the plane stalled and crashed. In the wreckage, one of the men
woke up, looked around and said: "Where the hell are we?"
"Oh, just about a hundred yards east of the place where we crashed last
year."
A Manager of a
retail clothing store is reviewing a potential employee's application
and notices that the man has never worked in retail before. He says to
the man, "For a man with no experience, you are certainly asking for a
high wage."
"Well Sir," the
applicant replies, "the work is so much harder when you don't know what
you're doing!"
The classified
ad said, "Wanted: a very experienced lumberjack". A man answered the ad
and was asked to describe his experience.
"I've worked at the Sahara Forest."
"You mean the Sahara Desert," said the interviewer.
The man laughed and answered, "Oh sure, that's what they call it now!"
Experience is
directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
Experience is
something you do not get until just after you need it.
Experience is
what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
Experience is
what you get when you were expecting something else.
Experience is
knowledge acquired when it's too late.
Experience is
that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make
it again.
Hunting
an Elephant 
Mathematicians
hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not
an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left.
Experienced mathematicians will prove the existence of at least one
unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an actual
elephant as an exercise for their graduate students.
Computer
programmers hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A:
1. Go to Africa.
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent
alternately east and west.
4. During each traverse pass,
a. Catch each animal seen.
b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
c. Stop when a match is detected.
Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known
elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate.
Economists don't
hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are paid enough,
they will hunt themselves.
Experienced economists never saw an elephant, but they try to hunt one
by controlling the interest rates.
Statisticians
hunt the first gray animal they see N times and call it an elephant.
Experienced statisticians add that there is a small probability that
the animal they hunted is a mouse.
Lawyers can let
hunting a single elephant drag out for several years.
Experienced lawyers can make it last even longer.
Consultants
don't hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at all, but
they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do.
Experienced consultants can also measure the correlation of hat size
and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant-hunting strategies, if
someone else will only identify the elephants.
Politicians
don't hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you catch with
the people who voted for them.
Experienced politicians take the elephant for themselves and blame the
press.
Managers set
broad elephant-hunting policy based on the assumption that elephants
are just like field mice, but with deeper voices.
Experienced managers keep in the project file the advise that claims
that elephants are just like field mice.
Sales people
don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they
haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season opens.
Experienced sales people ship the first thing they catch and write up
an invoice for an elephant.
Computer sales
people catch gray animals at random, and sell any one of them weighs
within plus or minus 15 percent of any previously observed elephant.
Experienced computer sales people catch gray rabbits, and sell them as
desktop elephants.
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