Thanks -- and to everyone who congratulated me offlist also. I have a job to finish up this weekend -- for a good lefty outfit y'all love, so I'll be getting back to folks as time permits.
The funny thing about what you say is that there isn't much else as a predictor. And if there is, HR screws it up. Or, I should say, bureaucracy, scientism, and hyper-rationalization screw it up. And the funnier thing it, the people who were that guy are the people I interviewed, studied, and worked closely with for a coupla years as I did my research on unemployment. They were the guy/gal who, seemingly, had all the power in the interview and was consciously aware that she was, as joanna says, looking to see if you're a member of the club.
But they aren't really aware. There are exceptions. I used to cater luncheons for a company's small select "club" luncheons, including those that were part of a candidate's selection process. They normally liked filet mignon and crab. When a candidate was entertainment for the eday, they ordered Cornish Game hen, one of which was to be overcooked and served to candidate. It was a test to see how they handled themselves. Cruel, huh?
I had to go through two batteries of tests, one of which was for PHP programmer which I tested out as Sr. Level which made me laff and laff and laff. But of course the only reason I got the job is that I played along and then wanted to see if they needed someone else for another posish or would they bring me on as a Jr. PHP programmer/apprentice. I treated it as a practice session b/c I was still in shock that they actually fly people in for interviews and pay relocation expenses, etc. I've always been on the market when things are on a downswing.
At any rate, most people don't operate at this level of cognizance where they purposefully torture candidates with toughh chicken. When people like the guy Chuck met become unemployed during a recession, they are utterly clueless as to what they used to do when they conducted interviews. They didn't know why, they didn't know the rationale for what they did, and the things the 'experts' are telling you about resumes are lost on those types (though not on HR but the prob with HR is the trends and metrics for supposedly figuring out predictors of success are changing as fast as fad pedagogies in teacher training schools).
In other words, when my group of unemployed upper-level mgrs got together on Monday to psych them up for the week ahead of disappointment (hugs Chuck), they'd unpack their interviews from week before. They didn't know or weren't cognizant enough to explain, what Joanna just did. They picked up interviewing by osmosis, mostly had to learn it on the fly. Robert Jackall calls this sort of thing "alchemy," arguing that management at this level tend to operate on the principle of alchemy, *even though* they are ostensibly in an organization (a bureaucracy) that is supposed to be rationalized and organized according to 'scientific' principles. Jackall explores this tension between modernized bureaucracy and the undergirding feudal structure of most corporate outfits in the book, "Moral Mazes,' explaining how this tension plays a part in systematically (not accidentally, but systematically) producing 3 Mile Island, the Ford Pinto, Enron, etc.
Alchemy is described in phrases such as "good fit," "clicking," "hitting it off," and so forth. It's mysterious and magic and managers come to fetishize this in an odd way. What was most interesting in my research was that it literally took them a few sessions of unpacking and explicit mini-lectures on it from the transition counselor for these folks to understand that, when they went on an interview, it was going to be all about alchemy and "clickin". What I mean is, it took them that long to figure out "OH! That's how *I* used to operate." This recognition was simply never present to them without a lot of help.
Partly, they don't want to know. The worst thing in the world is to be unemployed for a over a year and all of a sudden realize that there is very little you can do to change alchemy. You can't study for it, you can't plan for it, you can do nothing except do your best. It's out of your control and unemployed, discouraged workers don't want to know that they might just get a job, not because of a pretty resume or key words or their talents and skills, but because they had on a pair of socks someone recognized the brand of, a conversation started, and "clicking" started to happen. To realize that you're in that position is to realize that there's little you can rationally do to alleviate your situation and someone might get the job instead of you because they clicked and you didn't. There's no explanation. It's unnerving and could set these folks (long term unemployed upper level managers and professionals) into a bout of serious depression.