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Pete Lemke likes job interviews.
The interview process is the lifeblood of his company, executive search firm EFL Associates Inc. Proof of Lemke's skill is reflected not only in the success of his company, but also in the executives he has recruited for companies and some of the area's top nonprofit organizations.
Lemke enjoys the intellectual gamesmanship of the interview. His challenge is to pin down five or six crucial elements of a person's, psyche during the course of a couple of hours of conversation - a task akin to painting a landscape from a fastmoving car.
Even after researching a candidate's colleagues and former employers, which EFL does exhaustively, it's easy to miss a couple of important traits.
"Because I'm an expert and I've interviewed so many people, I've missed on most," Lemke said. "It's not a science. It's an art."
EFL President Jay Meschke said Lemke's gift is his thoroughness. Meschke said his boss spends an average of two to three hours interviewing a serious candidate and will call as many as a dozen references. Like the coach of a big-time college team, hell go on long recruiting trips, interviewing candidates in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati.
"A lot of people in our business are truly just matchmakers," Meschke said. "Pete gets into the details."
Lemke has a few prints of English fox hunts hanging in his Overland Park office, but he doesn't treat job candidates as quarry. Pete Levi said that when he interviewed with Lemke for president of the
Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce 12 years ago, he marveled at Lemke's laidback deferential manner.
Levi said he remembers it being a relaxed meeting, with a lot of open discussion of his style and what he had accomplished in his previous job at the Mid-America Regional Council.
"He is such a nice person and such an easy person to talk to...