Screening and Selection

Posted on Mon 29th Mar, 2021 @ 1:54am by Purulence Addams & Ignatius Collins
Edited on on Mon 29th Mar, 2021 @ 5:44am

1,099 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Business Not At All As Usual
Location: Collins-Griffin Mining office, 10th Floor, Spock Tower
Timeline: MD-10, 2000 hours

The remains of several personal-sized Meatlover's pizzas from Pub 10-42 and the dregs of a jug of plomeek soup sent up from the Vulcan restaurant on the second floor of Spock Tower littered the sideboard of Ignatius Collins' office in the said office building. Ignatius and Purulence sat at the small conference table in Ignatius' office, poring over PADDs containing the resumes, job applications, and references of various candidates for the two pilot jobs that Ignatius had open.

Starbase 109 was turning out to be a prime recruiting spot for pilots and ship crew in the sector. Ignatius could afford to be picky.

"Should I be doing this? I'm not even an employee of your company." Purulence asked as she glanced at the image shown on the topmost PADD of a stack of them that sat in front of her. "NOT this one." She set the PADD aside as Ignatius blinked at her.

"I will be happy to hire you as Director of HR for the Starbase 109 office on the spot," he said to her as he picked up the PADD she had rejected and studied it.

"Why? I'm not qualified," Purulence said. "I'm your girlfriend, so that would count as, what, nepotism? Conflict of interest? It wouldn't be right." She gave the next PADD a much longer look and began actually reading its contents.

She admits to being my girlfriend. PROGRESS!!! "Right," Ignatius said, "an HR Director candidate who tells me who not to hire, which will save the company money in the long run, and who acts as ethics officer, to boot. Looks like a win-win, to me." He glanced down at the PADD he held. "Would you consent to do an in-person interview with me and this guy?"

"Nope. Don't want to be anywhere near him, and you shouldn't, either," Purulence said.

"Good enough for me." Ignatius added the rejected candidate's name to his company's 'never hire' list and slid the PADD into the recycler. "You do realize that, in the case of a family-run business, it's okay to hire your relatives. Aren't you on the board of Darkness Holdings?"

Purulence rolled her eyes. "Executive Director of Taste and Class. A cute title that Dad came up with because he wanted me on the board but didn't know what title to give me, so he made one up. I--I didn't even take him seriously at the time; it was just Dad being Dad. And then he started having me attend board meetings."

Ignatius stared at her. "You really do undervalue yourself. Maybe if he had named you Director of Aesthetics? Some companies do have one--but he wanted your title to be special to him. You have a talent that anyone in the HR field would kill to possess. You know who to hire and who not to hire." Glee lit his eyes. "And, as you so beautifully pointed out a week ago--round peg and round hole. You're right. You wouldn't make a good pilot--or you wouldn't make as good a pilot as you would an HR director. Please tell me you'll consider it?"

Purulence sighed and shook her head at him. "Stop flirting with me. I'm a portrait painter--look it up."

"I know, but if you ever break your hand, or go blind, or--"

"I'm sure Chlamydia will fix me right up, good as new," Purulence said. "So what kind of salary would you be offering?"

"For HR director? 7.5 per annum," Ignatius said immediately. He had clearly been thinking about it, Purulence noted.

"I could probably make more, painting," Purulence said. "How about putting me on the Board of Directors?"

"You'd be a lot more valuable in HR than you would be on the board," Ignatius said. "You know nothing about the mining business. What you do well is read people, and that's what I need. Besides, we don't pay our board members much. We reinvest most of our money back into the company. As a BoD member, you'd get mostly stock options, and we aren't planning to do an IPO for quite a while."

"I have a better idea," Purulence said. "I'm a happy portrait artist. What you're saying to me without actually saying it is, you want the insights into people that you get from my art. Those insights are valuable to you. However, I'm going to bet that you don't need my insights all the time; you only need them for certain crucial positions, like Senior Vice President of Muckety-Muck or, since you're just starting out here, pilot. If you really must have me on your payroll, I can form a sole proprietorship business as a Human Resources consultant, and you can keep me on retainer. When there's a position you particularly need a good decision on, tell me, and I'll go meet the candidates. Once I've met them all, I'll tell you which would be the best people to hire." She paused. "By 'best' I mean 'the most honest, with the best integrity,' not necessarily the most skilled. You give those few a second interview. The rest of the time, I get to paint. Does that sound like a plan?"

"Well, since you are determined to lead a bohemian existence--" Ignatius stuck out his hand. "Put 'er there, girlfriend. Form your company, and I'll draw up the paperwork to put you on retainer with us."

Purulence drew his hand to her lips and kissed the back of his fingers. "You are strange, but I will work with you." She shot him a mischievous look. "This has real possibilities, you know? If I were to get an HR degree..."

"Nothing says you can't," Ignatius pointed out.

"HR law terrifies me," Purulence informed him. "Still, with this I can see light at the end of the tunnel, where I couldn't with your piloting idea from before." She fell silent and nodded to herself. "I'm going to do it, Ignatius. This draws on my strengths, and it shows me where I could genuinely be useful. I love art, but I want to do more, because an Addams is more."

"More what? Weirder than Collinses? Because my family is pretty weird," Ignatius said. "While you meditate on the moreness of it all, tell me what you think of this Sipov Boros guy we met last week," Ignatius said and handed Purulence Sipov's application PADD.

"I think that stout beer and kolaches are a horrible combination," Purulence said as she looked through Sipov's paperwork.

 

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