Recruiting at the University of Tennessee

So Monday night, I had an information session that I presented some stuff on our Management Trainee Program, the program I came on board with when I started work out of school. As the students shuffled in, I couldn’t help but flash back to when I was doing the same thing just 3 years ago. The thing I didn’t imagine would be so real in this flashback is that there would actually still be some of my peers at school after 3 years. I recognized two guys in the information session from previous classwork, and one of them we both said, how do we know each other? I couldn’t remember exactly, but in any case, I wondered what could he be doing here 3 years later.

The next morning, we had 13 back to back interviews with a break for lunch. After I met up with my good buddy Rich for lunch, we parted and I went back to the next set of interviews. It was such a cool experience to be on the other side listening to how the students would answer the questions, and then discussing their answers coming to an agreement whether or not to push them to the next round.

Then in came the guy that I had recognized. He did ok on his answers but then, as he got up to leave and put his jacket on, he said, I remembered how we know each other! I said, oh really? How? I didn’t know if I should say anything or not, but I was in your Statistics 201 class and you booted me out your group project. Ohhhhh right, Now I remember! I looked over to my colleague to see his expression and he seemed confused. The student then proceeded in saying, yah, after that class I got a D, and had to retake it as a senior but then I got an A, and I ended up doing the project alone cause everyone else was a sophomore. I said, well glad you did well, and thanks for your time.

Right when the door shut, my colleague looked over and said, Did he say what I think he said? You booted him out??

“Yes, I’ve only kicked one person out of my group in my entire college career.”

“What did he do?”

“He did nothing–and that was it. He expected to be put on the title page after he emailed us his part which was incomplete and bad work–so I ended up having to do his work.”

“Well that sure wasn’t a smart thing to bring up, now was it?”

“Ha–that’s an understatement!”

After the consideration of this candidate, I think we wanted to pursue some other candidates instead.. :D