It sounds like he's trying to connect a candidate's well-roundedness and interpersonal fit with job ability. The last sentence says it all: > But if a candida

It sounds like he's trying to connect a candidate's well-roundedness and interpersonal fit with job ability. The last sentence says it all: > But if a candidate can’t even tell you why they liked their last job, or what they got out of their college experience, or any of the million other questions that speak to their basic humanness… Then no amount of experience will make them valuable. That's his thesis I think, but he defends it very poorly. > As it turned out, we eventually did find someone for that position, with a lot less relevant experience. But she learned the job in about six weeks, and her upside enabled her to take on a lot of the unforeseen — and valuable — tasks that the previous candidate would have stumbled around. How do you know this? The other guy couldn't name his favorite book therefore he couldn't do the job? What past experiences do you have to back this up? > A person who has no hobbies, and can’t even exaggerate one, almost certainly lacks the ambition to make your company valuable. They are probably a loser. Again, why? I don't consider no hobbies == no ambition to be self-evident. One common aspects of CEOs is that their ambition for running a company pushes out everything else from their life (for better or for worse). Having no life could speak of too much ambition. It just sounds like he's trying to justify cliquishness with vague correlations to being a good worker. "Loser" to him amounts to, "a person I do not like for my own personal reasons."