They should expect a conversation. I'll ask questions, but these questions are designed to create a conversation about how you view management and what your experience has been and what goofs you have made in the past and what you've learned from them. I don't want to hear yes, no, since 1987. It's not a test.

Part of my job is to pull out of the candidate the things that are important to me. We have a structured interview process when we are interviewing for director-level positions, but I go off script, and it makes everybody very nervous. If I ask one candidate something, I will ask every candidate, from a skill set standpoint and a management standpoint.

We also go through an ethics scenario. That's important to me. I put people on the hot seat when it comes to ethics and give them scenarios where they might have to confront me about something, to see how they react. I want them to understand how seriously we take it. ETS is one of the divisions that gets hit by vendors. I want them to understand what my standards are and what the governor's standards are. We can't afford to have anyone who doesn't understand that.

None of us is perfect. When you have a candidate who you have probed and probed and they still appear to be without fault, that makes me nervous. It doesn't mean you have to manufacture some fault; I have to figure out a way to see if there's something there that I'm not seeing.