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Top comments (49)
I'm sure I've told this story before, it gets funnier to me every time.
The interview was to work on a very small web services team for the Chemistry department at my university. It was an absolute mess from start to finish.
Dodged a bullet, I guess?
Jesus christ, this had me rolled over ๐คฃ
Thanks for sharing
The entire company interviewed me. It was a startup years ago, but still, nine people interviewing you at the same time asking you questions non-stop at a roundtable was rough.
The "entire company" interview should be classified as a form of abuse or torture. I also had one of those. Big conference table with 8 to 10 people at a time, people coming and going, me on the long side in the middle getting whiplash trying to see who was talking and how the senior people were reacting to answers. After a while everybody was grinning a bit, and it was funny but I felt like a zoo animal. No feedback, no followup, classic ghosting. Over 3 people at one time is a waste unless its a presentation or something.
Similar happened to me
I showed up for an interview and was asked to wait in an otherwise-empty waiting room. The secretary went back and told the hiring manager I had arrived. He walked into the waiting room, and scanned the entire room looking for his applicant, not seeming to notice that I was sitting right in front of him. He then asked the secretary where Jesse was. It was immediately clear that he was not expecting a female applicant.
I can barely remember the details of the actual interview - the interviewer seemed disinterested, didn't ask me very many questions.
In my eyes the interview was over before it had even started - I did not belong there.
I had a job interview once for a junior PHP role (that didnt mention anything about multi-lingual support) and one of the question was how I would deal with chinese characters in my code. I explained that I didn't have any hands on experience dealing with chinese characters and that I would probably search stackoverflow for the best way to deal with the problem. They indicated they wanted a better answer and I panicked and said I would probably look for a library to deal with special characters. This made it even worse. They then went on a rant about how libraries are bad and that they only used code that they wrote themselves. They didnt go as far as calling me stupid, but their contempt for me as a developer was oozing through the (very tiny) room when they said goodbye. To this day I am happy that they didnt hire me. I consider it the best thing that ever happened to me ๐
So if the have to validate a phone number for example, they do their own library yup.
Yes, the best thing of that interview was that they didn't hire you xD
And the best part is, after 12 years, they still only offer their application in Dutch, English and German ๐
A few years ago a now well known company insisted on flying me out to San Fransisco to interview even through I was interviewing for a remote position...and then proceeded to have 4 out of the 6 hours be remote interviews over Zoom. As in: I sat in a conference room at their headquarters and the remote employees that would have been on me team dialed in. ๐คท๐ปโโ๏ธ
Lunch was a one hour session with two people from HR (this is one of the sessions that wasn't over zoom). They brought me lunch and a drink: I was specifically told I could not leave the office. I was encouraged to "make smalltalk" so they could "judge my personality" ๐คจ
The final interview of the day was with the recruiter, was was determined to know what my desired salary was. I didn't want to give her a number first, which kind of my thing:
Salary Negotiation for People That Hate To Negotiate with Josh Puetz
Josh Puetz ใป Jul 23 '20 ใป 1 min read
She threatened to withhold reimbursement for the airfare and hotel unless I gave her an exactly salary requirement! It was...tense. We ended up agreeing I wasn't a good fit for the company right there and then.
I once interviewed for a marketing job at small design agency. The interview was with the Creative Director/owner, who looked me up and down the moment I entered the room, and pretty clearly didn't like the (professional) outfit I was wearing and seemed to obviously have decided based on my appearance that I wasn't going to get the job.
The proceeding 15 minutes were spent quizzing me about the life and times of visual artists he liked โ which had 0 to do with the position. When I was mid-sentence answering one of his questions, he called for his assistant, asking if the other candidate was there yet because he was "ready for her". His assistant escorted the next candidate in and he began asking her questions before he even said goodbye, thank you, or anything to me. They also had asked me to take my shoes off (which were brand new) which they hadn't done to the other candidate so I had to scramble to put them back on to leave.
Later that day, they emailed me asking me to complete a video project for the role. I was early-career and naive at the time so I completed the assignment but never heard from them again. I'm pretty sure he just wanted to laugh at whatever I sent him.
I get steamed just thinking about it.
Oh, so many bad experiences to chose from. Which is the worst? Thatโs hard to pinpoint, but I would have to say driving to Beverly Hills to be charged parking (w/o validation) only to be greeted by two developers who didnโt really even introduce themselves much less give me any context for their positions, but they did offer a desk I could sit at.
The two developers had a compouter waiting, logged in. They wanted me to code a feature of an app, but didnโt bother putting an IDE on this computer. They watched me stumble, download an IDE, try to install it, and fail (lack of permissions). Yeah thatโs right, you heard me, they watched me, over my shoulder the entire time. When they could finally resolve the permissions, I had to figure out the directory structure of an app, then code against it, in 30 minutes. Something told me at the time nobody at the office knew front end, which at the time of my career appeared more like a curse than a blessing.
Then there was the time Amazon flew me to headquarters. I stayed in a nice hotel, I thought it must be nice because I recognized basketball players staying there. The next day, I interviewed all day long, multiple rounds of technical interviews increasing in difficulty, but along the way, thought I performed well. I flew home from Seattle, waited a week to be told I didnโt get the job because of one point. One point? Really? The Amazon recruiter said heโd never seen it before and if I had earned one more point on their test, I would have had an offer.
Iโm sure I have repressed so many bad experiences.
Hey, you asked...
Even though it was for a internship so long ago, I still remember to this day.
It would be a "group interview" with a few candidates, the moment the "boss" came and started greeting each one, the time he shook my hand, I could see his disgust with me.
The whole time he would ask each and everyone questions, hear the answers and add to it... except for me, for me... his assistant ended up doing most answers and listening while he played on his phone when it was my turn. Could be just me, but I believe it got awkward to everyone. Obviously, didn't get the internship while everyone else, or almost that got it.
But why stop at only one, right?
A more recent one, now online... the interviewer asked, and I would say how I would fit on what they are looking for and all. The interview seemed "normal" until the end, when the interviewer, as if talking to a hidden camera said something along the lines of "Well, as you said, it seems you're not a fit, so thank you for your time, bye.".
One still fresh was that after passing through all of the steps, challenges, talking to everyone, my "feedback" was from a "no-reply" email as generic as a first interaction one. I insisted on a feedback call as stated on that email, after much trouble I got the "feedback" that they really liked me, but they were actually looking for someone more senior, probably with 10-15 years of experience (I have 5).
BTW... did I mention I have a cleft lip and speech impediment?
Well... the last one is that I even gave a heads up that I have a speech impediment. In the interview, many times they brought up about how I communicate with my peers and all that, I said the ways I make sure it's not a problem, and finally after the interview they said something on the line of "well, I can see how it would affect communication on the team... so thank you for your time, but we won't continue from here."
I probably have some more that I don't remember, and probably will have more in the future...
Still looking, but sometimes thinking on giving up...
Some of those companies have whole pages on how inclusive they are... OMHO: bullshit.
How about the time I interviewed for a PHP role and they passed me over because apparently I didn't mention I knew PHP, despite having done a complete technical inteview?
Or the time I got left in a meeting room for an hour because they forgot about me and the company were going on a trip? I only got out of there by sheer luck.
Or the time I got phoned up for feedback on the interview process because apparently I'd impressed them in person and had been their second choice - and the feedback I gave was, "you never interviewed me, you turned me down before it got that far."