Look, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job. I know you’re making a sincere effort to learn about my background. You’re here to assess my strengths and weaknesses. You’re trained to evaluate how I might fit into your fast-paced, team-oriented culture. You need to determine whether or not my résumé was full of lies. I just think a much more effective way to get to know me and my capabilities than asking a series of the same old behavioral questions and case studies might be to ask me to rank my favorite Cheers characters in order.
I know this seems risky on my part. Obviously, for many people, hiring someone on the wrong side of the Diane-Rebecca Divide is a nonstarter. But I think the question is more what can you learn about me from the fact that I have the courage to tell you I rank Diane higher based on how she propelled 90 percent of the plots forward in those early seasons. At the same time, I could expound on how Rebecca showed up at a time when the show had done everything they could with Diane and needed a change. This might give you a good idea of my understanding of team dynamics, not to mention where I developed a keen sense of when to pivot.
