131–140 of 589 posts
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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.
This… 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…
"Innocuous" icebreaker questions about hobbies, the weekend, or whatever, can be surprisingly problematic.
The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of.
For me, this was best illustrated by one of the https://www.linkedin.com/in/lornaerickson/ funny video skits, in which the interviewer character was using "innocuous icebreaker" chat aggressively to try to extract information all over the no-no list of things you aren't supposed to ask.
(Then the skit was funny again, after the fact, when I was in an interview with some barely-out-of-school founder, who was intentionally doing one of the things from the skit...)
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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…
This is not a standard job interview question at all.
In fact if you tried asking this at any company with a legal or HR team, you'd get pulled out of interviewing people until they could train you appropriate job interview questions.
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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…
Some good points. Just a heads-up about something interesting I heard/read in training... "Innocuous" icebreaker questions about hobbies, the weekend, or whatever, can be surprisingly problematic. The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of. For me, this wa…
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I don't know your particular situation, so it might be totally different, but I think this is commonly just a formality and a friendly chat. It's a chance for you to meet the actual CEO (or VP or whatever in a larger company), and also for them to get to meet you in advance, instead of effectively getting "blindsided" by a new person (to exaggerate a bit). Usually, by the time you've gotten to that point, the decisio…
it's usually just a meet-and-greet. Yes, it usually is. But in this case the problem was that the CEO could unilaterally override the decision made by everyone else, so it wasn't just a meet-and-greet.
(And of course the CEO can override any hiring decision anyway. The question is if they will.)
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Some good points. Just a heads-up about something interesting I heard/read in training... "Innocuous" icebreaker questions about hobbies, the weekend, or whatever, can be surprisingly problematic. The questions and answers often inadvertently imply things about family status, religion, physical ability/disability, socioeconomic class, age, heritage, etc. that interviews are supposed to steer clear of. For me, this wa…
Good points. My hypothetical had the implicit assumption that the interviewer was acting in good faith when asking the weekend question. But that doesn't mean that interviewers necessarily are, of course.
Example: At the very start of the interview, candidate suddenly feels like they have to hide something about their religion, sexual orientation, or whatever, in how they answer. Or feels like their candid answer to the icebreaker was not received well.
Which is the opposite of what the interviewer intended, with an icebreaker, but their training didn't include how tricky casual icebreakers can be.
> 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"?
This… 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 t…
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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.
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Assume that every singlemotherfucking breathing human you find in your life wants or at least likes to feel special, and that any company that asks you that question wants you to massage their ego a little bit. Don't think much about it, just believe what I am telling you. It is going to save you a lot of grief.
That question may be a little bit praise seeking (especially in other contexts), but it's also a way to ask if you did any research on the company, or do you just spray and pray. If you took time to do a little research and validate that you fit more than 'i need a pay check and you have paychecks' that's valuable for the company. Your judgement may be poor, but you self screened, so that's an extra screening.