Dan Jacobs

I once interviewed for a small tech company in Bellevue that had a panel of 4 people asking me questions (which I thought was pretty fun, all eyes on me!). The strange part came at then end when they had finished their questions and it was my turn. I asked them to talk about what kind of outside influences and continuing education they encourage their staff and sales force to go through in order to always be learning (pretty innocent, right?). I was given a pretty frank answer, they did not believe in outside influences, they and they alone would like to be the ones to control the information that their employees learn for work. No school reimbursement, no outside speakers coming to sales meetings, none of that.

I asked them clarify a little more and that was in fact what they were trying to say, no outside training. I thanked them for their time and had no further questions.

They called to offer me the job 2 days later, I respectfully declined and told the interviewer that I do believe in the importance of internal training but I think it's equally important to bring outside perspectives into the workplace in order to keep people thinking "outside the box" and thinking of ways to improve the company....