Approached by a staff recruiter for an open position. Ended up speaking by phone with two different managers who both said they had hiring responsibility for positions open at that time. One manager disappeared in the middle of that process; never figured out what happened to him. Was eventually asked which of the two positions I wanted, and gave the honest answer: I knew I could do both jobs well, but would take whichever allows me to make the largest amount of money while maintaining my work-life balance. I'm at a stage in my career where I'm not paid to "dial for dollars" or "pound the pavement"; my value is as the person who can stand in a customer's boardroom and command respect at that key moment in the sales process. To my surprise, my blunt honesty was well received. Was offered a final interview at headquarters. Was initially going to be with 2 managers, but when I got there was told they had all of their directors and C-suite in the boardroom . . . for the next hour and a half at least . . . . and that I had to do all of the questioning, because none of the people in the room had questions for me. Several parts of that "interview" were contentious, because as an outsider, with substantial experience in the area of sales optimization for companies marketing to banks, I had strong opinions on how the company could improve. Again, to my surprise, my blunt honesty was well received. Left that interview and was told that I'd knocked it out of the park, that I'd get an offer soon. Flew home. Early the next morning, a woman who I didn't know called me and without preamble said "you must've made one hell of an impression yesterday!" I told her I was happy to hear it, and once we got past introductions she explained that the CEO of the company had walked into her office just then and said "I don't care what you have to do, you get that guy an offer and you get it to him today." I have to admit I wasn't really looking at this company as my leading prospect at the time, and I already had informal offers from a couple of positions with much higher pay. But in the final analysis I decided to take the offer, because there just aren't that many companies around in which blunt honesty is encouraged or even tolerated. There are even fewer in which the CEO cares enough about one hire in the sales organization to intervene in and accelerate the hiring process. I've been there almost 5 years now and I've not regretted the decision. At this point the tolerance for blunt honesty has decreased. There is less of a focus on dealing with reality to improve, and more of a focus on toeing the line. But I've still not regretted the decision.