States. The goal of the RF credit analyst is to conduct a thorough analysis of
the financing application at hand and to develop a number of scenarios and
recommendations as to whether or not to finance the proposed project. The
RF credit analysis staff is trained not only to protect bank interests, but also
and primarily to make sure that the investment is in fact in the best interests
of our customers. The RF bank staff must be trained to understand that the
RF bank is not in the business of renting money; it is in the business of in-
vesting in and with the clients in order to cultivate an ever-larger family of
successful and satisfied customers who have chosen to live riba/ribit-free,
according to the values of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic system.
Recruiting and Interviewing RF Bankers
An important tradition that I learned during my career while interviewing
candidates for Atlantic RichfieldOil Company (now owned by British
Petroleum) at the University of Wisconsin and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) was the process of the interview. I wanted to make inter-
viewing the candidate a real experience of adding a new member to our
family and at the same time a memorable and useful experience for the
candidate even if it was decided not to employ him/her. The process resem-
bles the interview you hold when your son or your daughter brings home a
candidate for a future serious relationship (i.e., marriage).
Candidate interviews are done in a unique way. The candidate is
requested to be at the bank at 8:00 a.m. to see if he/she is an early morning
person and if he/she will be on time that early in the morning. I start the
interview by offering the candidate something to drink, to make him/her
feel at ease, and I personally prepare and serve that drink.
I start by introducing the candidate to the interview process. I share
with him/her my story, in order to structure his/her story in the same way. I
also share with the candidate the goals of the organization and our dreams.
I check whether the candidate did his/her homework on our organization by
visiting the Web site and other sources on the Internet. The candidate is
asked to tell us about his or her experiences in high school and what courses
he/she liked and disliked, as manifested by the grades he/she achieved. We
then proceed to the college years at length. In the course of the interview, I
evaluate the candidate’s character and the depth of his/her parent’s efforts
to bring him/her up with values and discipline, in order to gauge their char-
acter. I then proceed to tell the candidate that we at the bank commit to
making him/her a very successful banker in two years, and that he/she does
not have to have prior banking experience. I share with him/her that we can
hire a well-dressed chimpanzee and teach it how to print charts and impres-
sive reports. However, there are two traits that we cannot teach a
328 THE ART OF ISLAMIC BANKING AND FINANCE