Page 8 of One Night Billionaire

“What could possibly be wrong now?” Brian asked.

“Terry quit.” Pete didn’t mince words.

“What the hell? Why? Did you offer him more money? We need a project manager on this to

keep them in line and on time.” They weren’t on time, but that was a different issue.

“I offered him a lot of things, even the ability to work remotely. He said he didn’t want to do this kind of thing anymore.”

“Where are we going to find another project manager this quickly?” Brian demanded.

This was a complication he didn’t need. The person would need to have excellent programming skills to be able to keep up with the programmers and understand what was going on. Not to mention the need to be able to jump in and help when they could.

That left a really small pool of people to pull from and even fewer that could jump in right away. These types of professionals were in demand and didn’t stay without a job for long.

“We have a few applications that have come in recently. I sent them over to you.”

“We don’t have long,” Brian said again.

“I know. Hire one quickly.” Pete said.

“Terry told me this would be ready but we keep having delays that are messing up the timeline. What’s really going on here?” Brian asked.

“I have been wondering the same thing. I haven’t had a chance to get in there and dig around at what Terry was doing, but I’m willing to bet he didn’t have a clue what was going on.”

“Dammit,” Brian bit out. “Go see what’s going on. Let me go through these candidates.”

“HR can help with that,” Terry reminded him.

“I don’t have the time for that. I need to find the right person and not jump through a bunch of hoops.”

“Fair enough.” Pete let himself out of the office.

The reason he’d hired Pete was that he didn’t beat around the bush. He didn’t have to pretend with him, and no small talk was required. Directness was a huge asset to Brian, and Pete had it in spades.

He opened the email from Pete and began looking at the resumes. There were only five to go through, and the first one he opened was a huge letdown.

The second one was somehow worse. You could tell by the way the resumes were written that they had no idea what they were talking about. A technical project manager would have better listed out their skills. This one seemed not to even know what a project was.

Sure, they could know what they were doing, and he was basing it all off of one paper that was meant to represent a whole career. But if they couldn’t convey what they needed to quickly, they weren’t going to work for him, literally.

The next three weren’t bad. He reviewed them all side by side but noticed one important detail about the fifth one. She worked for a startup that he knew was shutting down.

He called her first and did an impromptu interview. He left her a message and then called the other two. Only one person answered but they wouldn’t be available for a month so he hadn’t interviewed them. His timeline was too short.

Brian couldn’t do anything but wait. That was the hardest part of anything and he didn’t try to do anything to pass the time. Between the woman this weekend and now this problem, his thoughts were divided enough already.

Anna had left him and while she wasn’t the first woman to do so, he was overwhelmed but this was happening again. Most women stuck around long enough to bleed him dry of money. Well, as far as he would let them anyway. The moment he quit spending on them they would completely ghost him.

He always hoped the next one would be better but it would happen again. This time the woman didn’t even take money, didn’t know how much he had and yet, she still walked away like nothing ever happened. He was starting to wonder what the problem was.

His phone rang, blessedly interrupting his thoughts. “This is Brian,” he answered.

“Hi. My name is Anna. You called about a position?”

He winced at the irony of her name. How was he going to stop thinking about Anna from this weekend if there was an Anna in his face? He shrugged it off. Now wasn’t the time for personal shit.

“Yes. Thank you for calling. I’m sorry to start with such an abrupt question, but I have no desire to waste either of our time. I am looking to fill a position quickly and am wondering what your availability would be to start if you were offered the position?”

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