The Boy’s Job Interview for Mattel

My boy really likes Hot Wheels. I mean a lot. The only other interest that has reached similar proportions was dinosaurs. That peaked at five years old, he’s seven now.

Over the years we’ve checked out many dinosaur books from the library. His knowledge in this area was such that on several occasions he identified misnamed dinosaurs in books we checked out, author and publisher errors. The Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex, for example look very similar. We’ve come across books with drawings of an Allosaurus, but the captions may refer to it as a T-Rex, and vice-versa. When asked how he knew he would say that the Allosaurus had three-claws per arm to the T-Rex’s two claws. He is correct. How could the authors and publishers screw up?

This slackening dinosaur interest has been a gain for Hot Wheels. The pendulum has swung so far that he recently said he no longer wants to get a job at a museum. He had mentioned a number of times that he wants to work in a museum after school before becoming a paleontologist. I don’t think he’s completely turned the corner on a future in paleontology, but he has now said that he is interested in a job at Hot Wheels.

We went online looking for career opportunities for Hot Wheels. We found out that Hot Wheels is a division of Mattel Inc. and that there was a Human Resources job available at Mattel 30 miles from home. I suggested that we review the job prerequisites and do a mock interview to help him prepare to improve his job prospect. After mentioning that he could buy many more Hot Wheels with the money he earned from the job he consented to the interview. The ensuing video documents the effort:

[Video was removed by klem on 5/15/2009.]

I may have to admit that his attention span and stamina may not yet be ideal for gainful employment.
-klem