Chad was a really smart guy… undergraduate degree from an Ivy League school and an MBA from UT Austin… with honors, I might add…
But he was really smart in the interviewing process… he knew when to show he was smart and when to let the hiring authority look like “the smartest guy in the room.”
When asked questions about his history or business questions, Chad had the right answers… his experience, background and smarts were clearly well beyond most candidates…
The hiring authority was a very opinionated executive vice president…. very opinionated… and there were some questions he asked Chad, inconsequential ones, where the answer could be more of an opinion than “correct”… Chad was smart enough to answer the question by saying, “you know, I have seen a number of different positions on that subject… what do you think?”… Wonderful!
Chad was smart enough to know when to answer and when to make the hiring authority feel “smart.”
In fact, Chad said, coming out of the interview, that he got the executive VP to do most of the talking… and the “talking” was mostly about the executive VP and his opinions… and, by the way, the VP told us he thought Chad was one of the smartest guys he had ever interviewed…
And he was!
