How to say “Bad Motherf**cker” in a job interview and get the job

This is a good one for our Alltop and Brazen Careerist readers. This is a cool job interview thing that happened to me recently.

I went through an interview process with a tech startup, except they’re not really a startup because they’ve been around for a couple of years and sell a product and are self-funded. But they feel like a startup because of the young culture and nerf guns and air hockey tables. So that’s what I’ve been telling people.

I got the interview because I networked my way, via face-to-face, through three people. First was a designer who connected me to the marketing guy who introduced me to the CEO. When I met the CEO, at a party, I chatted him up about football and sports betting and we connected that way.

The first interview was a phone call with an HR person. It was a screening call to gather some information and make sure I was who my resume said I was. He asked about salary requirements and potential start dates etc.

The second interview was an extensive sit-down deal with the CEO, CTO, and a project manager. They grilled the shit out of me.  Work experience, education, why I was leaving my current place, work and life history, hypothetical conflicts and resolutions, strengths and weakness, favorite foods, fetishes, etc etc, everything was asked. It was exhausting but invigorating. Because I knew they were serious and they took their people seriously and it sure as hell made me think. I excel in situations like this because I articulate well under pressure.

They made me do homework. I had to write a long email after doing research and addressing certain hypothetical situations. An example of this: strategies I would use to market our new product in a particular industry. I had only a very general idea of the stuff they produced, so I had to dig around to figure it out. This was a test to see if I was (a) serious, (b) could write, and (c) could research and analyze.

This process took several days, and the whole time I kept up a subtle campaign of connecting to the principals over Twitter, Facebook, and blog. Basically, I would tweet out a decent thought or a great link to a resource that was related to what they doing. Things like that, to show I was with it.

The third interview was an out-of-the blue phone conference with the CEO and a board member. On a Saturday. I had just finished running stairs on a hot day when they called. I was literally sweating bullets and exhausted from running. So, more grilling. The board member was a terminator, he dug to the core of what I was all about in like 3 questions. I sat in the grass under a tree and answered everything. These were the toughest questions I’d ever been asked on a job interview.

Towards the backend of the last interview I got pretty fired up and said two things. First, I said I wasn’t satisfied with being a scrub, I wanted to be the shortstop for the Yankees, metaphorically speaking. Secondly, I called myself a “bad motherfucker.” I wasn’t sure if that line would go over well, but it just popped into my head I think because the CEO was a young dude. So I called myself a bad mofo.

The CEO emailed me on Sunday and offered me the job. So you can say bad motherfucker in a job interview and make it work. But it only works if that’s what your potential employers are looking for, a bad mofo. It won’t work if the job you’re applying for is a job for peons and scrubs. Because they don’t want a mad mofo for that. They just want a worker bee. And it’s a little scary because now I have to live up to it.