Think your interview process is tough? Think again
December 4, 2008 by Shane BorerPosted in: "Would you want this person in Finance?", Special report
There’s no harm in learning more about someone before bringing them into your department, but applicants for this position might be surprised at how in-depth the interview questions are.
With president-elect Barack Obama taking over office next January, it’s fair to say there’s a large pool of applicants who are looking to join his administration. Jobs are open to just about anyone — but anyone who wants to sign on must first complete a 7-page application with a total of 63 questions.
Doesn’t sound so bad? It’s not only educational background and references the applicants need to fill in. On top of the standard fare, candidates must:
- identify any affiliation they or their family members have had with Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae or any other institutions that have received a government bailout
- include any e-mail messages they’ve sent (at any time in their life) that could embarrass or otherwise reflect poorly on the president-elect
- list any aliases they’ve used on the Internet
- reveal their MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and other online profiles for review
- divulge whether they or their family members own a firearm, and
- include all resumes the applicants have used within the past 10 years.
The final question on the application requests candidates to: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family or the President-elect.”
Given the positions available, do you think the application’s thoroughness is justified? Have you ever completed a job application that asked for too much up-front information? Share your thoughts below in the comments section.
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Tags: Background check, Job application, Obama, Resume
December 5th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Sounds like a number of items that if our HR department were to ask, we could be taken legal action for. How exactly is the Obama administration able to legally delve into areas that are questionable Constitutionally to stepping over the right to privacy?
December 5th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Big difference working for a President than a company. There are enemies for every Party and politician, so the application process not only gives the President an out if something does blow up, but if someone doesn’t want any nasty skeletons to come out of their closet, the application puts them on notice to think twice before applying. Can’t say they weren’t warned. For a regular company, this is intrusion, but being in the public eye and paid with public funds, there are a lot of eyes watching for a weakness. That is something people in industry don’t fully understand. Doesn’t matter if you don’t like Democrats or Republicans, any applicant who has something revealed always gets tied to the main politician and that applicant is only a pawn in the political game. Grow up and look at reality, it is dumb, but so are most people who beat a scandle to death. Is Monica still an issue that reflects on Hillary Clinton? There are many who says it is a factor, because she is married to Bill.
December 5th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I think that the Pres. elect would have problems being hired by his own administration!
I wonder if any of the questions deal with past and present relationships with domestic and-or foreign terrorists.
December 5th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
if i were in his shoes i’d ask these questions. obviously it wouldn’t work in the private sector, but this isn’t the private sector! Go Barak.
December 6th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I think that the Obama people are making a very, very stupid mistake.
By asking all of this up front (and much of it looks suspiciously close to illegal,) they loss any possibility of plausible deniability when something happens. (Hey if you hire 80,000 people, some will be bad choices–about half.)
Oops! Now I’m out of the running for Commerce Secretary for writing something that could possibly embarrass him if he hired me.
Given our present administration of out and out crooks and murderers, how could he do worse?
It can only reflect badly on an administration if the media makes it that way–and then guilt or innocence doesn’t matter.
Clinton took an opportunity that has been taken by most if not all men of high office & they almost impeached him. Bush pushed through illegal (unconstitutional laws,) ordered the deaths of thousands of US soldiers and 10′s to 100′s of thousands of civilians and Iraqi soldiers. Simultaneously spending his way to the largest deficit ever–toped off by borrowing another 1.1 billion and counting to bail out idiots who should have seen what nearly everyone else in the world knew was an economic depression.
Because we are a nation of debtors, were we to reopen debtors prisons the vast majority of citizens would be working off their debts.
And fewer of them will be able to escape via bankruptcy thanks to the administration making it much more difficult to obtain such relief.
Why doesn’t everyone revolt when the government and financial “specialists” claimed that they were uanware of the rapidly advancing depression, when everyone else in the country knew it was coming?
Instead of FIRING THEM ALL for gross incompetence, we’re GIVING them more money and letting them help get out of the mess they got us into…are we really that stupid as a nation?
War is a sign that your diplomats have failed their job. They should be replaced at that point. Their job is to work things out WITHOUT WAR! The fact that a war takes place is a sign that they aren’t competent.
During the election, somewhere in all the mud the only issue that really came up was the Iraq “peace” (I remember Bush declaring “victory.” (Gads! I should HOPE we could beat a country 1/10th our size, with weapons 40 years out of date and a slave army. The fact that we had any trouble at all points to incompetence on the part of the DOD command.)
But everyone had already pretty much agreed that the war should end soon…so it wasn’t a real issue.
But the fact that the combined “laws (I use quotes because a “law” which violates the Constitution is, by definition, not a laws,) related to our “War on Terror” have effectively (if treated like real laws,) cost us our rights, since anyone can be turned into a person with no rights at the stroke of a pen.
That didn’t seem to be an issue with either major party (we are NOT and never have been, a “TWO PARTY SYSTEM!”)
Neither did facts that the “War on Terror” and the invasion of Iraq have actually increased the risk from terrorist attack. Or the fact that the “War on Drugs” (Now in it’s fourth decade!) has permitted the growth of vast criminal organizations and resulted in nearly any drug you can name being available at every crossroads in the US. That respectable, thoughtful citizens have been saying we need a different plan for the past 15 years has made no impact.
It is now an accomplished fact that the best thing an organization can do is have the US government declare war against it.
War on Poverty Poverty up 3x USGov’t -300,000,000,000$
War on Drugs DRUG USERS 200,000,000 USGov’t -150,000,000,000$
War on Terror Terrorists up 1.5x USGov’t -4,000,000,000$
The wonderful thing about the last 2 is that if there are no drugs or terrorist, the agencies are doing a good job, so we need to continue financing them. If there are drugs or terrorists, we need to increase financing.
There is no end condition to these “wars.”
They will end only when the agencies are ended, because history has shown that a crime-fighting agency will generate crime if it is required for the agency to exist.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:17 am
I totally agrre with Ted.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I don’t necessarily disagree with Ted, but next time please spare us the diatribe and end it after you are done speaking on the subject at hand, in this case the third paragraph.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
My bad, I meant Charles, not Ted…
December 10th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I live in Illinois and you all know how well that is working out. Perhaps we should have asked those questions to Rob before putting him on the ballot! I even voted for him…boy was I dupped! Some of the questions listed might be a bit much, like about the owning of guns, but I think if you plan on being a good representative for the US you don’t want any illegal activity that you didn’t previously check out bite you in the butt. Even if you did nothing illegal it gets you by assosiation.