Was there a particular time a company made you jump through ridiculous hoops while interviewing? Something particularly obnoxious the interviewer said or did, or some stupid process they insisted you go through?
Did you go through with it? If you got the job, was the actual workplace as dumb as the interview process? If you didn’t, were you relieved afterward, or do you wish you did “better” on the silly interview?
I thought to myself, if a company ever tried that on me, I’d just laugh and fuck with their AI as much as I could before excusing myself from their applicant pool. But in a few years I probably wouldn’t have a choice anyway, and I probably wouldn’t even be able to tell anymore.
But it’s not just AI shenanigans. A few years ago I applied at a mapping imagery company called EagleView, who I actually had a lot of respect for before this incident. After passing their pre-screening, they asked me to do a 30-min at-home test. No problem, I thought, it’d be a good chance to show my skills and experience. Except it was nothing of the sort, but rather a generic intelligence and personality test called the Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test, with multiple-choice questions like “The arrival of Aphrodite’s exquisite beauty is best ____________ in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus” (fill in the blank). Very useful in cartography, you see. There was also a personality section, but I never got to it. I just laughed, wrote the interviewer back with a “Yikes… no thanks. You gotta be kidding me”, and that was that. I hope that told them everything they needed to know about my personality.
When I was a youngin’ and looking for my first job, Best Buy had a similarly dumb process involving the Myers-Brigg personality test and random IQ questions. I did take that one because I was younger and desperate-er, but to see that used by a “professional” company as a prefilter for applicants with decades of experience was something else. Guess that’s what happens when companies want to select for blind obedience above all else?
Why? That would waste only your own time, not the company’s. The company can use the AI to interview a lot more applicants than they ordinarily would have, and at no marginal cost.
Why not? Consider it a one-man philosophical rebellion against the inevitable
Sure, it wastes time, but if I’m interviewing, I’m probably jobless and have a lot of time anyway. And if it wastes even a minute of their human-in-the-loop reviewer’s time (it may or may not, who knows), that’s a tiny victory for the common working man! I’m no Sarah Connor, but I’ll fight the good fight against Skynet here and there…
I think job interviews are like dating, a chance for people to get to know each other and to suss out mutual compatibility. The good ones are respectful meet-and-greets that treat candidates and employers both as unique entities worth spending 30-60 minutes getting to know. If a company doesn’t even think that’s worth their time, that’s their prerogative and they’ll still get plenty of applicants. Just not me, if I can help it. Someday soon, I won’t even know or be able to tell.
Many years ago I had a very memorable job interview with a NJ-based attorney who was looking for someone to bring in charity dollars for his pet cause. It seemed mostly about developing language for his website.
This guy was the most obnoxious person I may have ever met. After three hours with him (he would not let me go), I still didn’t fully understand the job he wanted me to do. He talked nonstop about things completely unrelated to the job. At some point he suggested that we get the charitable support of Halle Berry.
“Do you know why Halle Berry?” he asks.
“No,” I said.
“Because she’s fucking hot, am I right?”
(I am a woman.)
At one point he had me answering phones like a secretary. During a job interview.
The guy swore prolifically. I’m not remotely prudish about cursing, but during a job interview, man?
At a certain point he bought me lunch. His employees looked miserable. He went on and on about how hard he works them. At one point he says, “I will give you migraines.”
It was a miserable three hours.
When I finally got out of there, I got an email from the man’s daughter offering me the job. When I said no thank you, she said, “Yeah, this is kind of a recurring issue. Can you give me some feedback on why you don’t want to work for him? I need to give him some pointers.”
Holy shit. I had totally forgotten about that guy.
Honestly, with the way he prevented me from leaving (that kind of high-pressure snowing technique some men have mastered, where you look like the asshole if you assert a boundary) I’m not sure I would have escaped that job without a sexual harassment suit. That whole experience was highly unsettling.
Wow, now that’s a bullet dodged. How did this guy get any employees? How did he sucker someone into reproducing with him? What did you tell his daughter, besides “find a better dad”?
I can’t remember if I responded or not. It was so long ago. I think he kept employees there by paying them a lot of money. The offer was very generous.
I don’t know if I’d call it silly, but it was certainly the shortest one ever. The headhunter company I was using got me an interview for quality control manager on a large military project. I showed up and asked where I might find the person interviewing, walked into her office and introduced myself and she said “When can you start?”.
I don’t think I have a silly one or a horror story, but I do have a slightly odd one. It was an all-day interview panel, about 45 minutes for each person, and at one point I was brought into the office of a fairly scruffy individual. “Do you smoke?” he asked. As it happens, I was at the time a chipper - an occasional social smoker, and so I said sure, and then we walked around Boston long enough to each smoke a cigarette while I fielded questions and then returned to his office.
I did get the offer (surprisingly - didn’t I smell like cigarette smoke in later interviews?) but didn’t take it, though not because of him.
For the time being, maybe. But consider what happens when more companies roll out AI interviewing. Then, instead of getting, say, 5 interview requests for every 100 job applications you send out, you might get 95 interview requests. That’s a lot of time you’d need to spend interviewing, and it won’t give you any better chances of actually getting a job.
At that point I’d just have my AI talk to their AI. Or summarily reject any companies using AI interviewers, if I have that luxury (probably won’t).
Anyway, that’s not really the point; in context, AI interviewers are for now rare and novel enough that I can still point at them and mock them. Not for much longer, but I’ll enjoy it while I can!
Not a huge big deal, but had an “interview” once that turned out to be with a very large group that was split into teams of 4 or 5 people assigned to do a mock project together, with the suits strolling around silently observing. I was desperate at the time, so went through with this stupidity (the loudest and most aggressive member of each team “won,” of course) but it’s one of life’s small regrets that I didn’t walk out. Never again, and especially never if they do this without hinting at the nature of the “interview” in advance, which I’d justifiably assumed would be one-on-one, like any normal interview for any normal job.
On the other end, I once interviewed a perfectly credentialed woman for a public-facing position, and she could not make eye contact, none at all, and gave one-word answers to everything. It was heartbreaking.
Also on that same other end, I was on a panel where one candidate was WILDLY overqualified for the (low-level) job, if she was telling the truth – a former CEO of a Fortune 500 company; a lawyer; a pHD; the inventor of bubblegum; who knows what else. She was clearly either a scam artist or far too desperate or something else badly wrong with her. My idiot boss insisted on extending her the offer because she was the most qualified, and why WOULDN’T you hire the Most Qualified Person, Briny, you dummy? Luckily for the company, she didn’t accept and we hired the right candidate in the end, in spite of the boss.
The entire process is generally a nightmare for all and usually selects for all the wrong qualities (except, I guess, in sales). The person who is best at interviewing is very rarely the person who’s going to be best at doing the job.
I don’t know if it was silly, but it was surely the most perplexing interview I ever had. I was applying for system admin at a smaller size company (about 100 employees) and was interviewed by two people: the male staff manager and the female current sys admin (the first fiddle sys admin had surprisingly left the company as I understood it). The sys admin posed reasonable and interesting questions and gave me valuable information about the job requirements, and we kind of bonded by common interest and experience. The HR guy only posed stupid standard questions like “Where do you see yourself and your career in 5 years?” or “What do you think are your strengths and your weaknesses?” and bullshit like that. I don’t know what I answered, but I had some lame standard answers at the time for these kind of questions. Lame because as soon as I got them in a job interview, it was clear to me that I didn’t want to work in a company with such a lazy ass HR management.
I didn’t get the job, but I bet if the sys admin had had the last word, she would have hired me.
I once had an old-school, personal networking referral to a hiring manager, who for some combo of reasons took a real shine to me. He decided to hire me during our talk, and sent me to HR for the formalities.
Although I really was very well qualified for the job, HR had their back up, not liking being told what to do. They made it abundantly clear to me that they were being forced to hire me against their will, assuring me that I’d fail in the position. I excelled, but it was an unbelievably dysfunctional and weird place. The company fell apart a couple of years after I left when one of the owners jumped out of a window, though people said he didn’t jump.
it was early in my career, for a below mid-mmt position. I learnd during the job interview, that there were a total of 6 interviews.
I (too) gracefully bowed out, indicating that this was a (IMHO) deeply flawed decision process. My today’s “Me” woulud gracefully end the interview without sitting through it.
I also once was taking part in a group dynamic, where it eventually became clear that there was no job, but it rather felt like some observational behaviour study. I, today, also feel I was too polite.
When I was interviewing for my first real job after college as a software engineer, I went out to a company and was ushered into the manager’s office. He was on the phone and motioned for me to sit down. I sat while he talked on the phone. And talked. And talked. He literally talked on the phone for over 20 minutes while I sat there in front of him.
Finally he hung up and started talking to me. At some point early in the conversation, after maybe 5 or 10 minutes, he asked me something about my transportation. I told him that I didn’t own a car and would be taking public transportation to get to work. He said, “Oh, I’m sorry. We have a company policy that we don’t hire anyone who doesn’t own their own car.” He shook my hand and dismissed me.
I still don’t know WTF that “interview” was all about.
Long ago, I filled out an application for an entry-level job at a shoe store in the mall. Question: why do you want to work at Blah-Blah Shoes? I answered, “Al Bundy is my idol.”
They never called me, but I hope someone got a chuckle out of it.
I had a similar experience, but for a much lower level job. A freshman in college, I was wearing a concert t-shirt, cut-off jean shorts (this was 1989), and rocking a James Hetfield style mullet. I was riding around to fill out applications at places I knew was hiring. I also had a really crappy one page “resume”. Walked into a grocery store and asked for the application. The guy saw the resume and asked when I could start. High bar there.
In 2007 I was interviewed by a publishing company for a finance manager position.
24 hours before the interview I was sent instructions to go into a “virtual world” called Second Life, create an avatar, get some “clothes” and then go to some place where I would meet the interviewers.
I did go in, but the damn thing was so awkward and stupid. The interviewers were about as inane as the process indicated. The questions were apparently intended to be “playful and irreverent” and many would be extremely concerning to their legal team, let’s just say.
The recruiter said the objective was to see how you could rapidly adapt to technology and operate in unfamiliar situations. Decided I’d stay in a more tangible business (food retail) where this kind of shit would get laughed at.
One summer when I was in grad school I applied to teach some activity or another at a summer camp. During the interview I was asked what I thought was the appropriate relationship between a camp counselor and the kids. I said the usual stuff about being friendly, but not friends, professionalism, etc.
They said, “Yeah, ok. But would you get closer to the kids?”
Slightly puzzled, I said something like, “Well, of course you develop rapport with some kids better than others, but as an instructor you have a responsibility to all…”
After a couple more back-and-forths along these vague lines I was finally asked, “Would you ever have a romantic relationship with one of your students?”
I stared at the them incredulously for a moment, then slowly replied, “… Uh, no. My hesitation in responding was because I could never imagine such a thing and had no idea that’s what you were trying to ask.”
I decided not to work there. Sounded like there had been some… issues.
I answered, “Al Bundy is my idol.”