Best way to handle interviewer asking me out on a date after tech screen?

Guard against this possibility is remarkably easy: Nobody hits on job applicants. If you are interviewing people, it is your duty to know this, and your company’s duty to ensure that you know this.

Either that, or you had better have one hell of a documented paper trail explaining how they were good enough to interview, but not good enough to hire, and explaining why the person you ended up hiring was clearly superior.

In my experience, any company with the kind of process that can defend itself against such lawsuits wouldn’t permit an employee to expose them to the lawsuit in the first place.

If one of their managers has read this, I’m sure they’re horrified.

I'm not saying that men don't regularly do that. I'm saying I have absolutely zero evidence of men doing that. It might happen, but right now I am much more sure that policemen arrest people for refusing to pull over nearly 100% of the time than I am that male employers retaliate against women employees/candidates who refuse a date.

> Is it acceptable to contact them and tell them you are driving to the conference and would like to find someone to come along to make the ride more social, and asking if they would like to be that person?

Based on exactly how your question is worded, no. I think most people would feel uncomfortable with a relative stranger reaching out to them specifically and asking to carpool.

You have to consider the dynamics of the situation too: What are the ages of the people involved? What are the genders? What are their roles in the community, etc. These factors can make it anything from a friendly, but still not terribly appropriate request to downright creepy and possibly exploitative.

You brought up time, which is another dynamic to consider as well. I'm sure if we thought hard, we could come up with some nice rule of thumb like "if you're going to do this at all, it should be at least X weeks/months/etc later" - but really it's more about whether everyone can actually move on and what the new social dynamics are. If by this point the other party is well established in another company, not looking for a job, etc - it's much easier to put the whole interview behind everyone involved.

If you're both contributors to a project, why have you not interacted already? Have you been reading their social cues?

Some people are very open to meeting new people. If you interview someone and you genuinely find them interesting - see if they have a blog or twitter or something. See how they interact with people there. After considering the other factors, IF you decide to engage them, do it some place they are obviously comfortable and giving off cues that they want to interact.

Presumably there is some mailing list or discussion area for the project, see if they are open to interacting there.

You also need to be really honest and examine your own motivations and make sure you act accordingly and are not deceptive about it either to yourself or others.

If you're really interested in just making the trip less lonely, why not put out a general call? "Hey I'm headed to X conference, anyone want to carpool?" You might get some replies from people you're not interested in riding with for whatever reason, in which case you'll just have to deal with it in an appropriate way. Either tolerate them, or come up with some excuse to exclude that person politely ("oh, I think all the spots are accounted for, but I'll keep you in mind").

You'll have to accept that in a lot of cases, the fact that you had a failed business relationship with a person will preclude you having a personal relationship with them.