My guitar-related work interview story

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was thinking about this in the other thread open asking about guitar and bass - not sure why.

I am an executive at a small company. We were interviewing for another executive position and I was asked to check the guy out. I see his resume and it lists that he is a member of ASCAP the songwriters’ union. I ask about it of the head of HR and she says “yeah - he plays guitar.”

Cool - I have played for, oh, almost 30 years. Posters up on the wall at work. Everyone knows I am in a mid-life crisis band. I am thinkin’ “this could be a fun interview.”

He shows up, looks reasonably normal in a suit. He walks in to my office and we shake hands. He takes in my guitar posters (a very low-key one with a sunburst Les Paul collection is easiest to see). I say “so I hear you play guitar - what’cha got?”

And that’s when he said it - the stupidist, “oh, my god, this guy is just…lying to my face” type of response.

What he said doesn’t matter except to a guitarist (actually, what he said was that he had “a '59 Stratocaster fitted for a locking tremolo”) but you have to understand, that to a real electric guitarist with any knowledge of the history of guitars and how they play, he basically said the equivalent of “well, I have a painting - an Impressionist painting - a Monet of some water lilies - and I decided to have it transferred from canvas to black velvet.”

There is nothing wrong on its face about a guitar with a locking trem - they can be incredibly cool. But you don’t take a $30,000 guitar and drill holes into or enlarge existing holes on its body. You just…don’t.

So we were done - he was either lying outright (obviously the case) or was telling the truth and a moron. We talked for a bit and I moved him on.

It turns out that he said similarly stoopid things on other topics with other folks and was drummed out pretty quickly…

What could ever possess a person to try this type of thing? It was a big deal interview for a very high-paying job? I am kinda stunned he made it through our screening process…

2

My first thought here was “Thank goodness, I thought this only happened to me!”

Of course, by “this” I don’t mean interviewing, or guitarists; I mean people who come up with BS stories to try to impress others who are experts in that field, when logic would suggest that a successful BS story relies on an audience of amateurs.

3

Anyone who would really do something like that to a vintage Strat is just…is just…I don’t even have words. :ee:

4

you got it Corrvin. And I didn’t even mention what happened 20 minutes into the interview since I had already checked out. I had stopped asking him questions about work - there was no “there” there either - and tried again on the guitar. I asked him what style of music he played and who he liked.

“oh - I like it all - Hendrix, Clapton, even metal. Eddie Van Halen and Metallica.”

“hmm” I replied “I like all the music, but I must admit, I am not a fan of Kirk Hammett.”

“who’s he?” he asked.

“he’s the lead guitarist” I replied “of Metallica.”

“oh.”

he kinda knew we were done then, too…

What a tool.

5

People who say they like “everything” are almost always full of shit. People who care about an art form always have specific tastes. You were right to sniff this guy out as a poser. No real musician would be a fan of a band without knowing the name of whoever played his instrument.

6

It’s bizarre that he’d even bother. If it wasn’t relevant to the job, why make it up?

I know that it doesn’t hurt to list non-job-related credentials, but why lie about them? Anyone who might be impressed will probably know something about the subject and call you on it.

I guess it just boils down to the fact that people are stupid.

7

I love your analogy of the water lilies on black velvet, but I’m going to swim against the current here and defend the guy. Maybe he’d just heard a few things by Metallica, and really liked what he heard, but knows nothing about the band or who’s in it. It could happen. If I knew who played half of the music I like listening to, and trying to emulate, I’d know a lot more than I know now.

Still, if I were in that situation I’d probably not mention a band I didn’t know very well, or else I’d include a disclaimer, like “oh, and you know, I’ve just been getting into Metallica; don’t know much about’em yet”, and so on.

8

I know that this guy gave you other evidence that he was full of it, but the Strat story could be true without him being a total fool. I have two vintage guitars that would be worth a lot of money if they had not been significantly altered before I bought them. My '63 SG and '65 Mustang had both been stripped of paint and otherwise modified before I got them and they were both relatively inexpensive. I had no qualms about putting a more modern bridge on the SG and a new nut on the Mustang, and I’ve considered trying to refinish the Mustang in an original Fender color. These are both guitars which would sell for thousands if they were unmodified and in decent condition. Perhaps this guy bought a genuine '59 Strat that someone had already fitted with a Floyd Rose, and got a nice old guitar at a bargain price.

9

Not all guitar players or songwriters are gearheads. I’ve been playing guitar for close to twenty years, and most guitartalk (you know the kind…“I took my '82 Whatsit Amp and had it hotrodded with twin 15’s and Lower Slobovian tubes, and I play my '69 custom Fender Penis (with modified C-neck and '72 minibuckers) through it. It rawks!”) goes right over my head.

Me (glazing over) - Who the fuck cares?

Now granted, he betrayed a certain poser familiarity with guitar ('59 Strat, etc.,) so I’m willing to believe this guy is just an idiot. I’m just saying that, as a very experienced guitar player, if you had asked me this in an interview unrelated to music, I’d have been really vague as well. “An electric and a couple of acoustics,” is about all I’d have volunteered about it, because while I love the tones of my guitars, they’re nothing really special or remarkable. And if you’d asked me about favorite guitarists, I might be reticent, because (in my experience - yours may differ) most people really wouldn’t follow when I said Marc Ribot, or when I said, “I don’t really like guitarists.” Neither answer is completely true, so I might be tempted to offer a textured can’t-miss kind of answer like, “Oh, Hendrix, Vaughn, you know,” and hope you might start asking me about work experience or education.

I say (with a certain degree of tongue-in-cheek humor) that the guitar dialogue in the job interview is a nightmarish minefield for the interviewee, and is best avoided altogether. I mean, think. Most guitarists are rather proud of their tastes and accomplishments, and are very passionate about the music. I, as the interviewee, am no different…and I’m praying that the interviewer doesn’t ask me about Eric Clapton, because, oh shit, he has a framed photo of the smug, soulless bastard hanging in his office, and how do I diplomatically tell him that I think Clapton is an overrated, phony hack that systematically sucks the life out of anything he touches, and I’d basically rather take an icepick to the kidney than listen to his shit…much less converse about him with some classic-rock executive type who not only thinks Clapton is God, but who holds my future employment in his hands.

It’s rather like the whole “Michael Bolton” conversation the eponymous character had with the two Business Process Engineers in “Office Space.”

10

Snerk…giggle…thank you for that!

11

Ogre - everything you say make sense. I can’t share the vibe of the interview - I try to be careful, as you say, but this guy exuded “I am a shit-hot guitarist and love to talk about it” as he did with pretty much any topic…

…did I mention that he also claimed he was in the CIA to another person he interviewed with?

12

Oh - and a couple of other points:

Spectre - of course you’re right; believe me I have interviewed TONS of people for every position from admin assistant to CEO of a large company and never try to be a dick about backing people into a corner - the interview is supposed to be where I ask a simple question and get them talking to give them a chance to shine - and I honor that approach.

I often start with their “interests” if they list them at the bottom of their resume just to ensure that they start talking about something they’re comfortable with. And I agree, if I toss someone a softball - “hey you list guitar - what do you play?” I have no pre-conceived expectations and certainly don’t back them into a corner about guitar trivia. But if someone answers a question about who is their main influences as a player and they cite Metallica, they better know who is in the band. If you are an actor and you say that Al Pacino is a role model for you, I would expect you to know he was in The Godfather, y’know?

Crotalus - of course, you’re right, too. Many vintage guitars have been heavily modified, usually not by the present owner. But let me ask you this - at this point, as a player, if someone asked you “hey - whaddya play?” wouldn’t you name the cool, vintage guitar, then quickly say “but its been modded by a previous owner, so it’s not some amazing collectible”? If a guy boldly announces “I own a '59 Strat, fitted for locking trem” he should know he has a LOT of story to tell, even if he had nothing to do with the modifications - anyone who knows enough to know the significance of that guitar will want to know what happened.

and finally, again Ogre - '69 Fender Penis - not bad :slight_smile: . And yes, boys will be boys and some folks are gear-heads and some aren’t. Very cool. I would never - especially in an interview or frankly in any conversation that turned to music creation - expect folks to be gear heads the way I am. If I ask someone what they play and they say “an acoustic” I’m no dummy - obvious hint. But when a guy launches back with tech specifics, he is proclaiming himself a gear geek and all bets are off…

13

OK, but that’s not the type of message I was getting. “Even metal…”, as if it were an afterthought. In other words, he’s not much into metal at all.

Reading between the lines (and admittedly I’m getting this second-hand), they guy was probably most into early classic rock type stuff but didn’t want to sound too dated.

14

The CIA…I saw those guys once. They sucked. The guy on lead played this old mangled Strat. Between songs he prattled on incessantly about his “awesome” guitar and how he’d done all the mods himself. And for whatever reason, he seemed especially proud of all these songs he kept telling us were his “original compositions”. Bunch of crap if you ask me. Just warmed over Go-Gos with a bunch of one-note Neil Young style solos thrown in. I’m not sure who hated him more, the crowd or his bandmates. I’m not sure, but it’s possible the other guys in the band were just his teen-aged sons. What a wanker.

15

You’re correct - I was paraphrasing in my initial sharing of the story. He did say he was into all kinds of music, but when he mentioned metal and I didn’t flinch, he launched into that - going off about EVH and how great he is and how Metallica just RAWK…

16

In my case, I’d tell them about my main every day guitars, a 94 Strat Plus and a Takamine G-series. But if I mentioned the old ones, yep, that’s , exactly what I would do. I don’t just drop 63 SG and 65 Mustang into a conversation without the quick disclaimer that they are NOT museum pieces, just nice guitars defaced by others, but still a joy to play.

17

Thank you - exactly what I meant. And, fwiw, I have a '93 Strat Plus (sorry ogre but I swapped out the Lace Sensors for a much better set of pickups…and blocked the trem…

18

this is all quasi-impressive, but I happen to have a custom '69 Fender Penis with a locking tremlo…

19

Really? You have to screw it down?

20

I love my Strat Plus, including the Lace Sensors, and I always lock the tremolo on Strats. What kind of pickups do you have, and why do you prefer them over the Lace Sensors? Might be time for some modifications to mine.