My recollection after he was hired was that his first act was to handle Flus' callback interview, along with the callbacks for Dan Quinn and Jim Caldwell.
My old boss told me a story about The Purple Hotel, back when it was first being constructed at Touhy and Lincoln out in Lincolnwood. It was a Pritzker project and the architect had a meeting with the Pritzker matriarch regarding the hotel's color and design. Apparently, the architect had two color books, the client color book, which was basically a pamphlet, and the actual color book, which was a thick tome. The day of the meeting, the architect couldn't find the client color book, and had to grab the actual color book. As a result, she picked that gawdawful shade of lilac and refused to be talked out of it. The rest was history.
To me, Flus was Poles' choice, but that's only because Bill Polian and the other knuckleheads leading the coaching search gave him the client color book instead of the actual color book. So, he had a choice, but it really wasn't much of a choice.