Bill Belichick’s Job Interviews Sound Like the Absolute Worst Thing in the World

The interview process to become an assistant for Bill Belichick and the Patriots is a nightmare.

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If you think you have gone through some tough job interviews, it's nothing compared to what people have to endure to work for Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots. In a piece for MassLive.com, past and present Patriots assistants pull back the curtain on Belichick's insane interview process. 

When current Patriots tight ends coach Brian Daboll interviewed for an assistant job in 2000, he remembers spending numerous hours of his tryout in the team's old stomping grounds, Foxboro Stadium, with a pen and paper as he poured over old game film. Former Patriots assistant coach Mark Jackson recalls his interview lasting "several days" as he analyzed NFL games before presenting his findings to Belichick. "I thought an interview was an interview," Jackson said. "You come in, tell him (about yourself). This was more of an assignment."

"Those interviews are long days," Belichick said. "I think you see after 8, 9, 10 hours of an interview you see what kind of staying power they have, how excited they are to keep grinding through the information, how detailed they are, how important it is to them." After spending hours in isolation analyzing game film, candidates are grilled on their presentations by Belichick and his coaching staff. Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia, who left an applications engineering job to work for Belichick, calls the assistant job interview "much more intense than a lot of those engineering interviews I went on."

After all that, there's still the one-on-one interview with Belichick. Daboll remembers their conversation being "very, very thorough" while Patricia said it was "almost like a chess match." But, in the end, it's worth it because you're an assistant coach for the Patriots, and receiving decent pay for your work. Well, not so fast. After doing some research on salary surveys from the NFL Coaches Association, Daboll had a number in his head, but ended up taking a lot less. "So I say 70," Daboll recalled. "And Brad Seely leans over and says, 'Would you take 15?' I go, 'Yessir.'"

So, how tough was your job interview again?  

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