The New York Times business section is a great place to find advice from top executives. In Sunday's paper, Richard Anderson, chief executive of Delta Air Lines, tells how he hires his subordinates:

You want to know about their family. Where they grew up. What their parents did. Where they went to high school. What their avocations were. How many kids they had in their family. You know, what their whole background and history is.

I learned that from a C.E.O. I worked for. The C.E.O. wouldn’t really spend that much time on the résumé, but spent most of the time wanting to know everything about the person’s life, family, what they liked, where they liked to go on vacation, what their kids were like. And it gave you a really good perspective about who they were as people.

Actually, this interview gives a pretty good perspective of Mr. Anderson.

He's relatively boring, he's not particularly smart, and he's very probably breaking the law, because it's illegal to ask many of these questions during a job interview.