If you find yourself lucky enough to be up for a top job at Salesforce.com, you might be whipped into CEO Marc Benioff's presence for a job interview.
Prepare yourself for an odd experience, says Freddy Kerrest.
Kerrest is now cofounder of Okta, a security startup. Before that, he studied at Benioff's knee. He joined Salesforce.com in 2002, when it was a two-year-old startup with annual revenues of $30 million.
Kerrest describes his first meeting with Benioff as "the weirdest job interview I ever had." It lasted seven minutes and consisted of rapid-fire questions on every detail on his resume.
Kerrest has a degree from MIT. He mentioned a few tech skills on his resume. Benioff made him explain, in technical detail, those skills. For instance, he had to describe how an application server worked and what TCP/IP, the core protocol undergirding the Internet, was.
It was a test to see if Kerrest was fudging about his technical knowledge.
Benioff is a bona fide geek. He started programming when he was 15.
Benioff also grilled him on other stuff, like how Kerrest won business contracts against Benioff's big competitor of the day, Siebel Systems. (Oracle bought Siebel in 2005 for $5.8 billion).
Suddenly Benioff stopped, said "You're hired," and walked away. He told his executive assistant, Allie Covarrubias, to work out the pesky details like what the job was and how much it would pay. (Today, Covarrubias works as recruiter for Box.)
The job turned out to be a sales engineer on the marketing team. Kerrest was the third employee in that group. It made Kerrest's career. He stayed five years total, doing well in Salesforce.com's 2004 IPO.
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