Job interviews all pretty much start the same, it doesn’t matter if your selling cars or clothes, tending bar or emptying trucks. You go to the main entrance, ask the receptionist for the person you’re supposed to meet with, they ask your name, smile, direct you to a seat and then you wait…and you wait…and you wait…
I believe that the time you spend waiting to be interviewed for a job is something like a brief look into what a life lived behind bars might be like: You sit in silence, you are surrounded by strangers that don’t usually look happy, you have a lot of time to think about why you’re there, the music that usually is playing is a type of torture technique, see- prison techniques of music torture.
And then comes your first breath of fresh air (in what seems like years) as the door swings open and you are beckoned to head into meet your interviewer. Mine was a man who’s name had been synonymous with radio in the Scranton area for decades,  Jerry Padden. Jerry was a giant man, 6’8″ and had a laugh that could only be described as terrifying. He filled the hallway as we walked past the gold records that hung on each side of us. (I should note here that I have an insane affection of these shadowbox recording industry wall decorations, so much so he was losing me on the trip to his office) I could feel my neck swinging back and forth as we strode past them. There were ones from Aerosmith, and Faith Hill, N-Sync and Garth Brooks; it was heavenly! Millions of records and hundreds of artists and I was surrounded by them, WHOA!

I was in sensory overload!
After two rights and a left, each with about a twenty foot hall attached, we settled into what he called his “office”, but to this day I still believe it to actually have been an unused pantry style room that even the evening cleaning crew insisted was to nasty to store their brooms in overnight. I forget the gist of our conversation, but what I do remember was that it had absolutely nothing to do with the radio business. I recall at some point thinking when is he going to ask me about my reasons for wanting to be in radio, or how did you come to this decision… but he didn’t.
Suddenly he smiled, placed his laced fingers behind his massive head and leaned back in his chair. The noise the chair made gave me every reason to believe that I was about to be required to leap into rescue mode and assist him up from the floor behind his desk. He slung his feet up onto the desk, they were awe inspiring. (I have to tell you that one of Jerry’s most amazing features are his feet. They are so big that it looks more like he’s wearing the box that his shoes came in as opposed to the footwear that was sold inside them) He slid a small stack of clipped papers toward me and asked me to read through them in the following days.
“These”, he said, “are the station formatics (it‘s a radio term). They’re lists of things that are expected of you both on air and off.” I picked up the pile and began flipping through it, he continued talking but my mind began to wander as I scanned over words and paragraphs. I wasn’t really reading just assessing how much “paperwork” I was going to have to do (see the first entry for the joke there). Then it hit me.
“So, do I get the job?” I asked kinda nervously-excited. “Hell yes…” he said rather insulted that I didn’t realize that fact, “you had it ten minutes ago!” “But I don’t have any experience or demo” I replied, “I knew you could do this just by listening to your voice, the rest I can train you to do.” The remaining time I spent in the building was kind of a blur.
I was introduced to other on-air people and personal managers, salesmen and interns, and walked out of the building standing a bit taller that day… I had done it, I was a radio DJ!