had a similar unsolicited psych evaluation interview back in 2017 in twitter. There was a VP (or maybe director), who started with "go back in history and tell me what your boss at position X would say about you", and this kept happening for an hour.
The worst job interview I ever had
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Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, OP just unwinded himself, no filter. You can be truthful and open with friends and family, close people to you. You absolutely shouldn't when talking with strangers.
Then strangers shouldn't fucking ask questions that could have answers that make them uncomfortable. Just a thought.
We weren't there, and the article is light on details, so we can only speculate. I see two options here:
a) The potential employer vastly overstepped commonly accepted boundaries.
b) It was totally implied that the questions were to be answered in the context of work. "What was the hardest challenge you had to overcome?" in that context relates to e.g. debugging a hard concurrency problem, not your divorce.
What stood out to me is that whatever interpretation is the correct one, the candidate was willing to give (apparently) deeply personal answers. That's just something to adjust for in upcoming interviews, we live and learn.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#113This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of ever…
>It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of every question. It’s totally 100% the intent of the interviewer.
you are stating your opinion as fact, and I don't think there is a basis beyond your opinion, you simply don't know.
I agree with you the interviewee could have handled the questions better to not be so revealing about himself, setting boundaries the interviewer was crossing, but it might have been precisely the intent of the mental health company interviewer to elicit responses like that to stay away from emotionally wounded people.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#114This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of ever…
> Or the “this person knows how to interview” part (which generally, but not always, correlates with experience and emotional maturity).
I think that "generally..." is a little harsh.
The person might just not have worked in a stereotypical corporate drone environment before.
Or they might normally have been able to handle the corporate drone interview theatre, but are overextended by the context (e.g., laid off in this job market, which can easily be more stressful and existential than most actual work situations), and a bad interview hazing just yanks on that.
There's going to be more and more overstressed people showing up to tech job interviews, and people on the other side of the table will need empathy and understanding, if they're going to make good assessments despite the context.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#115Earlier this year I was told I failed an interview because when asked why I wanted to join a company, my answer "could apply to other companies in the same stage of life." They apparently required me to be _uniquely_ interested in their company. There were other oddities about their interview process. Some interviewers just want to feel special.
Thats the thing I love about recruiters. I won't be looking for a job, and a recruiter calls me about one that sounds interesting.
Come interview time someone will ask why I want to work there. My answer is: "You called me, why should I want to work here."
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you being glib or unrealistic? You're going to find many red flags for any job, perhaps severe flags. But you need a job. Or you have to roll the dice because you have deep knowledge of the red flags for your current job. Who finds 10/10 perfect jobs via an application process? Note: I probably shouldn't be commenting since I don't need to apply for jobs and conditions here are likely different from yours.
There's a difference between "red flags" and "imperfections". Every team has faults, which if you're experienced at interviewing/working many places, are usually pretty easy to figure out. These are distinct from "red flags". Early in your career it can be hard to distinguish the two, but once you've joined a company where there really were "red flags" you quickly learn to differentiate. Many people are reading the a…
I don't know if they still do it, but the fashion, back in the 1980s, was to give a Myers-Briggs-type test to candidates.
Maybe I'm wrong, but given the type of company it was (and likely, the C-suite people), I guess that they were doing something similar. I assume that they really did want to know about the person's non-worklife stuff.
I would consider that crossing boundaries. It's also possible that some of the questions might have been illegal (in the US).
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#117This… was a mistake on both you and the interviewer. All interview questions - unless it’s impossible to twist your answer to fit this - is scoped to “… at work”. Nobody who asks “tell me about yourself” is asking you to talk about how you met your partner, how many cats you have, or that experience you had, that one time, at band camp. It would be redundant and awkward to literally say “… at work” at the end of ever…
And even if, for the sake of argument, they legitimately did ask about your personal life instead of your work life... you normally wouldn't answer any of that. (In fact, it could very well mean the end of the interview, from the interviewee's side.) That's vastly overstepping commonly accepted boundaries. Sure, some surface level smalltalk is normal and expected: "Any hobbies? Ah, you like hiking? Nice. Where do you…
>Your traumata? That's a level of intrusiveness crossing into "rude" territory
OP didn't say that, he said "hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges" and then characterized it (his opinion) 'similar “trauma-baiting” questions'
asking a young person (I don't know that he was young, just saying) "what was the hardest day of your life" is a pretty standard question. Like on a college application, they expect you to answer it. Young people often don't have enough other experience to fall back on, and in a context in which you are expected to make yourself look good, the filter that is expected is to emphasize something that you were successful/resourceful at.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#118I've had that kind of interview. I kept avoiding the questions because it's not their business. He kept asking. I didn't get the job but that's fine.
I've always worked with people I don't mesh with. We fight with each other. We even yell sometimes. But that's ok. We don't need to be a family and in fact I feel major ick at the thought (weird polyamory shit) - they're gross. But they are competent and consistently bring us more customers.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#119Let me preface this by saying, I know this might be a privileged take. However, I've had some bad interview experiences but one thing I have never had happen and I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with. > hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions. I would take these types of questions as "from a profession…
Thanks for that sensible answer, had to scroll down quite a while to find you there.
The real problem is that for many people it takes a while to realize you're being abused, in that case it was only a while after.
I highly recommend learning the basics of persuasion and how to manipulate people. It helps identifying the signs early.
Re: The worst job interview I ever had
#120> Even if you hire a cracked engineer, it’s probably not gonna be a good experience all-around if you can’t make a human connection. "Cracked engineer" is throwing me, but maybe I've just never seen the word cracked used this way before. Should it be "crack", like "crack team"?
I have never seen it used in this way before around 2021, but it has become popular since then among the Twitter and YouTube tech influencer circle. Maybe that's where OP picked it up.