What To Ask

Arriving back at the office, Stephan started trying to work on what he thought he should include in the applications. After he noted the necessary information of name, age, and all that he decided to also include a work history section accompanied by a listing of skills they possessed. He then started trying to think of questions they could ask that would give them an idea of the applicant's problem solving skills and maybe an idea of their personality as well and was still working on it when the others joined him at the end of the day to help him narrow down what they wanted the applicants to provide.

Walking in Holly asked, "So have you been really working on this thing all day? Or are you in here doodling while you're off in lala land in your head?"

Growling, Stephan replied, "I've been working on trying to come up with these darn questions thank you!"

"Yeah. He's probably like most guys and has been trying to resist the temptation of asking for all of the girls in the world's bra sizes." Rachel joked as she walked in behind Holly.

"He don't want to know all of the female bra sizes," Holly teased, "He just wants to know Dawn's and maybe Ranita's sizes."

"Wow!" Dawn exclaimed walking in, "That is surely not the thing to walk in on."

"Don't worry," Ranita told her as she walked in right behind her, "with these two around you get used to it right quick. And, after a while, you learn to play along and just go with the flow."

"Ok...." Dawn responded, "So if I told them that I'm not shy of showing off my 36Cs they'd be all tongue tied and fighting with the dirty thoughts running through their heads?"

"Oh That was a good one!" Ranita laughed as she saw the looks on Rachel and Holly's faces and told Dawn, "I don't think I have ever seen them that tongue tied ever before!"

Laughing at the flummoxed looks on their faces, Dawn laughed harder and pointed at Stephan's blushing, beet red face as she sat down. Seeing this, Ranita slapped the table as she laughed and then told Dawn, "I've got to give you a high five on that one! I have never been able to get all three of them so embarrassed they couldn't speak at the same time before!"

Laughing as well, Dawn took a bow and then brushed her shoulder as she replied, "Well, when you've got skills you've got skills."

As they both sat down, Stephan took a deep breath and told them, "Ok all you jokesters, let's get down to business. Lets all go over the general information like name, birthday, and all that first since we can all easily agree on that part. Then we'll get started on the questionnaire part and decide on what questions we want to ask them."

After a quick thirty minutes, as they then got to the questions for the questionnaire part, Stephan suggested, "Ok ladies. I think the best way to do this is for each of us to read off one of our questions and we then vote a yay or nay on it for the first go through. Then, after we have voted on all of the questions, we will go through the ones with an even or a majority vote of approval and start trying to narrow it down to as close to twenty questions as we can."

"Why just twenty questions though?" Ranita asked, "The answer to these will give us a better understanding of their skills as well as giving us an idea of how they would be at teamwork and stuff."

"If we wanted to ask as many questions as we could to get as much information as we can on the person's skills and knowledge though," Stephan informed her, "We would end up not being able to rely on the answers because they would get so tired or so stressed about the answers that we would either get rambling answers where they show off every detail they know about things, short answers where they get to rushing through them instead of taking time to think the answers through, or they'd start writing down whatever they can think of that sounds good whether it makes sense or not."

"But by getting responses like that," Holly objected, "it would help us weed through the ones just in it for the attention, or the ones showing off their knowledge, and it would make it easier for us to narrow down to the ones taking this serious that are willing to help out in any way they can."

"The down side to that though," Stephan countered, "is that the ones that really want to help but don't have all the extensive degrees would get stressed out and be more likely to give up on making it and start putting down answers that were straight baloney."

"Umm, you guys know way more about the business and economics side than I do," Dawn told them, "but I think I can say with certainty that I know more of the psychological side and, evaluating these questions with my knowledge of behavioral science, I think we should do like Stephan is wanting and keep the questionnaire to twenty questions or less to make sure we get the best answers." As the others started to object Dawn held up her hand and continued, "But we should keep the questions we are rejecting and save them for the interviews. That way we can throw them out there to see if the responses in the questionnaire were true answers that the person had thought out or if they were answers that were hiding their true knowledge and their true personality."

Confused, Rachel asked for clarification, "Wait a minute! What do you mean by all that behavioral psychology and true personality junk? Couldn't we cut through all that with our feeler ability during the interview?"

"Yes and no." Dawn told her with a smile, "current feeling do predict current behavior. But they way folks answer questions tells us how their mind works too. How they phrase stuff and the words they use tell us how they think their problems through. While the way they answer the questions in person and their reactions to the things we say and how we say them tells us what they think of the subject, and us, and also what they think of themselves."

"I don't know," Holly returned, "It sounds like malarkey some psychologist came up with to justify how much better than shrinks they thought they were."

Dawn laughed and replied, "Ok then. Let me demonstrate then and I want you to be honest and each of you tell me if I'm wrong ok?" After everyone had given their reluctant agreement but didn't know what she was fixing to say or do, starting with Holly, Dawn continued, "A perfect example would be the whole deal about Ranita's and my bra sizes. You mentioning him thinking about my bra size was aimed at embarrassing Stephan. But you adding Ranita's size to the statement told me that you yourself appreciate what she has and was thinking about her size when Rachel talked about asking for bra sizes in general. Then, when I freely offered my size, your reaction showed me that you appreciated them and that you have a preference for breasts."

Holly blushed more and more as dawn explained and, at the end, just nodded her head being unable to verbally indicate Dawn's correctness. Turning to Rachel, Dawn provided, "As for you, Rachel, my dear, You opening with a pick at Stephan about bra sizes when Holly said he was off in lala land shows me that you think of women's breasts when you yourself are off in lala land. And, given your reaction to me sharing my size along with your quick glance at them, you showed me that, while Holly likes Ranita's breasts, you like mine. Plus, you being too embarrassed to look me in the eye, probably because you know I would be able to tell I was right, but unconsciously looking at my breasts since I started talking about holly liking Ranita's breasts tells me that they are probably close to what your hormones, if not your brain as well, think is the perfect size."

Rachel's only response, other than trying to stare at her papers after being called out on having been staring at Dawn's breasts, was to just throw her hand out to indicate Dawn's correctness. Dawn smiled and then turned to Ranita saying, "You, my dear Ranita, was the most surprising read."

Rolling her eyes up to the ceiling, Ranita groaned, "Oh, God. I don't know if I can handle this psychoanalyses stuff, but lay it on me I guess."

Dawn grinned and explained, "Well, first, I will say that your reaction and tone of voice right then tells me that you are thinking my explanation is going to also embarrass you as well and are trying to prepare yourself for it but you are also curious to know what I was able to pick up on earlier. And, as for what I picked up on with the whole bra incident, I can tell you that your tone of voice and phrasing when telling me to 'go with the flow' tells me that you secretly enjoy the way Holly and Rachel's perverted jokes help draw you out of your comfort zone. Also, Holly mentioning your bra size earlier along with your reaction when I was calling her out on it a minute ago tells me that, while you may not be sexually attracted to her, you have been enjoying and appreciating the attention that Holly has been showing your breasts over the years. And, leading up to my last target, I will add that the way you reacted and your tone when responding to Stephan's embarrassment earlier tells me that you see him in your heart as like a little brother that you are looking out for."

Ranita smiled, shrugged, and told her, "What can I say? Guilty as charged" as she giggled.

Then, as Dawn turned to Stephan, he groaned, "Oh Lord, For some reason I am dreading this and feel like I should just go ahead and call a shrink so I can get fitted for an I love me jacket." After saying it, he then slapped his hand to his head and asked, "Let me guess, this tells you I'm depressed or something?"

Dawn gave a small chuckle and told him, "On the contrary. This reaction along with your tone and gestures tells me that you are actually curious to see what I have picked up on today and are wondering what it will reveal that you might not have consciously known beforehand. So, without further ado, what I picked up on was that you hadn't even been thinking about any of our breasts before today because as soon as Holly said something about mine and Ranita's you had a starteld look in your eyes and you them looked at all of our breasts like they were completely new features.

Then, the look on your face as well as the full body blushing when I openly admitted my bra size – that I purposely did as you finished looking at Ranita's and had started to look at mine by the way -showed me that, since my comments about us skinny dipping the other day, you have been becoming more aware of your attraction to me but you have been too shy to even think about asking me out on a date. Which, by the way, I think we should wait on doing until after we get all the big issues like the next ship and the colony and other extraneous stresses dealt with. Anyways, back to the subject at hand. Like I was saying, you have become more aware of an attraction and so my bra size comment while you were looking at them made this attraction come to the forefront of your mind. Me then showing Ranita how deeply you were blushing then caused your defensive reaction of making us all focus on the questionnaire so that you could focus on something other than your physical attraction to me until you had time alone to think through and, shall we say, analyze those feelings later. And, in conclusion, I will add that your reactions to me telling you this revealed that you were unaware that the demand to focus on the questionnaire was a defensive reaction because you had thought you were consciously deciding to return to business mode."

Taking a deep breath, Stephan responded to her evaluation, "Given how much you have revealed about the perverts and Ranita along with stuff you have brought up that I was only partly aware of myself, I'm just gonna have to take it on faith that you were more right than I know. And, given how much just two minute interaction showed you about us, I think we should do as you suggested and keep all of the questions we have rejected as random questions we can use to show us more about the applicants than the impersonal questionnaire can show."