As a Hiring Manager for a billion-dollar firm with operations in 28 states, Ed interviewed thousands of candidates. He found that when you interview and hire people as permanent employees for your own firm, your reputation is on the line with each hire.  He always felt that when he interviewed and hired someone, it was like they had his name stamped indelibly on their forehead.  He was partly responsible for their success or failure.  Therefore, he developed a careful and thorough style of interviewing.

 He also retained many outside recruiting firms.  He found that not only did recruiters not give a careful and thorough interview... but most didn't understand his business at all and were simply looking for a few "buzzwords" on a resume before they stamped it and sent it on.  They couldn't tell a good widget from a bad widget, because they didn't even know what a widget was!