Job interview high weirdness

So last week, my grad school advisor sent along an e-mail he got from the career center advertising for court reporters. I sent my resume and got a call back the next day, when we scheduled an interview for yesterday.

I showed up to find an empty office. I don’t mean no one else was waiting. I mean an empty office. No receptionist, no other employees working, no one. There were a few desks, but only one computer. :dubious:

There was, however, a stack of magazines on the chair next to me. I flipped through, hoping to find one with a cover date before September that had been sent to that address. I found one dated May. I relaxed a bit.

So the woman who was supposed to interview me, and who is not the HR manager (this detail is important), came in from wherever it was she had been, gave me an application to fill out and some spelling and proofreading tests. I did that in nothing flat, including writing out the proofreading test with the appropriate corrections. I handed the whole packet to the puzzled interviewer, who seemed flummoxed that I would go through the trouble of re-writing the whole paragraph just to fix “a few mistakes”.

So the interview begins. The interviewer asked me what I know about court reporting. A lot more than some of their other applicants, if her comments are anything to go by. She went into the job description and so forth. Normal stuff, pretty much.

Then it got weird.

Apparently, I need a hard-disk recorder. Not a problem; I know where to get those fairly inexpensively, and I’ve used them and have a model that I am comfortable with. No dice. I have to get the recorder through them for which they’ll deduct the cost from my paycheck over the course of “months,” not specifying how much the actual cost is, or how many “months” it would take to pay for it.

She went into the compensation package, which seems ridiculously low. They do pay travel expenses, but the salary is around $25,000 a year. Mileage reimbursement is $0.24 cents a mile, nine cents below the going rate. At that point, she strongly implied that higher reimbursement rates and salaries eat into the company’s profits.

It also turns out that, despite what the ad says, they have no health insurance. At this point, she told me she assumed I can get insurance through my husband. :dubious: I tell her I can’t, and she said, “Well, I thought you could.”

Moving right along. She asked me a few more questions, including one that was out of nowhere. She asked, “What’s your dream job?” I know this is a standard interview question, but this time, it was apropos of nothing. Then she asked whether I went to college right out of high school, or if I waited a while. Questions alluding to age, religion, race, ethnic background, and so forth are right out.

I’m not going to have any problems turning down this dream job. Since I want to help them avoid a potential discrimination lawsuit, and because I’m nice that way, I might let the real HR manager know that her proxy is asking illegal and inappropriate questions.

Robin

Wow. This reminds me of an interview I had a while back. There was an ad for a “personal assistant to the CEO” listed. The ad talked about “great benefits, excellent starting pay, flexible schedule” and so on – who could resist right?

Well, I faxed my resume, they call me and say, “we got your resume and we’re really impressed, do you mind faxing over your salary requirements?” So, I fax over my salary requirements, they call me within minutes, breathless “we got your fax, can you come out for an interview this afternoon?”

I show up, the place is tiny and filthy. I mean, it looks like something out of a bad B-movie set. Did I mention this was an ambulance service? No? Yeh. Not going into details (I think I talked about this in another thread), the long and short of it was that after an ungodly long wait, the interview ending up being conducted by like 3 people, and a friggin novel of application paperwork – they offered me like minimum wage. :dubious: I was absolutely in shock. Seriously, some people just do not understand the concept of honesty, reality. Glad you found out about the company before accepting the job?

There are companies in the world that have a massive disconnect about how wonderful they are to work with, what employees expect to be paid for the work they expect to be done, etc. I see the job ads occasionally - “We want a super-duper good at everything person to do everything we can possibly think of, in three languages. Starting salary - half of the going rate for this industry.” Good luck with that.

Higher salaries eat into their profits? How about no salaries at all - just expect people to volunteer. How about trying to make money with no employees at all. Idiots. At least you found out before you made any commitments that they are a bunch of ninnies.

Well, duh. Did she think she was going to make you happy with a below-market salary by “explaining” that?

I don’t understand. Do you mean that she asked those types of questions, or that she refrained (you think) only because they were illegal?

If the former, by all means share what they were!

Wow, Robin, you’re certainly in contention for this month’s “weird job story” award. You definitely made the right choice on giving this position a pass.

I agree with Freddy the Pig. If the interviewer actually asked questions on prohibited subjects, please post them!

I think this was the illegal question -

It’s a way of figuring out your age.

And I expected to read something like this -

the instant I opened the thread.

Regards,
Shodan

Apparently so. There is such a thing as being too honest. I know that businesses exist to make a profit, but that’s not something you tell to an applicant you’re trying to lowball.

There was the question that Shodan already explained. There were also questions about my husband’s occupation, and one or two others that were, at best, questionable. I’ll try to post these later, but I have to leave.

Robin

That question is borderline illegal. It is permissible to ask for the date you attained your degree, if you have a degree.

What’s illegal is any question that is designed to identify an applicant over the age of forty.

It’s even worse than that - the IRS allowable deduction rate for 2007 is 48.5 cents a mile.

I also think $25,000 is shockingly, ridiculously low for a court reporter. I thought I’d heard they make at least double, possibly close to triple that. Maybe I’m wrong.

Edit in case anyone notices: it’s not a reimbursement rate; it’s a deduction.

snort

Uh, yeahhhh…

Oh, I don’t know… A while back, I had an interview that had been set up by a headhunter. I met with the hiring manager, who interviewed me and showed me around the company’s facilities. After several hours of this, I met with the HR manager, who told it was sooo expensive to hire someone through a headhunter and the company wouldn’t do it unless they couldn’t find a decent candidate “for free” through their newspaper ad.

No, I don’t know why they brought me in.

Don’t know if I’m being whooshed, but it sounds to me like he was trying to hint that he would hire you only if you and he could collaborate to screw the headhunter out of his fee.

I interviewed for a position at a late-era dot.com company in downtown Boston. Apparently they were growing so fast that they had multiple stories in a building under construction. One of those floors was where I interviewed. There were bare wires and plumbing and dust everywhere. Nothing was close to being furnished either so me and the interviewer had to look around for some chairs and put them in the cleanest room we could find. The interview seemed to go fine until I asked her if my skills were lacking in any way. That is when she informed me that they had nothing similar to what I do open. The headhunter simply made a terrible mistake. She did point out that if I had any friends in technology based sales, then please pass them on. That is when she gave me her card.

When I worked for Vonage, they actually told us there were cots available if we wanted to sleep over there after volunteering past our shift. “Can’t I just go home?”

There was another firm, which was the outsource for a big pharma company that rhymes with Ponson and Ponson. They wanted: a bachelors in CS or in administration, 3 language native fluency, certification including a CCNA & and MCP, 4 years+ experience, and a good credit record. OK, says I, and I applied. I get the call from the recruiter, and ask about salary because I’ve already got a job. So, the maximum they’re willing to pay? a whopping $12 and hour! WOW! SIGN ME UP!! When I asked why they didn’t just increase their offer, after rejecting them outright, they said it was to maintain loyalty. :dubious:

No whoosh. This occurred to me some while later (how much later, I’m embarrassed to say). At the time, I didn’t think of it because (1) I, personally, wouldn’t have thought to do such a thing, (2) He truly didn’t seem interested in pursuing it - didn’t want to take my list of references, etc.

Back in the 90’s, I called this “God for $25k”. You’d see it everywhere, especially after a new programming language was introduced.

January 1: Language A introduced.

January 2: “Wanted, Programmer with minimum 5 years experience working with A. Must be proficient in every computer operating system known to mankind, able to work 168 hours a week, write like William Shakespeare, be able to live without food, water, air or human contact. Salary: $25k.”

So have you touched base with your grad school advisor about this interview yet? He might want to check into it on his own.

I have, and I’ve also talked to the alumni office’s career counselor. Both people have advised me not to take the job.

As I said, for all I know, the compensation package could be better than I was told. The interviewer came across as a bit of a ninny anyway, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that she’s talking out her ass on just about everything.

Robin